Roy was not weight drained in the Tarver fights or Johnson fights.Taking the muscle off may have been some contributing factor but I have think the major factor in his decline was age.
I think 1 was the best option fight Byrd Jones would get a decision here. Rematch Toney Jones gets another win. Fight Tarver at a catch weight Jones wins by decision beating his longtime rival and retiring on top.
Nothing against Roy, I’ve met him and liked him on a personal level but I do believe he was roided and what you’ve mentioned also to go with age, muscle weight loss and improved competition created the perfect storm of a seemingly invincible fighter to an ordinary one in the blink of an eye.
It was always going to end the way it did unless he'd have retired and stayed retired in his early 30's, or he'd have tried to have changed his style to have compensated for his age. By the time Tarver knocked him out, he was 35, he'd had 50 fights, and he'd been up and down in weight. The weight loss harmed him, his age diminished his reflexes, and the knockouts took away his supreme confidence. It left him extremely vulnerable.
Age and putting on and takng off muscle weight too rapidly. Awesome resume and high historical standing already achieved before that point.
He did always say he'd retire early, but it's very hard to do when you've done it from being a young guy. And you can make these promises when you're in your 20's, because when you're in you're 20's, your 30's seem like an age away. But as we known, time moves so fast, and you're just living in the moment. The problem with Roy, is that he still felt great in the gym when he was in his 30's, so he just carried on doing what he'd always done.
Flash24, Roy was raised to fight in that unorthadox way by his father. He was tremendously skilled. They were just unconventional skills that were perfected around his incredible athleticism. Ali was unique wasn't he. The very definition of toughness. You can try and compare their characters, but you can't really do a like for like comparison between a HW and a former JMW/MW, who was knocked out in his 3rd weight class at an advanced age. The circumstances are very different. Roy had a lot of heart. He showed us that in the first Tarver fight when he had to dig deep in the 2nd half of the fight after he was exhausted. He then rematched Tarver which he didn't have to do. He then jumped into the ring with Glen Johnson after his humiliating loss to Tarver, before fighting Tarver again after over a year out of the ring. He didn't have to do any of those things. Roy didn't have a Fab Four like opponent. Toney was Roy's Leonard and Hagler. Virgil Hill was a very good fighter. Sure, he wasn't an ATG and he wasn't in his prime. But it was highly impressive how Roy beat him. Roy was the only guy who ever knocked out Hill, and Hill won a CW belt from Fabrice Tiozzo a few years later. Again, you can't really compare him with one of the greatest HW's of all time. Roy took challenges. He showed heart. He didn't have Ali's chin, but that's just circumstances. You either naturally have something or you don't. You can't pick and choose your attributes. You're born with them. Roy lost muscle at an advanced age, and he suffered back to back knockout losses at an advanced age that left him vulnerable. And not only did it leave him vulnerable, many doctors have claimed that knockouts of that nature can leave a weakeness. Of course those guys would have tested him. They were some of the greatest fighters in the history of the sport. But if you're pondering on how those fights would have played out, the fairest and most objective thing to do would be to think how those fights would have played out prime for prime. Why would Roy's past prime losses have told you that he'd have lost to those guys even when he was prime? You're talking about 2 completely different versions of Roy. How many greats of the past beat a prime ATG fighter? There's many that didn't. But he showed enough in 15 years of dominance to be rated very highly.