Mistakes Roy Jones Made?

No..That isn't true.

Take away elite reflexes and handspeed from these guys

Leonard
Whitaker
Mayweather
Ali
Robinson

Are they still elite fighters? No. They aren't.

 

How so? He's a plodder with limited offense. His career has been above average at absolute best.

 

BS. Watch his fights again. When there's danger of getting hit, either one or both hands are up. Including the second Tarver fight, his right glove was raised up to protect his head, but the angle the punch came from changed after Tarver made a wide diagonal step forward and to the right while throwing his left hook.

 

Again, it's a matter of degrees. Old Ali - when shot, sick and slow as a mummy - still gave Berbick a good fight. Jones, in much better condition, got iced by Glenn Johnson. Robinson was a world class MW in his late 30's after hundreds of fights. Leonard got through the last five rounds against Hagler even though his legs were gone. Etc, etc.

Yes, neither of them were nearly the same fighters when their speed left them, but they didn't go from untouchable to losing to almost every half decent fighter they met - most often by KO - either.

 

Jones mistake in that sequence is that he shifts his weight to his back-foot when Tarver comes forward, leaving him off balance with his back straight and chin up when the punch comes. Doesn't make it any better that he himself tries a counter left even though he's off balance, but that was the kind of thing he got away in his prime and he never stop with them.

 

Berbick is a measuring stick? Robinson started performing badly at an earlier age than Jones. So did Willie Pep. Leonard wasn't even 35 (when Jones was KO'd) when he faced Terry Norris, he was only 32 for Lalonde fight.

 

Jones has just thrown a straight right, stepped back and is throwing a left hook at the ongoing Tarver. A hook that got there first, but because of the already mentioned Tarver's movement forward and to the right, the hook landed on the neck instead of the point of the jaw where it was aimed, and thus had no effect. Had Tarver not made that diagonal step, the counter would have knocked his senses off before his own left hand got to Jones (or, rather, to Jones' right glove which would have been in the way). Jones is throwing his left hook with his right glove protecting his right jaw from a counter, the weight is on right foot, with slight pivoting of his body into left hook, exactly as it should be done. Had this been a younger Jones, he'd actually try to step forward and to the right and slightly duck his head to the right while throwing his counter (which would be even more against the textbook, but the "angular" attacks/counters worked perfectly for him before), but Jones' legs were no longer the same since at least the Harding fight.

 

And I'm not even starting to explain that what Tarver was doing at that moment was totally wrong. No boxer should ever be throwing a wide left hook while he is looking down, and not at his opponent, has both hands down below his chest level, and the opponent is right in front of him and has a short left hook ready to counter. If you ever teach any fighter they should throw their punches like that, the number of times they get KO'd will be in double digits. But accidentally, an unorthodox move like that has beaten the textbook that Jones was following in that situation.

 

It's actually pretty reminiscent of the Nunn-Kalambay KO And just like that fight it's the same southpaw-orthodox straight left angle issue while closing range

I'm not sure what you mentioned is the mistake as such.

Going by the textbook, once Jones throws and misses, he should have the left glove up. Punchers like Jones though like to keep their hands free to let them go

You could also say, once he throws the right he should spin off to the right, taking him out of harms way.

He also once he misses the right he hooks with a southpaw while being square on. Now this is probably the biggest mistake as it opens him up completely to the straight left. If he was stepped over to his left, he can hook with a southpaw, but not square on

You could say he should be straight in front of a southpaw, but he usually is happy to be so because his lead right and left hook are so quick

If he lands the right, which he missed, none of these things would be issues. If he had the power to back Tarver up, again none of those things are issues. The loss of power, workrate and speed are the reasons he couldn't do any of those things.

