I’m being deadly serious now, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with you. Here’s some facts for you: 1. You know absolutely nothing about the career of Roy Jones. Nothing. 2. Because of your lack of knowledge, you are trying to debate on statistics without applying any context. It would be like me laughing at the notion that somebody rated Ali above Marciano, on the grounds that Ali lost 5 times and Marciano was unbeaten. I love debating guys on here. But how can I debate you with this attitude you have? You are ignorant and possess zero knowledge of the subject.
1 I must have watched at least 20 Jones Jr fights so I'm well qualified to talk. He has a love affair with the canvas. 2 You're an absolute nerd. and 9 losses is almost double that of 5 losses. he lost NINE ****ing times! This aint the Willie Pep olden days... Fighters fight about twice a year now, In the modern era losing nine times as a pro is very embarrassing for a top fighter. Lomachenkos single loss to Salido for example gets brought up on a daily basis on forums, if he lost 9 times do you think people would still view him as great , hell no. At the end of the day.. if he was as good as you make out he wouldn't have got his ass kicked twice just after his so called best performances ( Woods, Ruiz) by a good but nothing special Antonio Tarver, and Glen Johnson. Those 3 losses back to back told everyone he was not as great as fanboys like you thought. And him choosing to continue to fight and continuing to lose/get knocked out just kept diminishing what legacy he had. Calzaghe was a true WINNER, he didn't know how to lose.
Yeah there has been an awful lot of revisionism from many fans regarding that fight. So many who picked Lacy to win tried to act like the words that came out of their mouths beforehand were spoken by someone else lol I felt sorry for Lacy after because a lot of his own fans turned on him and he became an object of ridicule and it clearly affected him deeply. He said his phone stopped ringing and I think a lot of his fair-weather friends deserted him. To be honest, he sounded like a broken man in all the interviews I saw. Yeah I hate it when one of my favourites loses too. If they lose fair and square you just have to take it on the chin, but if they get stitched up by the ref, judges or both that's shitty.
James Toney is my number one fighter of all time and even I’ll admit there was nothing like seeing Roy Jones at his peak. Take that back it was like Tyson you’re guaranteed to see something you couldn’t see anywhere else in the world, baddest man on the planet at his weight
Great comparison...this was duran-Moore 2....both crowds were bloodthirsty. Ive never known a crowd whipped into such a murderous frenzy as calzaghe-lacey...i had fear for joe before the fight...at the end i was screaming stop the fight....laceys corner were a disgrace.that young man was nearly killed shouldve been stopped rounds earlier
RJJ may have been the best overall fighter ever to fight at the weight but like Michael Moorer at 175 did not carve out enough of a legacy there to be considered the greatest. Calzaghe is. Ward used to cheat to win. & u can't say he was in form if he's ballooned up to 207lbs pre camp. He'd obviously gotten slovenly in the months prior. He was also coming off that fight with Williams too which was a hard, close fought affair right up until the stoppage. Lacy isn't Joes second best win, it's a signature win. Mitchell was better, he was a two time WBA champion & lineal champion. That should have been a unification fight for Mitchell's 3rd (IBF) title but Otke stuffed him big time in Germany.. Mitchell had KOd Frankie Liles, JSC & Siaca etc.. Joe retired him. Another fighter he ruined! Brewer ended Herol Grahams career, Woodhall had beaten men like Catley & Malinga, Reid took Nardiellos WBC belt & Lacy ruined Reid who should have been a rival champion at the time they fought (Otke, again!).. & Calzaghe topped it all off with a 9-3 win over a peak Kessler too, years past his physical peak. That's a better career than beating former Lightweight Pazienza & a fat camp Toney. & yes you can equally nit pick those wins I mentioned but all told Calzaghe accomplished more regardless of a hypothetical h2h matchup. Toney isn't some mythical monster btw.. Tiberi had his way with him. Anyway, I understand your stance but I personally don't rank RJJ as the GOAT at SMW.
