If Roy Jones Jr. had retired after Tarver 1 where would you have ranked him?

Who do you rank number 1?

 

See post #31

 

That's my problem. There's lot of fighters above him who carried on fighting too long also.

 

Could have been 53-1 if he just stayed at HW and fought some of the smaller guys in the top ten. There were plenty to choose from.

 

Roy's Boy Toy fan club on here don't understand this. Roy handpicking Ruiz was NOT the same as Fitzsimmons or Spinks fighting and beating THE champion. Notice Spinks didn't handpick Tony Tubbs (WBA) or Pinklon Thomas (WBC) he fought THE Champion in Holmes. Roy didn't do that as Lennox Lewis was THE champion not John freakin's Ruiz
Its not even close to the same thing.

 

This. He definitely fought past his expiration date.

 

In fairness, I don't think anyone is claiming he was ever THE man at heavyweight? It was obvious why he chose Ruiz and not Lennox Lewis.
However, it's still possible to underrate that win. Sure, Ruiz wasn't exactly the second coming of Ali. But he was still a rough and tough solid HW who had some decent wins. He was, in essence, a heavyweight contender of his era. But, in fairness, if former middleweights stepping up and beating HW contenders was that easy, more of them would be doing it, no?

 

IIRC wasn’t there talk of RJJ fighting Lennox ? I can’t see how Roy or his team would have seriously wanted that fight as it would have been a comprehensive Lewis victory. A more realistic fight would have been Roy fighting the then IBF HW champ Chris Byrd which would have been a crap fight with two guys circling each other hardly landing. Roy would have probably got the decision then he could have retired as a unified HW champion.

 

Roy wanted something like 100 mill to face Lewis. Which essentially means he priced himself out and had no intention.

 

John Ruiz is the only Heavyweight ‘champion’ to lose to two former Middleweights
You aren’t helping Roy’s case here. It was a circus type win. He handpicked the slowest guy with the least amount of skill. Ruiz last stoppage win was also four years previous so Glass Jaw Roy clearly knew what he was doing. It’s not the same as what Spinks did.

 

You had him even lower all-time...19.

 

However you rate him based on resume, I think most people can agree that pure ability wise at his best he was a top 5 all time talent in terms of being hard to defeat.

 

Yeah he was a phenom
Easy to shyte over him now, but in his prime he was a unique talent for sure

 

I find his placement on there interesting.

In some ways him and Ezzard Charles have some things in common. Both around a ten year prime, followed by a fair number of loses. It seems like not many focus on Ezzard's loses now when ranking him.

Maybe time will be kind to RJJ and when looked at historically, more focus will be on his accomplishments. He could end up moving up these lists.

I don't have any old magazines to check, but during Ezzard's late career loses, I'm guessing that not many were calling him the greatest light heavyweight of all time...

 

Not because of post prime losses though.

Its because everyone above him i think is greater.

Him retiring earlier wouldn't move him higher on my list.