If Roy Jones Jr. had retired after Tarver 1 where would you have ranked him?

His whole career is questionable due to steroid use.

 

Holyfield's whole career is questionable too IMO

 

Best of his era which would make him atleast a top 20 atg.

 

Didn’t Vitali get busted for roids in the Olympics? He and his kid brother should be in question too.

 

Possibly top 5 P4P.

 

Not even close to Roy Jones level of steroid use.

 

But enough for you to question their whole career right?

 

His certainly would have been ranked higher IMO. That Tarver KO and beyond tarnished his career.

 

How are you measuring the difference? They both only tested positive once.

 

Its a difficult question to answer.

Realistically nothing after Tarver should be held against him, but clearly it is.

But i do have him top 20 all time, I'm not sure id have him above that.

I have him behind Floyd, Pac and Usyk and even had he retired at this point i think i still would.

But it's hard to answer.

 

Not sure where I would rank Roy Jones but he was such a talent and force during his prime that nobody could beat him,he only truly lost at near 35 and after 50 fights and that was also after jumping up to fight at Heavyweight. Then you just have to look at his record and there are some very big wins over very good fighters and nobody even ran him close in his prime.. As for the steroid use just because other boxers never got caught does not mean they were not using,and then there are also other ATG fighters like Mayweather who had the testers in his back pocket . Prime Roy Jones is without a doubt a fighter who could have mixed it in any era. Roy Jones could and should have walked away after the Heavyweight win but like many fighters before him he could not and fought on way longer than he should have at the expense of his brilliant record,had he retired then easy top 5 ranking for me .

 

It should make no difference his career was done at that point.

 

Much higher than I do now.

I know a number of respected people in the business had Roy Jones in Sugar Ray Robinson territory after the Ruiz win.

While the first Tarver-Jones fight was a close fight, you could make the case Tarver wasn't busy enough to get the decision.

However, Roy's record after Tarver 1 made his stock plummet, IMO.

But, until then, he was 49-1. Easily could've been 50-0. With belts from middle to heavy.