ROY JONES JR - 'Why aren't I judged by the same criteria as ALI & ROBINSON?!'

He also beat champions like Gonzalez and Tarver, and, he destroyed Hall of famer, Virgil Hill. Nobody ever did that to Hill. (And Hill kept fighting for another 10 years)

 

Exactly some of Jones's wins get heavily underrated. Like for example Thomas Tate went 12 rounds with Julian Jackson, Roy Jones fought him straight after and stopped Tate in 2.

And the fighter you mentioned above Julio Cesar Gonzalez, ended Dariusz Michalczweski's long unbeaten streak. These wins deserve more credit.

 

Malinga is a good win too.
Look at the trouble he gave Benn and Eubank.

 

Yes, he'd probably be regarded as a clear top 10 p4p ATG by many had he retired in 2003.

 

Thank you for schooling Clenelo

 

Roy had perhaps the greatest reflexes in the recorded history of the sport .. his speed and boxing brain was exceptional .. the only problem was , like Ali, when the skills faded his lack of fundamentals made him human .. unlike Ali he did not have a great chin so while Ali took beatings, Roy was iced and the image of any fighter put to sleep time and again hurts a legacy .. this is especially so for generations that only saw the faded version .. I remember reading about Joe Louis' legacy after the Charles fight .. so much of the country never actually saw Joe Louis fight but the Charles fight was televised and a huge audience that never saw Louis fight did for the first time and were very critical, in shock by what they saw of the supposed "great" Joe Louis ...

 

That's pretty similar to Gil Clancy's take on Jones.

 

Top 20 very possibly. If he had retired then, but there’s the rub.

 

That's excusable for the very casual fans. But anyone who bothers to study boxing and historical boxers to even a small degree has no excuse to downgrade Roy Jones Jr for KO losses at that age/stage of his career.
It makes no sense whatsoever.

 

It does make some sense. Had he started slipping but toughing it out on points and just dropping a few decisions, I’d agree with you. But he wants to be compared with the greatest of all time and so if those fighters never suffered the same indignity in their later years, Jones compares unfavourably to them.

You can’t just pretend it didn’t happen. It did happen, we did see it and it impacted how we viewed him. I don’t think that has anything to do with being a casual or serious boxing fan. It has some impact on his overall legacy, especially when compared to fighters who that didn’t happen to.

 

Of course, he's not in the same category as Sugar Ray Robinson anyway.

I would say it doesn't diminish his legacy one bit, but I'd also say that fighters like Robinson who carried on until their 40s and didn't suffer those kinds of beatings actually enhance theirs.

 

I wish we would stop focusing on fighter's losses when they were washed. Nobody talks about Wille May's hitting .211 and knocking in six home runs for the Mets, Kareem scoring ten points and grabbing five rebound a game for the Lakers or Dan Marino losing his last game 62-7.

 

Robinson paid the price though. He died at 67 of Alzheimer's Disease. Suffering repetitive concussions makes you much more likely to get the disease. Towards the end of his life Ali and Bundini visited him. He didn't recognize either of them. Even sadder Muhammad told Bundini that will be me some day.

 

On another board I remember a poster giving another poster crap because RJJ got knocked out in one round in 2009?