How popular was Roy Jones Jr?

Prior to fighting Ruiz only hardcore fans really knew who he was. His PPV numbers before then where between 100-150K. By fighting a heavyweight in Ruiz he was able to tap into some casual fans and increase his PPV sales against guys like Tarver, Hopkins and Calzaghe.

HBO expected him to become a huge star like Ray Leonard but he simply didn't want to take big risks after HBO gave him that stupid $5mill guarantee per fight deal. He could have been a much bigger star if he had stayed at supermiddle as there were numerous good fights to be made but for some insane reason he decided to go up to 175lbs.

 

floyd moving up to fight gatti was the very definition of a low weight fighter who wasn't known by the casual fan fighting a popcorn favourite.

hell, gatti even got paid a lot more than floyd for that fight.

hatton was 'another' talented 'euro' fighter who just happened to want to want to stop talking on euro tv about what he wanted to happen, and he made it happen.

there's been plenty of good euro fighters who could have done what hatton did but decided to talk instead of following his example.

 

too little too late though.
jones was already disinterested and on the slide, and none of these guys were PPV draws

 

Mayweather keeps himself in the media thats why. He's like the Lindsay Lohan of boxing. He's in the WWE, he's on TMZ, casual fans and even people who dont know boxing might watch wrestling, or might go to gossip sites.

Jones lives on a farm and is so low key that hollywood doesn't know who he is even to this day.

 

His ppv buys from Pazienza to Hall were in the 160-170k ppv region. Basically he wasn't a very big draw until the Ruiz fight, which had a certain amount of novelty.

As for attendance figures they were from 3.8K(Brannon)-16K(Woods)

 

I read it was 5m per year

Maybe because he knew there weren't any high risk fights there

 

:rofl

You have the Ruiz fight correct but none of the others Jones/Tarver III did nowhere near 440k PPV buys.

 

Go boxrec and you'll find out this:

2005-10-01 :

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175 lbs beat

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173 lbs by UD in round 12 of 12

• PPV buys: 440,000 (originally reported at 415,000)

And the same for the others.

 

Looks like Rico got proven wrong.


Again !

 

I can't believe myself why Roy Jones didn't have better ppv sales.

 

most of my mates know ali, tyson and jones, so he must be popular.

 

I can't drop PPV #'s, but I can say that arguments that RJJ 'wasn't known to general audiences' or 'was only known when fighting for HW title' are....bizarre.

RJJ was very analogous to Mayweather. Recognized top fighter, abrasive personality, questions as his career moved along about fighting top opponents. He was never as crass/rude as Mayweather, but RJJ was big in self-promotion. He just didn't have the charisma to pull it off well, and this sometimes made him an annoying character.

His best work came in the early/mid-90's, before everything under the sun was PPV. His fights were always well covered, but no one was going to shell out big bucks to watch him fight Rich Hall or whatever slop he was fighting late 90's/early 00's. His unbelievable athleticism always brought his fights attention thought, and he was one of the most prominent US boxers. One of the most recognizable names for the mainstream audience.

 

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFXcpp40Qw4[/ame]

 

when I saw you commented, I had a feeling it was gonna be something with that subtle racism crap u do

 

that same show had a 5 season run on the WB. someone was watching it?