Did Roy Jones duck Michalczewski?

Hmmmmmmmmmm...........now I remember that. No level playing field for Michalczewski. When I first saw him fight I was very surprised. I had to buy a tape, but it was well worth it. No wonder Jones did not fight him.

The US media was not fair either. I told Max Kellerman, live on the air, years ago when he was on ESPN2 and Fernandez' coast to coast show that he was a very nice biased person. Later Max became a fan of Vitali's after the Lewis fight. He said he had never seen Lewis flop down on his stool like that and he was sitting right behind Lewis' corner. Max thought Klitschkos were German, later he finally learned that they were Ukrainian. When the iron curtain came down, the Eastern Europeans took over and they are still coming. After Klitschkos there will be many more................

 

Hello Rummy,

I tried to send you a PM, but it would not go through. A message said that your inbox was full. It was somewhat long message about the old days, before ESB and the inception of ESB, etc. Miss your radio show.............

I am trying to find out where some of the old posters are also.

I saw a message on the front page with your name, but I do not think you posted it. Someone posted a message using my name as well. I wrote the admin. a message about their using mine, it was later that I saw one posted with your name also............Whatever, I hope you are doing well...........

 

Thank you for the response.............I will try and send you another tomorrow night.

 

Yeah haha. I remember in 2005, I wanted to watch all of Ali's fights, so I bought DVDs of all Ali's fights online from some guy. each fight had its own DVD and it was pretty cool I would bring them over to my friend's apartment and we'd watch the fights. It was exciting. Back then you couldn't find classic fights on youtube like you can now, as youtube was much different.

it's pretty amazing how you can find pretty much any fight you want on youtube these days. i think sometimes we forget just how cool that is. yet even with all that is available to watch online (and not have to order them) we still get bored somehow.

 

It was the other way around, Tiger ducked RJJ.

 

Jonesmad e a money demand to fight him. Whena protoer came up with the money, Jones went into his "Roy Jones does not have to prove anything to anyone, everyone knows Roy Jones is the greatest..." act.

Like Pac and Mayweather, and other examples, they should have fought, but never did.

 

Yes. he shoulda went to Germany and fought him.

 

Why?

 

Hi mate,

I didn't really want to get into all of this again, because it's been done to death on here, especially by me.

But I'll give a short breakdown on what happened, based on evidence that's been gathered across the other threads.


DM's advisor Klaus Peter Kohl, made several offers to Roy's camp (nobody seems to know the exact amount) and Roy kept declining them.

He had no intentions of going to Germany. He felt that the onus was on DM to go to him, because he was the world's best fighter, and the unified champ. He also thought that he wouldn't have got a fair shake in Germany. He said "I don't think a knockout would be enough over there."

So again, he kept turning down the offers. Kohl at that point was angry, and said "If they don't want to come to Germany, then they better make us some good offers to go to the U.S."

So Roy sent Brad Jacobs to meet with Kerry Davis of HBO and Kerry tried to contact Kohl several times. But he could never get to meet him either face to face, or via the phone.

From the evidence that we've got in the other thread, it seems that because Roy had turned down Kohl, Kohl was upset, and temporarily purposely ignored Davis's attempts to contact him. He actually admits that on the link. They were ignoring calls because they'd been snubbed. It was school yard antics.

So because Davis couldn't get hold of him, he came up with the idea of faxing through a proposal of a double header. He wanted DM to come to the U.S. and fight on the same card as Roy, to introduce DM to the U.S. public and to hype the fight.

But Kohl immediately turned down Davis's proposal, by declaring "Dariusz is a proud champion, and not an undercard fighter!"

So according to Kohl, Dariusz was too proud to fight on Roy's card (even though there would have been a big money fight afterwards for EVERY 175 title) but it was perfectly ok for him to fight Joey De Grandis, Richard Hall twice and Alenjendro Lakatos instead.

So at that stage, there was nowhere to go. Negotiations broke down altogether.


I've read your article, and it's a good read.

The only think I disagree with though, is where you've wrote the following:


"In essence, rather than face each other, both fighters instead opted for the path of lesser resistance. Instead of fighting Michalczewski, who clearly represented Jones’s toughest challenge, he was content making millions in the United States while facing sub par competition."

That's not true.

Dariusz opted for the path of least resistance, as you can see by looking at his resume. He was content fighting subpar opposition in Germany for good money.

But late in 2001, Roy spoke to Evander Holyfield just prior to his third fight with John Ruiz. They spoke of fighting the following year, but the fight was a draw and Ruiz kept the belt. So Roy backed out of talks because there was no title, and he felt it wouldn't get much credit beating Holyfield in his first fight at the weight. So he remained at 175 for another year, and weighed up his options.

Then early in 2002, there was talk of a Hopkins rematch, until Hopkins priced himself out by demanding a 50/50 split, even though Roy would had to have gone down in weight, and he already held a win over him. I honestly believe that Roy would have taken the fight, if Hop had have accepted 40%.

But even though those fights obviously never came off, we know that Roy went up to HW to face John Ruiz. We know that Ruiz wasn't the second coming of Ali, but he was a legitimate top 5 HW, who was effective, and had over 20 pounds on Roy. A lot of people at the time, thought that Ruiz was a bridge too far for Roy. Also, Roy was 34 years of age, and he'd had almost 50 fights.

So quite simply, a guy who was reluctant to fight tough challengers, and who was content to just face sub par opposition, would not have moved up to fight Ruiz. People say that Ruiz was easy and was tailor made. But how many other 34 year old LHW's have gone up to even fight a top 5 ranked HW? Which ever way you look at it, it was a risk. No HW can ever be tailor made for a 34 year old LHW.

Then after Ruiz, he dropped down to face a fired up, and hungry Antonio Tarver who was a good fighter, and who was a southpaw.

So again, a guy that was content fighting subpar opposition, would not have fought John Ruiz and Antonio Tarver.

So Roy wasn't content to do what Dariusz did. Roy took dangerous fights, while Dariusz fought the likes of Ka-Dy King and Harmon and Hall, who Roy had already beaten convincingly two years earlier.


My personal opinion on the whole saga is, that the onus was on DM to go to Roy. He said that he was willing to go to the U.S. and there was no logical reason why they should have turned down Kerry Davis's proposal.

The fact that they turned it down and Dariusz then went on to fight who he did, is a clear indication to me, that they were never serious about fighting Roy.

That's my honest opinion.

 

DM was a unknown, Jones was PFP no.1 in the world with all the belts that mean anything. If DM didn't want to leave Germany then it's his own fault the fight never happened.

If DM was PFP no.1 and the big name and Jones was unknown then I could see his point.

So no, Jones didn't duck him.

 

You really need to sit the Crack pipe down...