Roy Jones is underrated

Rocco pulled out of his fight with Roy.

He would rather get his belt in court thatn by fighting for it.


Keith

 

What a bull**** response through and through.

Who do you think most boxing fans thought waa the man last year at lt heavy, Erdei or Dawson, or Clazaghe before that. That's right no one gives a **** about Erdei when he was the "lineal" champ by your methodology. Like I said earlier, it's a bull**** dump for fans trying to hype one fighter over another when they KNOW he isn't actually a better fighter.

ANd by the very fact that this thread is s long is proof that not everyone is ironclad on YOUR definition of a lineal champ or YOUR opinion on the importance of it.

Dm is already a faded memory of the past, and Jone is considered an ATG. End of story.


Keith

 

And just like when you said it earlier, it's incorrect and shows blatant ignorance of history. Anyone who has a memory that extends earlier than 1995 or more recent than 2005 can attest to that.

Unless perhaps you think Muhammad Ali wasn't better than Ernie Terrell, Bob Foster wasn't better than Vicente Rondon, Carlos Monzon wasn't better than Rodrigo Valdez, Larry Holmes wasn't better than Mike Weaver, Carlos Baldomir wasn't better than Zab Judah, or Floyd Mayweather wasn't better than any of his WW co-champs....

No it doesn't, because the thread was intended to argue that Roy is underrated. If anything, the fact that there's been so much dispute of that only reaffirms what I've said.

 

I agree. I dont know why so many try to make a big deal out of DM when he clearly wasnt

Anyone with brains can tell he was never a threat to Jones

 

That's what those people and their brains said about almost everyone Roy lost to.

 

Jones was still a pretty dominant fighter, when DM was struggling with the likes of Hall and then losing to Gonzalez, fighters Jones one sidedly dominated.
The fight should have happened, but I dont think thats a reason to call Jones overated at LH, thats a joke.

 

So would he have lost to DM? I don't think there's any question over who the better man was.

 

For whatever reason, pre-03 Jones was a different animal to post-03 Jones. I think the evidence of that is pretty clear. I genuinely cannot envisage Michalczewski even making it close with Jones pre-03. I won't pretend to have seen all of his fights, but I've seen a couple and highlights of a couple more. I don't see him being all that much better than prime Clinton Woods, and we know what happened with Jones and Woods. I know it doesn't always tell the full story, but the performances against common opponents is emphatically in Jones's favour, and that can't be discounted. I'll reiterate, I think this is the exact same scenario as Joe Calzaghe not fighting Sven Ottke, except Ottke does not continually get flung in Joe's face because he did show himself to be the better fighter, beyond any reasonable doubt. Jones was the p4p#1, it should have been Michalczewski busting a gut to fight him, not the other way round. Floyd Mayweather didn't go cross the Atlantic looking for Ricky Hatton, Hatton went to the USA, won a belt in Mayweather's division, and forced the fight. The onus was never on Mayweather to go looking for him to prove he was better, and it's the same situation with Jones and Michalczewski. P4P#1's don't go scowering the globe for lower-profile challengers. Maybe in an ideal world they should, but in this life it just doesn't work like that. Jones should have fought him, but that he didn't really shouldn't be a rod to beat Jones with for all eternity. It wasn't a fight that had to happen for the ages, nothing even close to it IMO.

 

I think the whole point of this whole back and forth shouldnt even be about Roy...it should be about the fighters that the thread starter feels should be ranked behind him at lightheavyweight.

What Roy didnt do is not as important as what those fighters did do...which is more then Roy did at this weight.

I dont hold it to much against him that he didnt face DM...whom is just as much to blame and who Roy would have carved up pretty easily IMO.
I just look why should Roy be ahead of guys who obviously achieved more at 175...I feel Roy top 5 at lightheavy IS overrating..anywhere outside of that is not so bad but I have him borderline top 10.

 

Way too much emphasis is being put on the linear thing here. It's a useful idea in situations such as Hopkins - Taylor - Pavlik, where you have somebody beating the man who beat the man, distinguishing him from the other title-holders who merely fed off the discarded scraps of one of the real champions. But when you have some tenuous "re-establishment" of the supposed linear title and you use that as a basis to discriminate against a guy who has nigh on all the belts and has beaten pretty much everybody within sight in dominating fashion, you're placing an unreasonable amount of weight on it. It's not as if DM beat Spinks for the title and was defending it ever since.

 

I'm not going to over emphasize the importance of DM as it pertains to Jones. But, in all fairness DM did beat Hill when he was pretty damn close to being considered "the man" , along with many of the same opponents that Jones beat. He was a fragment titlist for the better part of some 9 years and certainly at least the second best light heavy out there. He also made it to 48-0 before finally losing when he was slipping at about the same time Jones was. I think its both fair and reasonable to assume that had Michael Spinks, Ezzard Charles or Archie Moore reigned for many years with such a challenger/champion looming about, that there would be a fair amount of criticism being generated here.

Now, do I think that Jones never fighting DM revolkes his right to be an all time great? No, absolutely not. In fact, I'm not even sure who was genuinely responsible for that fight never happening.. Jones was a champion in 3 weight classes and probably the second or third longest reigning light heavyweight in history. His legacy would have been solidified a bit more had he fought DM and beat him though.

 

I genuinely don't believe there is a legitimate argument for having Roy in the top 5 lightheavys. I don't, and I'm a Jones fan.

 

I don't either. I do however, have him in the top 10, but only on the lower tier of it.

 

Those are carefully selected examples.

Sometimes the lineal champion is generally accepted as 'the man' at a given weight. (E.g. Ali was regarded as better than Terrell in 1967.)

Sometimes he isn't.

(E.g. Mayweather was regarded as better than Baldomir in mid 2006).


And sometimes Linearity ends with retirement of the linear champion.

Welterweight linearity ended when Mayweather retired in 2008.


Light heavyweight linearity ended with the retirement of Bob Foster in 1974.

Heavyweight linearity ended with the retirement of Rocky Marciano in 1956.

It ended again with the retirement of Ali in 1978.

 

There's no shame in not being ranked in the Top 5 guys at 175. It's very possibly the most stacked division in terms of high-ranking ATGs of any.