Okay. I’m going to give you a chance to debate properly. If you want to have an actual debate, I’ll oblige you. We’ll start again. But if you don’t, then we’re done. I’m not having a back and forth with you where we keep trading insults. So it’s up to you. I apologise for my earlier comments. Let’s try and have an actual debate. Now you claim that you’re qualified to speak of Roy’s resume. But your opening post didn’t reflect that at all. Your opening post saw you ridiculously trying to compare statistics without context. Roy’s win over James Toney eclipses Joe’s wins over both Lacy and Kessler. Yes, Joe’s performance was amazing against Lacy. It was beautiful to watch. I watched it myself. It was an absolute masterclass. But Lacy was overhyped and had looked poor in some of his prior fights. And he hadn’t beaten any really top quality fighters. The Kessler win was also great, but it was more competitive as Kessler was a better opponent. But although Kessler was very good, he was never classed as being a great fighter. Like Lacy, he also hadn’t beaten any top level guys. And afterwards, he was easily beaten by Ward, and he split two fights with Carl Froch. When Roy fought James Toney, Toney was a top 3, P4P fighter. He’d beaten Mike McCallum and peak versions of Reggie Johnson and Micheal Nunn at MW. He’d then moved up to SMW, where he had beaten Iran Barkley and Tony Thornton, as well as knocking out Charles Williams and Tim Littles. Littles had beaten Frankie Liles. Toney was a better fighter than either Kessler or Lacy. And if you try and dispute that, you’ll be ridiculed. Regarding Roy’s resume, yes, Roy lost 9 times. Because unlike Joe, he just wouldn’t quit. If you know of Roy’s career, you’d know that he was 49-1 at one stage, with a superior resume to Joe’s, as he’d beaten better opponents at higher weights. He’d gone from MW up to HW, and then back to LHW. He was named ‘Fighter of the Decade’ for the 90’s. He’d reigned for 15 years, where he fought across 5 weight classes, where he beat world class fighters with absolute ease, where he barely lost rounds in the process. His sole DQ loss was avenged in under 3 mins. He was phenomenal in his prime. But he was a reflex based fighter. His unique skill set was highly unorthodox which was built around his incredible athleticism. Which meant that he needed to either retire early or change his style to compensate for his age. But he did neither and he paid the price. But he didn’t lose because he stepped up his competition. He lost because of the weight loss from HW where he burnt muscle in a short period, and the fact that he was 35 and had fought 50 fights. He dealt in split second timing. He was a counterpuncher. Once his reflexes had diminished as well as his punch resistance, it left him extremely vulnerable, where he was there to be hit. That’s how simple it was. It was a mixture of the two things which left him a completely different fighter to the one he’d been in his prime. And Chris Byrd, Antonio Tarver and Chad Dawson, also suffered the same fate. You’ll never find a single person who thinks that guys like Glen Johnson and Danny Green etc, would have beaten Roy in his prime. Because those guys would literally have been fortunate to have won rounds off of him, let alone have beaten him. Comparing stats with Joe is utterly ridiculous. There is nothing particularly special about Joe’s 46-0 resume. Not when you break it down and look who he fought and when. Most of his resume consists of B and C class guys in defence of his lightly regarded WBO belt. Again, Roy was once 49-1, before he carried on into his late 40’s, where he was only a shell of the guy he’d once been. Look at some of the guys who Roy beat: Roy easily beat a 28 year old Bernard Hopkins with one hand. He easily beat Jorge Castro who had tough fights with David-Jackson and Reggie Johnson. He iced Thomas Tate in 2 rounds who’d been the distance with Julian Jackson. He knocked out Thulani Malinga who’d given peak versions of Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank extremely tough and close fights. Again, he easily beat James Toney was a top 3, P4P fighter at the time. He was the only guy who ever destroyed Virgil Hill, who went on to win a belt at CW, 2 years later. He toyed with Reggie Johnson. Reggie Johnson had more ability than Lacy. He destroyed Montell Griffin in a single round. Griffin was a very good fighter who’d split 2 very close and technical fights with Toney. He toyed with Clinton Woods. He beat Eric Harding who’d beaten Antonio Tarver. He easily beat a top 10 HW in John Ruiz. He burnt muscle in 2 months to drop back down to LHW to beat Tarver. Now Joe was great. But he wasn’t ‘Superman’ He went life and death in his prime against Robin Reid, where he scraped a split decision win. He was dropped by Byron Mitchell where he looked extremely vulnerable in a shootout. He was dropped by a European level fighter in Kabary Salem. He was always susceptible to right hands all throughout his career. Your statistics don’t mean anything. Prime for prime, Roy was a better fighter than Joe Calzaghe. It doesn’t matter that Roy lost 9 times and that Joe beat him in 2008, like Johnson had beaten him in 2004. That’s not how it works. Again, we’re talking prime for prime. Roy was faster, more powerful and much harder to hit. He was also more accurate, with better timing and a bigger variety of shots in his arsenal. He also beat better fighters. He achieved more than what Joe did. He will always rank higher. Also, Joe wouldn’t fight Roy in his prime. He wouldn’t go anywhere near him. Being unbeaten doesn’t mean a damn thing without applying context. Muhammad Ali could have carried on for another 5 years and amassed another 10 defeats. But it wouldn’t have mattered. Because NOBODY would ever rank Marciano above him, even if Ali had lost 15 times, in comparison to Rocky’s zero. So if you want to claim that Joe was better than Roy because he was unbeaten, whereas Roy has 9 losses, you really aren’t qualified to debate. Because that is a casual fan’s logic which you see on social media sites such as Facebook. That kind of silliness has no place on this forum. We don’t just debate numbers. We break down all of the relevant factors. Again, if you want to debate, I’ll gladly oblige you. If you don’t want to read what I’ve written or respond to me, then we’ll go our separate ways.
