Are there any fighters in history you think could beat a prime Roy Jones?

Did Roy answer? Not that I recall. I do seem to think he was calling out N Hamed to fight D Gainer though

Dariusz was the man and yet he was doing the calling

 

Not based upon their 2008 fight. That was faded, bloated, end of career Calzaghe with damaged hands having his last fight.
Prime Calzaghe I think would have won inside the distance

 

I will have a read of this later.
I did write "unintentional wrist". Read it again

 

How have you come to that conclusion?

Where in my post do I even suggest such a thing?

Read the timeline again.


Form line?

Get back in the real world.

If I was to use your logic, then I would simply say:

"Roy would have beaten Dariusz with absolute ease, considering he easily beat Gonzalez who himself beat Dariusz"

Stop being silly and debate in a proper manner.

 

What wild judgements?

He beat Hopkins and Toney, who I feel were better than Tarver.

Again, I would say that Hill, Reggie and Tarver were all of a similar level.

Are you telling me that Glen Johnson was the best guy that Roy fought?

Are you telling me that you think that Glen would always have beaten him?

I'm yet to encounter anybody who thinks that Glen would have beaten Roy at his best. I love Glen. I loved his attitude and he was great for the sport. But he was in the right place at the right time. He won every single round. He bullied him and then knocked him cold. This was a guy who split 3 fights with Clinton Woods. Although I'm an advocate of the old adage: "styles make fights" we've got to be realistic here. Roy should never have taken that fight. If you do some research, you'll read accounts of how he just went through the motions in training, and that the ringside doctor said that he was severely dehydrated etc. He looked like a zombie in there. When you've barely lost rounds during 10 a year reign, and then you lose every round to a B class fighter before being left unconscious from a shot that didn't look too damaging, then you know that something's amiss.

At his best, Roy would have been a heavy favourite to have beaten every guy from your list.

You couldn't have favoured Ottke just because he beat Glen. Otherwise you might as well have just favoured anyone over Roy that beat Glen.

Stop trolling and come back and have a proper debate.

 

If Joe had've unloaded on Roy with volume, they'd have ended up in a shootout.

It would have been suicide.

Roy was faster, more powerful, more accurate and he had better reflexes.

I think it's also a fantasy to assume that Joe would have had the confidence to have unloaded on a prime version of Roy.

 

Did he answer?

He sent his advisor, Brad Jacobs, to meet with HBO's Kerry Davis, to try and negotiate for a fight.

Dariusz's advisor was Klaus Peter Kohl.

He was never willing to sit down with Davis and Jacobs.

I keep telling you, it doesn't matter what people say. It only matters what they do.

After the dust had settled, HBO tried to secure the Hopkins rematch. And after Hopkins had purposely priced himself out, Roy then went on to fight Ruiz and Tarver.

What did Dariusz do? He just ended up continuing to do what he'd done before, which was to milk his lightly regarded WBO belt against B and C class opposition.

So:

Roy went and fought: Ruiz and Tarver.

Dariusz went and fought: Lakatos, King, Hall and Harmon.

Which one of them wanted the big fights, and which one didn't?

Don't judge people on what they had published in a magazine, judge them by what they did in the ring.

 

The only way Joe would have beaten Roy, is on the PS4.

Let's be real here, Joe would NEVER even have fought Roy at his peak. We both know that.

Faded and bloated?

He was a top P4P fighter.

Roy was finished as a top level fighter, going into the fight without a top level win in 5 years, with a 3-3 record from his previous 6 fights.

Let's look at Joe's opinion of Roy BEFORE they fought:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...hUKEwi7ptfuyofZAhWO3KQKHZRqB5kQ6AEwAHoECA8QAQ

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(6mins, 30 secs)

 

You're absolutely right that Jones Jr was never Lineal, at any weight, which is certainly a significant footnote in his career. However, it's not as if he avoided the Lineal MW Champs of that era. He did beat Toney at SMW who was recognized as the Lineal Champ at Middleweight the year before when he vacated and moved up. And he beat Hopkins at MW long before Hops was recognized as Lineal Champ at MW, but while the title was vacant for a long itme, Hops was in fact the next Lineal Champ after Toney. So while Roy certainly was never Lineal Champ at MW, he beat both MW Lineal Champs of his era, just not when they were the Lineal Champ. (and it's not like anyone else beat them before Roy beat them)

At Super Middleweight, Frankie Liles was Lineal Champ when Roy fought Toney and Jones Liles was never made. Within 2 years Roy moved up again in weight and challenged Mike McCallum for a Light Heavyweight Title.

The Lineal Title at LHW had been vacant for over a decade since Spinks moved up to face Holmes in 1985. And when Roy fought McCallum, the other fight that was going on at LHW was Virgill Hill vs Henry Maske who were already established at the weight and thus higher ranked than Jones who was just moving up from SMW. So as a LHW unification (WBA / IBF) naturally Hill Maske that was for the vacant Lineal Title. Hill won and became the newly crowned Lineal Champ. Then what happened next was instead of fighting Hill Jones defended his WBC Title against Montell Griffin in his first defense and we know what happened there. Hill decided to fight Michalczewski in yet another unification which established Michalczewski as the Lineal Champ.

