Roy Jones as a Middleweight champ

This is the bottom line. I hate when discussion disolves into "Monzon never beat a guy like Roy...Roy never beat a guy like Monzon". That's often a given when you have two ATG fighters in a fantasy match-up. So, yeah, although I don't know if Ezzard was guilty of this or not, specifically.

I do think, though, that people put an awful lot of stock in their analytical ability when they say things like "Jones would destroy Monzon" etc. etc. Because Bodhi is correct, Jones didn't really beat anyone all that good at MW. Proof is the first line of analysis. After that, we're basically whistling in the wind. So I do tend to look first to the fighter that proved his greatness in terms of opposition and dominance. However, it must be stated that this can only be in the light of some technical analysis.

Jones did look like an absolutley extraordinary athlete. He also looks, to me, like a vulnerable one in terms of punch resistance. Now, somebody has to go ahead and have the debate about how much Jones "lost" in terms of punch resistance by losing weight. That person won't be me. I'm sick of talking about that. My position is that Jones has a vulnerable chin. That position is backed by one-punck knockouts he suffered on film, and is further supported by just how incredibly difficult he was to catch at his astonishing best. Jones is an athlete who reached his peak early because he was an athlete, an athletic boxer. He enjoyed certain advantages in speed an reaction time that allowed him to perfect techniques without employing the same sort of technical learning, physical memory and tactical deployment. He could get away with it, like Ali, like Midget Wolgast, like Greb.

But I do believe in learning. I do believe that Jones peaked at SMW. And I personally beleive that purely in terms of how good he was he was better at LHW than he was at MW, specifically for reasons of learning. He was never a boxing genius IMO, but he did become pretty savy. For example, IF middleweight Jones somehow lost his legs in the way he did against Johnson at LHW, i'm not sure he could employ the strategy he did against Johnson without getting stopped early rather than late. He looked smart taking that beating, I guess is what i'm saying. Not smart as in "clever", smart as in, he new his way around the pocket, he knew how to slide in and out, he had learned more standard technique through boxing experience. My favourite quote on this matter recently was Roach's saying of Pacquiao that it had "taken six years to teach Manny to bait an opponent into the ropes and then counter". This is the kind of curve we are talking about here.

So, that said, I favour a lot of different guys to beat up Jones at MW. I don't like the combination of freshness and vulnerability. Jones wasn't just short of fights, he was protected in the early days of his career by a seemingly jealous father. I maintaint that putting 21-0 Jones in with 80-3 far from being somehow "risky" for Monzon is actually cruelty towards Jones. It's just not fair. It would be fairer overall to match them up at LHW even though Monzon never fought there. Because the difference in experience is vast and the difference in size is not as vast. I favour Monzon by KO. I don't think it would matter if it were 12 or 15 rounds because I favour Monzon to start getting to Jones before that and for Jones to show failings in durability and crumble. Because he just doesn't have the type of fundamental breadth in technique and strategy to keep a flat out master general like Monzon off him. I would expect to see this happen 5 times out of 5.

Maybe Jones later became this head to head phenomenum that his fans keep insisting he was later in his career, but he flat out wasn't then. And if anyone mentions his victory over Bernard Hopkins as proof that something different might have happened, let me say here - Hopkins was a superb technician who was in his physical prime. He was also entirely without the experiece that would make him a master technician and strategist. You don't have that kind of acumen after 24 fights, that fighter doesn't exist. Jones beat a good but not a great Hopkins. And that's my final word on the matter, really.

 

Your view of Monzon's opposition is, and always has been, silly. As with anything that involves Jones it's impossible for you to see the truth of the matter.

I don't care. The differences between the two codes have been so thoroughly proven over the years, and testified to by so many fighters and trainers nobody even talks about it on this board aside from you.

 

A summary of your contribution to the debate.

 

It's impossible for you to give him his due. Your inherent bias makes it impossible for you.