You can choose your own criteria. Again: Does Joe have a better win than Roy’s over Toney? No, he doesn’t. Was Joe a better fighter than a prime version of Roy Jones? No, he wasn’t. Would Joe have beaten a prime version of Roy Jones? No, he wouldn’t have. He wouldn’t even have fought him, let alone have beaten him. Joe was a great fighter in his own right, but he wasn’t better than Roy was. He scraped by Robin Reid and was dropped by Mitchell and Salem. Roy was clearly on another level. He just doesn’t have the stats that Joe has, as he left after 2 years because he couldn’t obtain fights with the WBC and WBA champions. So he left to go to LHW, where he beat fighters who were better than many of Joe’s SMW opponents. And when you’re rating on a H2H basis, that is extremely relevant. If you want to put Joe as number 1 based on accomplishments, then that’s cool. But for me, he’d only be there based on accomplishments. Because again, no version of Joe was better than a 25 year old version of Roy Jones. You can absolutely rank a guy based on ability. That’s completely logical. Sven Ottke also has great stats at the weight. But it doesn’t mean that he was a better fighter than the likes of Roy, Toney and Ward. Regarding Joe’s resume, it was good, but nothing special. Woodhall was good but he was at the end of his career and had been injured. Mitchell was nothing special. His claim to fame was knocking out a faded Liles. He’d split 2 close fights with Girard and the one you noted against Ottke. I wouldn’t say it was a level above Joe’s win over Lacy. Reid gave Joe a great fight but lost to Malinga and Branco either side of that. Herol Graham was 38 when he lost to Brewer. Yes, Toney had lost to Tiberi, when he went through the motions when he was young, where he fought every month or so. He was 26 and one of the worlds best fighters when Roy fought him. And he was in form, where he’d recently knocked out Tim Littles who’d split fights with peak versions of Frankie Liles. Roy toyed with Toney and Lucas, and he easily beat Malinga before Woodhall had beaten him. Again, Joe just has the numbers on his side because he spent 14 years at the weight where he had 44 fights. But he didn’t do anything special that Roy didn’t do. He just beat more guys. I’ve no real argument of you want to declare Joe as being the greatest SMW of all time based on his accomplishments. But again, he just wasn’t as good as a version of Roy Jones. So you debate on accomplishments, and I’ll debate on H2H ability.