Hill's decision to fight Michalczewski prevented Jones from becoming Lineal Champ. But what really prevented Jones from becoming Lineal Champ apparently was Jones' DQ loss to Griffin. Does anyone know (Loudon?) if Hill was considering fighting Jones before he took the Michalczewski fight? By Jones losing to Griffin, Griffin captured those belts temporarily right? After seeing Jones lose to Griffin, Hill then wouldn't have had as much of a reason to fight Jones with Griffin holding those titles like he could have with Michalczewski.

Do you know if Hill Michalczewski was signed before Jones lost to Griffin? We know in the postfight, when asked by Larry Merchant about a rematch with Jones, Griffin stated that he wanted to fight Hill, but then reluctantly rematched Jones presumably after seeing that Hill vs Michalczewski was made.

I'm wondering if Jones would have unified with Hill had he not gotten DQ'd vs Griffin, that would have given him an opportunity to become Lineal Champ by fighting Hill before Hill lost to Dariusz. If that would have happened, Roy would have fought the Man (Hill) and would have likely became the man by beating him. Instead Dariusz became the man who beat the man by beating the man before Roy could.

 

Thank you for the kind words, and I've really enjoyed reading your posts.

I understand where you're coming from regarding Ray having had to dig deep against Hearns.

Yes, we never saw Roy have to do that against another elite guy. But he didn't have a Hagler, Ray or Duran type opponent to fight. Roy's Hagler/Hearns was Toney. But I think Roy did possess the same heart as those guys, it's just that he hardly ever had to show it.

I respect what you've wrote about guys losing to guys who went on to be great. But again, some ATG's of the past lost to non great guys before they got to the stage where Roy started to lose. I can name guys who lost to guys of the calibre of Tarver and Johnson on their way up.

Here's some links, videos and excerpts that you may find interesting if you've not seen them before:


Live in-ring interview before fighting Bryant Brannon, October, 1996.

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An interview with Jack O'Halloran, Frankie Liles' former manager:

http://ringsidereport.com/?p=2112


An excerpt from Jim Thomas' autobiography. Jim Thomas was Evander Holyfield's attorney for 13 years:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...hUKEwjW4YirrIjZAhUSElAKHRpCBJUQ6AEwCnoECBEQAQ


An interview with HBO's Mark Taffet, which includes negotiations with Bernard Hopkins from 2002:

http://www.secondsout.com/usa-boxing-news/usa-boxing-news/inside-ruiz-jones-jr-with-hbos-mark-taffet


Dan Rafael's article for USA today from 2002, giving details of Hopkins' demands:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/boxing/stories/2002-07-10-jones-hopkins.htm

 

"We will have agree to disagree"

bbjc made some great points, yet that's all you're going to respond with?

Seriously?

 

As I recall, Hill's fight with Dariusz was originally planned for April, 1997, but it was pushed back until June.

Roy signed to fight Griffin sometime in January of 1997.

I'm not sure, but I would guess that Roy signed to fight Griffin first. But I've read an interview which was conducted while he was in camp preparing for Griffin, and he spoke of wanting to fight Hill afterwards.

The whole belt fiasco with Dariusz has always intrigued me. In my honest opinion, he must have known going into the fight with Hill, that he couldn't have kept the WBA belt alongside his WBO belt had he have won. The WBO were formed from the WBA, and there was bad blood between the 2 Org's. Then the IBF stripped him for not agreeing to fight Guthrie the month after the Hill fight. Now that was obviously unfair. But from what I've read over the years, his promoter never tried to reason with them and ask for an extension etc. He's also on record as saying that he wouldn't negotiate with King's fighters, of which Guthrie was one. Although I hate seeing fighters getting stripped, I'm pretty sure that Dariusz could have dropped his lightly regarded WBO belt to keep the WBA and the IBF. But he didn't seem fazed by the actions, and he seemed happy to instead rack up a number of WBO title defences. I also believe that his promoter had connections to them. It was a real mess, which eventually saw Roy ending up with the belts. But if Dariusz could have have kept them, the LHW landscape would have looked very different, and Roy would have had to have really pushed for that fight and made concessions to make it happen.

I'd very much like to read your thoughts on this. Because although I feel that Dariusz was hard done by, nobody ever seems to talk of how he could have dropped the WBO belt.

 

re: DM - there you go again talking up belts, which seems to be your 'go to' (cotto, sturm) when you need to bolster a fighter's lack of wins against top fighters.

and hatton fought tszyu under warren because hatton put pressure on warren to make the fight. tszyu openly said he would go where the money is, with his career winding down. once warren tried to set hatton back into the routine of fighting cans again, hatton left him, went to the US, and did what Calzaghe should have done

 

woulda, shoulda, coulda...
you're a brit defending a british fighter who you grew up following and who captured your imagination, that's all

it's very bad form giving a fighter a 'mythical win' over the best fighter of his era, when your hero had a decade to actually make it happen
like I stated in the other post, that's why we can talk about 'when hatton fought Floyd and pacman' or 'when amir khan fought canelo' - but with Calzaghe it's all 'woulda, shoulda, coulda'

 

People here talking about Calzaghe, Darius, Ward. Lol.

Put down the bottle!