Bigger upset at the time: Rahman-Lewis or Tarver-Jones?

The last sentence of that first paragraph is an utter lie.

The serious boxing fans in 04 were posting on various forums - here, Boxing Fanatics, and Fightbeat. WE are the serious, knowledgeable posters.

Trust me when I tell you, NOBODY thought the rematch was gonna be a struggle. Jones was expected to return to form, and easily beat Tarver.

Most were expecting the "RJ" side of him to come out, and for Tarver to catch a beating.

You're making up sh!t at this point, and maybe the other guys can't call you out it, but I was there and know for a fact that nobody gave Tarver a chance in the rematch.

 

Tarver over Jones.

Jones was of course the Ring Magazine p4p #1, but that does not even tell the story.

Before this fight happened, people were seriously debating whether Jones might be the all time p4p #1, on forums like this.

It was assumed by many that he had a great chin, and it was even occasionally crept into arguments about the best chins of all time, though most urged caution!

Many people honestly saw him as a top three heavyweight in the world at the time!

Tarver beating him like that, turned a lot of people's worlds upside down!

 

You're also failing to state that Lewis was on the set of Ocean's 11 leading up to the Rachman fight, getting fat and not training, and MANY were concerned that he wasn't taking Rachman seriously... that all he cared about was Tyson.

The writing was on the wall.

The writing was never on the wall for Roy getting KO'd.

 

Neither was given a chance, but Jones was held in much higher regard, hence the Tarver upset is bigger.

You couldn't find a poster who picked Tarver to beat Roy in the rematch. And the quality of posters back then was FAR higher than it is today, so these weren't some General Forum idiots holding that opinion.

Back then, every forum had the same level of insight as the Classic Section does here. That's why I like it on here, it feels like a throwback... but it was the norm in 04.

Nobody gave Tarver a chance. The prevailing opinion was Jones was gonna stop him in the rematch.

 

The odds, the odds, you and the odds!

The ODDS say that Joshua losing to Ruiz was a bigger upset than Jones losing to Tarver.

Is that the reality???

 

Nah.

Lewis was still regarded with an element of skepticism, which bizarrely resolved itself based upon his subsequent fights.

Jones was practically viewed as being god.

After he beat John Ruiz, everybody started to see him as the second coming of Bob Fitzsimmons!

 

Kev is a newer fan, I'm convinced of it.

No one around at the time would consider Lennox Lewis losing a bigger deal than Roy friggin Jones losing.

Roy was considered God.

It's hard for the younger fans to comprehend now, so lemme put it in perspective - if you even suggested in 04 that Floyd was on the same level as Roy, you'd be laughed out of the building.

There was a Roy Jones SUB-SECTION on one of the major forums back then, dedicated entirely to Roy topics. That's how huge he was.

 

I can't gauge your intelligence level, but I AM convinced that weren't following the sport in 04... 100% convinced.

Cause everyone who was following the sport at the time thought the idea of Roy Jones losing to ANYBODY was an impossibility.

Lennox Lewis was never considered invincible. Was Rachman picked by anybody to win? No, not that I recall. But the fact that he lost was LESS surprising than Roy Jones losing.

The first Tarver fight was considered nothing more than an off night.

 

Yes, you are right about Jones and Lewis, but at the same time as Jones was considered far superior to Lewis, Tarver was considered far superior to Hasim Rahman. Tarver was considered top-level fighter, clearly the second best LHW in the world after his first fight with Jones and Michalczewski's loss to Gonzalez. Rahman wasn't considerd a top-10 guy when he KO'ed Lennox. His win over Sanders was underrated because nobody knew how good Sanders was, and anyone has remembered his brutal KTFO loss to Oleg Maskaev, who after beating Rhaman, by the time when Lewis was going to fight Hasim, was brutally knocked out himself not once but twice - by Kirk Johnson and Lance Whitaker.

I think the biggest factor of how shocking Roy's loss looked was the way Tarver won that fight much more so than the fact of victory itself. Quick one-punch KO - nobody expected that. The manner of Lewis' loss wasn't that shocking since everybody knew Lennox can be KO'ed, but the fact of the loss to such a non-hoper as Hasim Rahman was very, very shocking.

 

Everybody said that Jones had a bad day because he dropped weight, and next time we would see the real Roy Jones, and Tarver would be put back in his box. Jones was going to get Tarver out of the way, then step back up and take on the top heavyweights!

Of course nobody expected Lewis to loose to Rahman, but he was seen as being far from unbeatable. He had obviously lost to McCall, and a lot of sports writers picked Tua to beat him. When he fought Tyson, a hell of a lot of people picked Tyson. Then bizarrely, nobody gave Vitally Klitschko a chance!