@Loudon You clearly are Roy Jones Jr's number 1 fan , and A massive Calzaghe hater. So there's a hell of lot of bias. Whereas I'm a fan of Calzaghe, but I don't hate Jones Jr I just think he's overrated, and that he tarnished his legacy. Talking about Calzaghe getting knocked down a few times really is ridiculous considering Jones Jrs chin history, Calzaghe had a far better chin than Jones Jr and was never stopped, Jones was knocked out many times. So you could never win any points on that subject lol. You massively overrate Jones Jr resume. His resume wasn't even that good! I've only ever read you praise his resume. People just usually praise him for his natural ability/speed/reflexes and and achievements across weight divisions. His resume is one of his weak points. You seriously overrate the likes of Reggie Johnson, Malinga, who were just standard good fighters.. but nothing memorable at all. And can't believe you're even mentioning Montell Griffin and Thomas Tate, cmon lol. There was a lot of cherrypicking going on with Jones Jrs opponents. Ruiz for example is one of the weakest HW champs ever, that's the only reason he moved up. Jones Jr ducked plenty of fighters, the main one being the excellent Dariusz Michalczewski who seemingly Jones Jr was terrified to fight. Calzaghe was A Level in every department, the better overall, consistent fighter who always found a way to win. Jones Jrs chin definitely wasn't that of an elite fighter. You claim Jones Jr was faster but. I disagree.. Calzaghes handspeed was unreal. they both had A level speed. Jones Jr was 35 when he had 3 back to back losses versus Tarver and Johnson. If he was as great as you claim he is, that would not have happened! fact. Because 35 is not that old. If he was this ATG sensational fighter he should not have been beaten 3 times embarassingly back to back like that to that level of fighter ( 2 by KO). He didn't have the greatness to be a winner. Glen Johnson can a bit harshly be classed as a journeyman or gatekeeper. Jones Jr career was a tale of two halves... for the first half he was a highly succesful fighter like Calzaghe/Mayweather. The second half of his career he's been a chinny laughing stock like Amir Khan/David Price!!! You have to take his WHOLE career into consideration! You can't just focus on when things was going right for him. It wasn't like he was in his 40s when it went wrong. He was being praised for his performances against Ruiz and Woods then SUDDENLY boom he loses 3 times ( 2 by KO), when he was only 35. And then later on he chose to go on past his peak , and he chose to tarnish his legacy. He has to be held accountable for continuing to fight and getting knocked out all over the world. Also which you conveniently don't mention. There's a huge dark cloud over his career and achievements because of Peds.
Regarding your comments on Loma, again, where’s the context? Yes, if Loma lost 9 times, he wouldn’t be seen as great. But would he fight 75 fights into his late 40’s like Roy did? Again, context. You seem to be forgetting that Roy was once 49-1, when he was 35 years of age, after a 15 year reign. Let me ask you this: If Joe had fought another 30 times, until he was 49, do you seriously think he’d have retired unbeaten? Fighting world class fighters, way past his best, in higher weight divisions? Would he have beaten a guy like Lebedev at CW at 42 years of age? Also, where’s the evidence to suggest that Roy had a glass jaw? He took a big shot off Toney. He took a great right hand off of Ruiz. He got up after being dropped by Del Valle. Being knocked out by world class LHW’s and CW’s in your 30’s and 40’s isn’t evidence of having a glass jaw. How many former MW’s do you think would have been able to have taken flush shots against huge punching LHW’s and CW’s, when they were past prime with diminished reflexes and punch resistance? Again, where’s the context? If Roy had really had a glass jaw, Ruiz would have knocked him out, and he’d have been found out way before he was 35.
I'll just chime in here too.. Was it a delayed reaction? He beat Tarver & unified (in part) 175 about 8 months after Ruiz. It was 14 months after Ruiz that Tarver sparked him in the return.. now I'm no chronological expert but if he lost because of the weight loss then it must have skipped a fight. & surely 14 months is more than enough time for a huge commercial commodity like Jones to surround himself with the right nutritionists & trainers to help him re acclimatise properly. The muscle thing probably was a factor but I suspect Tarver being able to make adjustments was also something to do with it too.. Superman is a fictional comic book character. Funny how you make out he's some super human yet continually make excuses for his failings, failings that many mere mortals are able to cope with & adapt to, such as evolving your style with age & weight cutting correctly.. neither of which Jones 'the super human' was apparently capable of. Roy Jones was knocked out cold against Glen Johnson & Antonio Tarver. Don't be lecturing people on chins.. You're way too touchy about Jones. Prime for prime Jones was probably better than Calzaghe yes. He's also a greater fighter OVERALL than Calzaghe in terms of achievement yes. But he's not beyond criticism pal.. he was too arrogant to try & adjust his style, he was also content to feast on bin men for large periods (yes he's not the only one, but again you hold this guy to such high standards he should have been setting the example surely?!) whilst surrounded by a crop of European talent (Calzaghe, Benn, Dariusz, Collins, Eubank, Rochigianni etc) that far eclipsed them.. He was also probably a big juicer. Therefore basically a cheat with the deck stacked in his favour & a fighter with an asterisk attached to his legacy, or parts of it anyway.
