Despite that nice post by Fish262 above, it's not changing my mind about this matchup. Gerald was good, very good, but at this weight Jones was unreal. Give me raw blinding speed over power any day.
To realistically look at this you have to go back to PRIME RJJ which was at 160-168. I truly feel that anything after the Ruiz fight, is not the real RJJ. In his prime he could box and man could he bang. I hate to reference the Benn fight,but... Benn was hurting GMan and Jones could seriously crack at 168 as well. That plus once he got a man in trouble... I like Jones against EVERYBODY at 160 - 168. As tough,hard-hitting and talented the Gman was. He isn`t going to get through Jones speed,power and be able to do damage. Jones by 12 UD maybe even a late stoppage. Prime Jones was a supernatural force at this weight ...That and Jones had an incredible belief in himself that he was unbeatable ! Everything he did at camp and in his life, was totally in line with his BELIEF that he was the best.
I don`t see it that way, why ? Because Jones was way too fast and he`d pull the trigger on Gerald before Gerald could hit him. Simply put, Jones got off faster better than anybody... And the shots that he`d hit Gerald with, would hurt him. The ones you don`t see are the ones that truly do damage...
Manny Steward isn't exactly the most impartial judge is he? Love to Manny but he had an ego of his own and you'll note that he qualified his G-Man wins within 6 minutes statement with "if I was still training him". Now I've watched a lot of McClellan fights and even with Steward training him Gerald fought in a seek and destroy manner almost completely ignoring defense and leaving his chin out there for solid counters. It's just that until the Julian Jackson fight he never received any solid punishment in return, as he was usually blasting so so fighters out of there. I've never bought the whole "G-Man was a more circumspect fighter under Manny but after that he went knockout crazy" myth. McClellan was a tiger and was always, always looking to destroy. A guy like McClellan can never be discounted but Jones' punching power wasn't far off Geralds at 160, plus he was faster, had better footwork, more variety of punches and was infinitely harder to hit. I don't see McClellan having too much of a shot especially when you factor in much better technicians than him like Hopkins and Toney struggling to have any success against Roy at all.