Had Roy Jones retired after the Ruiz fight...

I think it's an easy game to play with anyone's resumes to tweak who they should've fought when, but it really only selectively gets played when it comes time to knock someone.

Yeah, I'd have loved for Roy to have fought a 160 McCallum instead of a 40 year old 175 version, or a Hopkins from 97 instead of 93, or gotten a Dariusz fight in there somewhere. Benn, Eubank, or McClellan would've been great.

Ultimately- and this is particularly true with weight jumpers- fighting everyone just isn't going to happen. The one division Roy really made a sustained championship run at was 175, and the only name people can reasonably say he "missed" was Dariusz (who is HOF worthy IMO). That's just a fight that, politically, wasn't going to happen. I don't think either was ducking it. Both were making money at their respective homes. Meanwhile, U.S. fighters were getting robbed in Germany, and German fighters were getting robbed in the U.S. It was always a pipe dream for those reasons. Sucks, but that's how it goes sometimes.

There's no 100% right answer for career management when it comes to legacy, anyways. We see "career" guys at prestige divisions get knocked routinely for not moving up and/or for having a weak era when they actually do clear it out. It's extremely rare to have a single division legacy and excel at weight jumping, which is why those guys are rated so damn high.

What it boils down to is: Roy beat a lot of solid, world class guys, has clear marquee wins (even though I think the Hopkins win has aged into looking way better than it actually was), about 1/3 of his fights were for world titles, and he did things we won't be seeing again any time soon. I don't like the PED issue, but he was a product of his era, and I don't buy into the romantic notion that plenty of old timers wouldn't have taken full advantage of what was available had they been there, either.

 

Great post.

 

I don't think Roy is worse off for fighting on and getting more losses. We know how to rate fighters who are great. He is great. No one beats Toney easily and Virgil Hill easily. or even a young Hopkins easily. He had incredible speed and I think in his prime better than Floyd was, but Floyd had better technique.

 

He basically quit in the Calzaghe fight, so that hurts his legacy imo