Slimzos, I don’t hate Joe. I used to be a fan of his. I grew up watching him. I only lost interest in him when he started constantly whining to the media about wanting the best possible fights, yet was defending a lightly regarded belt against mostly B and C class fighters. He always whined but did nothing to change his circumstances. He could have fought in the U.S. and moved up to LHW to target better fighters with Showtime’s backing. But he didn’t, because despite what he said, he wasn’t interested. He wasn’t ambitious. Joe had a great chin, but you’ve missed the point. The point was, Joe had a defensive flaw, which saw him get dropped by lesser fighters. Which is why he struggled in some of his fights. Although he had a better chin than Roy, Roy was far more elusive in his prime. When you’re struggling with Robin Reid at 27, and you’re getting dropped by Byron Mitchell and Kabary Salem, (who was a European level fighter) then you’re not as great as a prime version of Roy Jones. Sure, Joe was never knocked out. Okay. You’re right. But consider this: Seeing as though he was dropped by Mitchell, a euro level Salem, Hopkins and a shot version of Roy, what do you think would have happened if Tarver, Lebedev and Enzo Mac had landed flush on him? It doesn’t take a lot of working out does it. If Hopkins could drop him with a solid shot at 36, we know what would have happened if Lebedev and Enzo had’ve landed when Joe had’ve been in his 40’s. Look, let me save you the embarrassment. Don’t criticise Roy’s resume whilst trying to hype Joe’s. Because you’re going to lose royally. Roy has a superior resume to Joe’s. Do you think the 9 defeats where he was a shell of the guy he’d once been, eradicates all what he’d done before it?? If Roy’s resume wasn’t that good, then Joe’s was garbage! Look who he fought from Eubank to Lacy in a 9 year stretch. The biggest win of his entire career was a split decision win over a 43 year old Bernard Hopkins. I’m not overrating a guy like Malinga. The manner of the victory makes it special. Malinga pushed Benn and Eubank and he beat Reid who Joe struggled with. Yet Roy beat him with absolute ease. Reggie Johnson was a very capable fighter who Roy toyed with. Nobody else ever beat Reggie like that. Roy iced Montell Griffin in his THIRD weight class, in under 3 mins with a lead uppercut. Joe never beat anyone in that manner. If you don’t think that that was special or memorable, then there’s no point in continuing. Roy’s got 8 very good-great wins: Hopkins, Toney, Reggie, Hill, Griffin, Harding, Tarver and Ruiz. Take into account that Roy was a former MW. Take into account that he beat most of them with ease. Joe’s resume doesn’t compare. Ha! Hello! Joe defended a lightly regarded WBO belt for 10 years, where he ended up fighting a guy like Mario Veit, TWICE! He starved himself in order to fight low level guys at SMW, even when he knew that Ottke wouldn’t fight him and when there was nothing else on the horizon at the time. You can say that Ruiz was a cherry pick, but he was a top 10 HW! You can’t criticise Roy for cherry picking a HW, when Joe wouldn’t even move up to fight at LHW, despite the fact that the SMW division was weak for prolonged periods, he was coming down from over 190 pounds, and there were far better fighters to target. The LHW division consisted of: Roy, Dariusz, Reggie, Harding, Nunn, Griffin, Woods and Tarver etc. Go and look at who Joe fought instead. Name me the fighters who Roy ducked? Roy wasn’t terrified of Dariusz M. That’s laughable. You can’t be serious. He just wouldn’t take his 3 belts to Germany. Roy’s advisors along with HBO, tried to get Dariusz to fight in the U.S. but he wasn’t interested. He was content to milk his WBO belt in Germany where he faced low level guys and fighters who Roy had already beaten. Joe wasn’t better than Roy was in his prime. We have all of the available evidence to hand. Again, it’s okay saying he always found a way to win, but look who he fought and at one point. Roy had a decent chin. Again, getting knocked out by naturally bigger guys when he was faded and then shot, doesn’t mean that he had a glass chin. I don’t have to claim that Roy was faster in his prime. The whole boxing world knows that he was. Roy had the faster hand speed in his 20’s and early 30’s. Go and see for yourself. He had much quicker feet. He had much quicker reflexes. Roy was far more athletic. He was also more powerful, with one shot knockout power in either hand. He was far more accurate, as Joe concentrated more on volume rather than accuracy. Roy had better timing. He threw a bigger variety of shots. The only advantages that Joe had was more stamina and a better chin. Other than those 2 things, Roy came out on top. I’ve already explained it in detail in my previous post. Chris Byrd fought HW monsters but was knocked out by a C class fighter in Shaun George when he dropped from HW to LHW. And Antonio Tarver and Chad Dawson also suffered the same