I'm not sure about this, Jones was arguably as faded as Ali at that stage. Old Jones dominated Jeff Lacy and Tito Trinidad, you could argue they are on Berbick's level. Losing to a Spinks level fighter who's smaller is arguably worse than losing to Glen Johnson, as is going to disputed decisions against Young and Shavers

Also you're forgetting Ali was getting bailed out by his chin and resilience as he got older. Ali made plenty of technical mistakes of his own, arguably more mistakes than Jones made

EDIT - Struggling with Frazier and Norton level fighters, with all due respect to them, near his prime, showed plenty of technical issues

 

Kalambay is perfectly in balance, though. Chin down, both feet planted and upper-body crouched somewhat forward. He misjudges the distance, but doesn't make the fundamental mistake Jones' does.

That's when you get punished for poor fundamentals. Roy's legs, reflexes and hand speed were so sensational in his prime that he got away with things literally no other fighter in history would get away with against Hopkins, Toney, Reggie Johnson etc.

Winning disputed decisions can never be worse than getting iced, surely? And Johnson should be on about the level of Shavers, Young and Berbick.

Also, Roy is STILL quicker than most. Ali against Berbick was a corpse that was suffering from the onset of Parkinson's syndrome. I can't see how that's even close. Ali in that fight is about as physically depleted as I've seen a fighter.

I think you pinned down Ali's technical flaws pretty well in a thread recently. He had some pretty obvious ones that, as you say, cost him against Frazier and Norton.

Personally, I think Jones' are significantly larger though (the big difference is footwork - and that difference is big IMO), but this thread is about mistakes that Jones made. That Ali also had flaws doesn't change anything about Roy's.

 

The issue wasn't numerical age, but how they did with decreased physical ability. That Pacquaio hasmore left than Harold Johnson at the same age doesn't mean that he's techically superior, just better preserved. What matters for this discussion is that Roy dropped like a stone when his legs left him. What exact age this happened at is of less importance.

 

Roy himself regrets his poor defensive habits.

Ask him. To his face. He'll tell you.

He's pretty good natured about it, just give him credit for being the animal and the freak he used to be.

The fastest fighter of all time, who builds his entire game around that speed, is understandably not going to be much when it starts to leave him.

When Roy lost his legs, he lost his elite success. That is the long and short of it. When he could no longer make a shot hit air, he started to have trouble not getting beat up by better guys.

 

exactly. when his legs went, it was over. at his best, he was unlike any other fighter i've ever seen but when he aged the style that made him the great he was betrayed him.

 

1. The mistake is actually arguably worse, jabs against a southpaw and misses, moves into a square on position to jab again to leave himself open to a straight left that Nunn walks into. Fundamentally wrong against a southpaw

2. Well yes, but many fighters make technical errors, not just Jones, as mentioned the technically excellent Kalambay makes a similar error to the Tarver 2 fight

3. Yes it can, Ali at the same age was actually going to disputed decisions against Shavers and Young, neither particularly amazing boxers. If Ali didn't have a top class chin then Frazier, Shavers, Foreman and maybe Norton all would have knocked him out. It was chin not 'fundamentals' that stopped him getting ko'd

4. Speed is nothing if you can't apply it for 3 minutes of a round while moving. Jones legs and stamina are shot

5. Disagree, I'd say Ali has worse fundamentals than Jones. Jones has better technical punching technique, as in he plants his feet and turns his punches over better. Jones doesn't lean back with both hands down like Ali did, he was much better at bringing at least 1 hand up. Jones typically leans to the side more than straight back as Ali did (which is better).

Ali in his prime maybe used better lateral movement, but past his prime he didn't. Ali had a better jab, but he had long arms, Jones had short arms

Jones went on allot longer than Ali. We can talk ring years, and Ali looked shot around Young onwards, but Jones looked shot Tarver 1 onwards too.

 

It really is this simple.

Roy Jones at his peak was all legs. His movement. His lunges, his leaping shots, his speed, his power.

He had NOTHING when they left to make him elite. He just had a bag of tricks that worked for 20 years giving him ever more diminishing returns.