I've never known a fighter who's reputation has taken such a beating, especially when his defeats happened when he was 35+. When RJJ was at his peak, there aren't many fighters from 160-168lbs who I'd pick to beat him. For a period, he was untouchable. Now, his fundamentals weren't great but that only became an issue when his natural skills eroded. You can take that into account when rating him in a historical basis but, only rating him at his best, few can touch him.
He certainly looked the best ever to me, but was he? Hard to say. It's either Ali, Leonard or Jones Jr..(we never saw prime SRR). Lomachenko looks in his league.
In my opinion it was Sugar Ray Leonard, he was not only as athletic as Roy, and i really like Roy, but Leonard could fight like a lion, could dance, punch, he was complete.
I agree with this thread 100%. Nobody could fight like Jones did. Boxing purists will argue that he just used his superior athleticism and lacked true boxing skill. That's laughable. It was similar to the argument that Urban Meyer's great Florida teams only one because they had superior athletes. Isn't that the point?
Montreal Duran is the closest to perfection that I've ever seen in a fighter. I don't think it's possible to be much better than he was at one point. Montreal Duran is a better fighter than Roy Jones was.
That's because boxing is full of hipsters and wannabe smart guys. For some reason athleticism gets less respect in boxing than technical skill. And that's stupid to me. Because attributes matter, they always have.
I'm referring to all of the casuals on social media etc, the likes of who have jumped on the Joshua bandwagon. There's loads of casual boxing fans. Most of my mates are casuals. Of course there's nothing wrong with that, but I was just making a point that if Roy was in his prime now, they'd all be in awe every time he fought, and he'd be discussed 24/7.