Roy Jones is underrated

First of all you can't be certain how a 28 year old Hopkins would have fared against the Taylor he lost to. If you are, then you don't understand the meaning of CERTAIN.

That said, I would pick the 1993 version of Hopkins over the 2005 Taylor.

 

all very fair points. jones' resume is his biggest weakness and it makes him terribly hard to rate overall. it is leads to difficulties analyzing him h2h because we don't have a decent pool of reference for how he'd handle certain styles. i do disagree though with using his later loses against him. otherwise we do the same with joe louis, ezzard charles, and jack johnson

 

jones was unbeatable at his peak but like so many others like nunn tyson chavez ali etc hes gone on far too long

 

It's ironically fitting that a fighter so freakishly athletic would take such a freakish turn for the worse late in his career. The KO losses have hurt his legacy tremendously. Prime for prime, I think the only guy who straight up embarrasses him from 160 to 175 is Archie Moore. Not saying others don't beat him clearly, but people have gotten very flippant when considering how he would have done H2H against past greats.

He won one of the clearest 8-4 fights you'll ever see against a consensus all-time Top 5 middleweight. People like to say B-Hop was "green", but Roy was about equally "green" himself, and was really the smaller man, even if their careers suggest otherwise. That has to count for something.

 

I guess I don't understand what "certain" means then either.

 

There's a difference. When Louis, Charles or Johnson lost late in their career everybody knew they were past it. With Jones people didn't think so. Him beeing past it just came up after he was beaten. And instead of thinking the guy who beat him jus was wrong for him, Jones was suddenly past it. Because nobody could imagine Jones could lose in his prime. I see it a bit different. Jones is very beatable. Even in his prime. Of course it would need other special fighters in their prime to do so but I don't think Jones is up there with the very best in the division he fought at. He just never proved it.

 

You really need to read the thread. :-(

 

Well, it's always going to be extremely difficult to predict how that fight would unfold, since Hopkins was a totally different fighter. It wasn't that he was just an undeveloped version of his future self; he had an entirely different style, and was basically a brawler/pressure fighter who would constantly press his way inside. His defence and movement were good, but nothing particularly special. BUT he had a tremendous straight right hand, a decent jab and very good infighting skills. That would probably be enough to exploit Taylor's technical vulnerabilities and get the decision.

A more interesting question is how the older, craftier Hopkins gets on.

 

The other irony is that, despite being a worse fighter, Hopkins probably had the right style to beat Jones at that stage of his career, and still couldn't pull it off!

 

Hopkins is really going to bull Jones in the rematch.

 

To quote the Brits, I'm running at the moment and "can't be arsed". But I will at some point go through all 11 pages to learn what about my statement is incorrect. Somehow I doubt I'll be convinced though.

I'm not going to lie and say I saw the Tarver KO coming, but if you wonder why people believe Roy was nearing his expiration date, I wonder how many Jones fights you've seen. He was sluggish, winded, and way more hittable in the first Tarver fight than he had ever been to that point, and laying all that on "level of comp" or "style" is silly IMO.

The man's body was deteriorating, and when that happened, he lost his mental edge and lost to guys he'd have embarrassed in his prime. This has happened to many, many fighters, but people (myself included) had put Roy on such a pedestal that we were all stunned watching it unfold. That effect is still influencing how people consider him in historical context, and it probably always will.

 

You know, I'm big fans of them both, and was moved by one poster's comment to support this fight out of respect and to look at it as kind of a "retirement fund", but it's simply a farce and I don't know if I'll even watch it live.

There's going to be more posing in this thing than a playboy shoot. The only hope it has for being a good fight is if Hopkins comes out and wants to prove a point, but at this point, I bet he'll take a grind it out decision and not press that hard.

 

That's possible, but I think Hopkins realises that getting into a boxing match with even a past-prime Jones is probably not the best strategy. Obviously, time has gone by since their first fight; but if there was one lesson to be learned on Hopkins' part, it should have been that getting inside and roughing Jones up is a recipe for success. Plus, I have a snkeaing feeling that Hopkins has rather nasty intentions for this fight, and wants to really hurt poor old Roy. Jones doesn't have the legs to avoid confrontation nor the chin to stand up to it, and I think the towel will probably come in after a right ravaging by B-Hop.

 

1993 Hopkins was way more aggressive than... he was actually KOing guys, hence nickname. He would've went for Taylor and more than likely KO'd him.

 

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