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

I wouldn't say that Tarver was vastly superior to James, it's just that James was so inconsistent due to his out of ring habits. In terms of skill, James was the better fighter.

Reggie was a decent LHW. He had a great win over Guthrie who touted as the next big thing. He was a little faded at LHW though.

I agree with you regarding Tarver. He was a dangerous opponent, and I think he would always have given Roy a tough fight, at any point of his career.

 

Joe had the physical tools, but he never had the mental strength.

Look at some of the things he's said over the years.

Look at how he handled his career.

He would never have fought Roy when he was anywhere near his best. His goal was to retire undefeated. Which is why he killed himself to make SMW for 14 years, to defend a lightly regarded WBO belt over 20 times.

 

James was consistently poor at LHW, its the one division he had no success at.

You said Reggie was on level with Tarver, I dont see an argument for that..at least at LHW.

 

He was poor at LHW. How did you score those Griffin fights though?

Yeah, I think Reggie was on a similar level, even though Tarver obviously beat him. Tarver lost to Harding and Glen, Glen split fights with Woods etc. So I believe that along with Hill and Griffin, Reggie was of similar ability to all of those guys. I think all of those guys would have had mixed results against each other. Glen beat Roy and then lost to Woods. I'd have picked Reggie, Griffin and Hall to have beaten Woods. I would also have liked to have seen Reggie fight Griffin.

The point I was making to Bailey, was that it would have been foolish to have favoured a guy like Ottke over Roy, just because Ottke beat the guy who beat Roy. We both know that in boxing it's not as simple as that.

 

Toney vs Griffin were close fights. Tarver vs Griffin was not close.

Nonsense. Tarver beat Jones Jr, Griffin, Reggie, & avenged his losses to Glen & Harding. Tarver established himself as the man until Hopkins beat him. No case for Reggie being on the level at LHW...NONE.

 

not quite so obvious. sorry son, you are wrong. what are you, thirty now?

 

maybe i was confusing you with another enabler. someone on here stated hbo held jones back. when in fact the criticised his opponents every fight for a few years.

 

might be the only thing we ever agree upon! who knows, maybe not.

 

Reggie had two fights he excelled in. other than those two, his career was a textbook case for hype job.

 

he waited till he was shot, thats the fact. he cant stop himself ageing while waiting can he. he tried the same with bhop but got a rude awakening.

 

you dont think that sounds like joe calzaghe...

just an observation.

 

I said a SIMILAR level.

If you want to say that Tarver was better, that's cool. He obviously was on the night they met. But in my opinion, all the guys I listed were of similar ability.

If Tarver was on a completely different level, then how did he end up splitting fights with Harding and Glen? Glen went on to split 3 fights with Woods. Even if you don't agree with the results, you can agree that they were close fights. Like I said, if you threw Hill, Reggie, and Griffin in with Tarver, Harding and Glen, then I think you'd have ended up with a mixed bag of results. If Tarver and Johnson were the best LHW's that Roy fought, then why didn't Glen easily beat Woods? Why did he need 3 fights? Hill was faded when he lost to Roy, but he went onto beat Fabrice Tiozzo in a round. Tiozzo beat Dariusz. All of those guys were of similar ability. We know that Tarver beat Glen, Reggie, and Griffin, but would he have beaten Hill or Toney? Would he have beaten Dariusz, or Jirov if he'd have moved up to CW? I think when Roy was at his best, he was clearly on another level to the rest of the top 10 fighters at LHW. Whereas the rest of them were all around a similar level.

 

Wrong with regards to what?

 

You obviously have confused me with someone else.

They didn't criticise every fight for a few years.

They had an approved list of fighters, and Kerry Davis and Mark Taffet have spoke of the difficulties that they had in trying to secure fights against Dariusz and Bernard.

Bernard walked away from $6m, and then had a year out before fighting Morrade Hakkar for $1.3m.

HBO were frustrated, but they knew that it wasn't Roy who was preventing the biggest fights from taking place.

 

Reggie was a very good fighter.

Some of those losses to the likes of Castro were highly debatable, and there's a lot of people on here who think he beat Toney.