addie, that's a REASONABLE and objective analysis. most can't do that when it comes to jones. to many jones' later career losses, unlike every other fighter before him, retroactively detroyed his previous wins and exposed him as a joke.
The win would have lost a lot of its lustre in the minds of non-fanboys after Ruiz also lost to a fat blown up fighter called james toney, who is mediocre at best as a heavy. Not that it wasn't a fine win at the time and better than Grimace's, but still.
i agree but i think this thread will sort out some interesting differences. his placing after ruiz or after tarver 1 should be about the same as it is now. i get the feeling maybe of those that say he would have been top 20 after ruiz will place him barely top 50 now in his career. why? if latter loses don't matter why does he get dinged for them
I personally think that he deserves recognition as one of the truly great p4p fighters. If Bob Fitszimmons is credited as being a pound for pound great by virtue of winning belts at MW, LHW and HW, then why shouldn't Jones? Furthermore, Roy had a substantially long reign at 175 lbs, defeated a lot of prime fighters with good records or veterans with big names who were still reasonably competitive. He was basically undefeated ( the Montell griffin loss was bull**** ), until he reached 35 years of age and was coming off a period where he had both gained and lost a ton of weight in a very short time.. I sometimes wonder if ascending to the heavy weight division, then dropping all those pounds, is what hurt him... I think he's a great fighter, but his critics will say differently.
This thread comes up like once a month. It was discussed plenty of times. And no I don´t consider Jones Jr as one of the greatest fighters of all time. He didn´t prove himself enough to be one. He was a fine fighter, certainly a great one, but not one I´d talk about in the same breath as Robinson, Fitzsimmons, Ross, Canzoneri, Ali and others. And no, I don´t want to discuss this again.