Instead of dropping back to 175 Think about it...what if he beats Ruiz in 03, then he faces Toney, dangerous but beatable ... Then he has one last fight against either used up Holy field or used up Tysons Do you see that as a good lock to retire with only one loss, retire as HW champ and go down in history as one of the top 5 fighters of all times
Ive held this opinion for a while. When Lewis and Vitali are around he could be beating Toney, Old Tyson and Old Holyfield. When Vitali and Lewis retire it could be Jones vs Byrd for the vacant HW championship and that's a 50/50 fight.
Man that brings back some memories. I'm sure I made a thread asking for people's opinions on these 2 meeting at heavyweight, with the view that Toney's chances would dramatically increase. Years later and with the knowledge of some of the posters on this forum I've come to the conclusion that Jones Jr is one of e worst possible match ups stylistically for Toney. Not to say he hasn't got a chance, but I think it's very unlikely he'd avenge his first loss under these circumstances
It would have been great. And in hindsight he should never have rushed back to fight Tarver at LHW. But he didn't have a lot of motivation to fight Toney again at that point. After he'd beaten Ruiz, he was open to having another fight at HW if it brought in huge money. The plan was to fight Evander. Evander's attorney, Jim Thomas, met with Roy's advisor, Murad Muhammad, and Don King, to try and secure the fight. But from what I've read, Murad and King got greedy with their demands and King refused to pay Evander money that he was owed from a previous fight. So a very pi$$ed off Evander chose to fight Toney instead, even though it was for less of a guarantee with no title at stake. In August of 2003, Roy was then scheduled to fight Corrie Sanders for the same $10m guarantee that he'd received against Ruiz. But after careful consideration, he went back and doubled his demands, which killed any possibility of it taking place. Whilst Roy was having talks with Evander and Sanders, Tarver was baiting him at every opportunity. So when he couldn't secure the fight that he wanted, he signed to fight Tarver in Setember. But the problem was, according to Roy's coach, Alton Merkerson, Roy had kept his HW physique that he'd gained for the Ruiz fight, in the hope of fighting again at HW. Which meant he had to lose muscle in a short space of time to make the LHW limit which was in November. Regarding Tyson, according to Roy, they met in Miami late in 2003, and Murad spoke to him over the phone to discuss a potential fight for the following year. But any chance of a fight taking place came to an end when Roy was knocked out by Tarver and Johnson, and Mike was knocked out by Danny Williams. :good
I'm glad Roy didn't take that fight. Sanders wasn't great, but that would have been a truly horrible stylistic match up for Roy. Roy didn't want to be messing with big, hard hitting southpaws, who were fast and who would have poured forward aggressively.