Roy Jones is underrated

I see Roy being about a 25-35 alltime fighter...Considering the fighters I feel that are ahead of him I think he is in good company.

He is most certainly one of the best fighters I have ever seen.

 

Jones never held a lineal title.

But his embarrassing KO losses don't?

This. :deal

Roy never actually proved he was the best light-heavy of his era; his ranking was purely speculation based mainly on how he "looked" in his wins. He never fought the best opponent out there for most of his reign (Dariusz) and was beaten decisively 2 out of 3 by the next best opponent to come along (Tarver). Given that most people insist on rating Roy higher at LHW than a fighter who whupped him twice at that weight, he's lucky to be rated even as high as he is.

Tiger may have been "old, small" but he was a genuine ATG (and was still great even at light-heavy), which still puts that win above any Roy had at light-heavy.

 

The Hopkins Jones fought was not an HoFer. Neither were Tito or McCallum who were both tat the very very end of their careers and above their best weight. Toney was.

So, DM is a hometown fighter but Jones isn't? DM was THE champ. Why should the champ go to the hometown of the challenger? It usually is the other way round. And yeah, Jones ducked the hardest/best competition, not just DM.

Which linear titles has Jones won? He was neither linear champ at mw, smw or lhw. He actually was only one of many beltholders and all of his titles at lhw he just had because other fighters got stripped of them.
He definitly was one of the best p4p fighters of the 90s :good

Joney was a great athlete and has great abilities but he sadly proved it to rarely against the very top.

I wouldn't pick him over most of the atgs in his divisions. Why? Because he never proved he could hang in with this kind of calibre. He didn't even fight the best fighters of his day.

Toney was weight-drained, not Jones problem and still a very good win, and Hopkins was not an atg when they fought. Both fights give you as much indication how he would do against Monzon, Spinks, Charles as his bout with tthat police man. None.
I rate Jones in the Top15 at lhw which is pretty high when you consider that he ducked his most dangerous competition and never was the champ.

Not by you. You turn to the other extreme.

 

Ability is speculation like h2h. Rankings should never be based on speculation.

 

Tiger was a great fighter but didn't do enough at Lt Heavy to be called a "great" at this weight.Two close wins over Torres,a stoppage of so so Roger Rouse and a blow out loss to Foster don't make Tiger a great Light Heavyweight.

And as for Tarver,take Roy Jones's name off his resume and his best wins at Lt Heavy is Glen Johnson (who also beat him) and another couple of guys who Roy Jones had already beaten more impressively (Reggie Johnson,Griffin,Harding).Tarver has no case to be ranked higher than Jones apart from fighting him at the right time.His resume is **** by comparison.

As for downgrading Jones for his embarrassing KO losses (all occuring after he was 35) I think it's hardly fair to judge a fighter after he'd clearly slipped.Unless of course you still think he was prime and just got found out finally which is just preposterous imo.

 

Can someone explain how Michalczewski was linear champ?

I know he beat Hill but didn't Hill lose to Hearns (which he never avenged) and then he just picked up a vacant belt before partially unifying against Maske.

Isn't the whole linear thing that you beat the man who beat the man? I don't see exactly how Dariusz did that as with all this alphabet **** I don't think there has been a linear Lt Heavy champ since probably Michael Spinks.

Can anyone clear it up?

 

Maske-Hill reestablished the linear title. Those were one and two at the time they fought. DM beat Hill and unified the WBA, IBF and WBO titles - he got stripped from the WBA title because WBA wanted nothing to do with WBO and from the IBF because they wanted him to defend this title in 30 days time after winning it. Later he defeated Rocchigiani, the rightful WBC champ, who got stripped of his title for no reason so thta the WBC could give it to Jones - the WBC got sued because of that, lost and nearly went bankrupt. At this point DM should have held all 4 major belts.
Jones just picked up the belts others got stripped of.

DM and Rocchigiani got pretty much f*cked over by the governing bodies just because they wanted Jones as their champ.

 

So H2H ability is not a factor in ranking fighters? That sounds pretty crazy to me. When one says: "X was a great fighter," presumably part of that description entails that they were actually good at fighting.

And "speculation" is a vague word anyway.

 

I've said this before and I'll say it again: There is ZERO evidence that RJJ was "chinny" before he cut his legs off post-Ruiz. Maybe that's because he never got hit - which in itself says something about his H2H ability.

 

Give it time

Roy needs to get out now though

I hope he can muster one final hurrah and KO Bernard but i doubt it

 

Thankyou.

It does my head in trying to work out who the linear titlists are at this point but going by this the now linear Light Heavyweight titlist is Zsolt Erdei and he has been since 2004.

Strange when you also consider bloody Shannon Briggs was once a linear champ as well.

 

Yep, because you can't judge it. Fighters can look great fighting mediocre opposition and avoid the toughest challenges, like Jones, Mayweather, but does that give you an indicaion they would beat great fighters? Too many factors, too many uncertainities and intangibles involved. I stick with resume, accomplishments, longevity and dominance. These things can actually be judged and compared - and it's still hard enough.

 

On that principle, I suppose we can assume that Louis loses to all of the top 10 HWs of history, and that Chavez would get beaten by anybody of note from 130-147.

 

Standards are way too high.