fate when they burnt muscle. Respected sports scientist and sports strategist, Mackie Shilstone, who’d worked with Roy, Hopkins and Michael Spinks etc, has said that burning muscle at an advanced age can damage the body’s immune system. He told Roy not to drop back for Tarver. Roy rushed off the muscle in a few months and was depleted in their first fight. And 35 is old for a guy like Roy who’s style was built around his unique athleticism. He’d had 50 fights. His reflexes had diminished, and when Tarver knocked him out, his punch resistance had also diminished. Again, no disrespect to Glen, and I love Glen, but he had a damaged and vulnerable version of Roy in front of him, who’d just been knocked out by Tarver only a few months earlier. Again, Glen would literally have been lucky to have took rounds off of a prime version of Roy, let alone have beaten him. Glen split 3 close fights with Clinton Woods. Glen hit Roy to the side of the head and Roy was out for a long time. Yet he’d taken a far bigger shot off of a 230 pound Ruiz, just 18 months earlier. So you work it out. You can’t ignore the losses, but you have to put them into perspective. How relevant are they when you’re discussing his SMW prime? They’re not. Roberto Duran has 19 losses. Mike Tyson got beaten up by 2 European level fighters in Danny Williams and Kevin McBride. But how relevant would those losses be, if me and you were debating the greatest HW’s of all time? We wouldn’t even factor them in. You can keep talking about how Joe was undefeated with a 46-0 resume, but we both know that he could never have retired undefeated had he have fought another 30 fights into his 40’s, like Roy did. Prime for prime is all that matters. A prime version of Roy Jones was better than any version of Joe Calzaghe. Only a casual fan would try and debate on statistics. I don’t condone anybody taking PEDS.
Goran, I’ve covered this in my most recent post. Roy was 35 years old and had fought 50 times. He was clearly depleted in that first fight. Tarver caught him with a beautiful shot in the rematch and he deserves huge credit for that. Roy was clearly damaged goods in the Johnson fight, which was just 3 months after the knockout loss to Tarver. If you watch the Johnson fight, Roy clearly looks like a completely different fighter. Glen bullied him for 9 rounds where he hit him at the side of the head and knocked him cold for a long time. Roy had been hit by harder shots than that in his career. He’d been hit flush by John Ruiz. According to Roy’s team, the doctor was called and he said that Roy was severely dehydrated and shouldn’t have been in the ring. I’ve always been an advocate of the old adage: ‘styles make fights’ but a guy who went 15 years unbeaten except for his DQ to Griffin, couldn’t even win a round off of Glen Johnson, who split 3 fights with Clinton Woods. So to me, something was clearly amiss. Just like how Shaun George knocked out Chris Byrd at LHW. How many fighters do you know who have gone from MW up to HW, and then back down to LHW? How many fighters have burnt muscle within a short period of time and have been successful? Every fighter cuts weight. Not every fighter burns muscle at an advanced age. Antonio Tarver, Chris Byrd and Chad Dawson also struggled when they did it. I agree that Roy should have changed his style. But it’s hard when you’re living in the moment and you’ve been doing the same thing for 20 plus years. I’m not lecturing anybody. But there’s a world of difference between being knocked out past your prime in your 3rd weight class, to being knocked down in your prime against a Euro level guy. Probably? There is no probably. ‘Clearly’ is the word you’re looking for. He wasn’t content to feast on bin men. That’s complete nonsense. Why don’t you follow his career path. If he’d only been content to defend his titles against low level opposition, then he’d have stayed at SMW for years like Joe did, where he’d have amassed double figures in title defences. Joe held a lightly regarded WBO belt for 10 years. Roy could have done exactly the same with his IBF belt. But he dropped it and moved up to LHW, when he couldn’t obtain fights with the WBA and WBC champs. Because Frankie Liles and Vincenzo Nardiello wouldn’t fight him. He then fought pretty much everyone in the top 10 at LHW, with the glaring omission being Dariusz. As we all know, Roy wouldn’t go to Germany and Dariusz wouldn’t leave Germany. He then tried to rematch Hopkins. But Hopkins demanded $10m before taking a year out. When those fights didn’t materialise, that’s when he fought Ruiz at HW. Roy was doing that whilst Joe was still starving himself to fight B and C class guys in defence of his WBO belt. Out of the names that you’ve mentioned, we know that Dariusz, Joe and Eubank wouldn’t fight Roy. Yes, Roy missed guys. But he was far more ambitious and took far more risks than what Joe did. We don’t know the specifics, but again, I don’t condone anyone taking PEDS.
