Love the psychology of how the knockdown came about. RJJ could not only overwhelm with his speed and physical ability, he was running psy ops on Toney.
Its probably true... put anyone else in Toney's place that day, the way Roy performed, he would have won by early KO.
These guys are funny sometimes. Like Hearns saying his toughest fight was Roldan once in an interview. Ray and Marvin beat him and knocked him out. Sometimes they will pick the toughest guys someone whom they beat. I guess it is about ego..
Makes sense to me. It's not like James, even that James, wasn't one of the best guys he ever fought. It can't be that far off the mark.
RJJ vs Toney was a mentally wearing chess match so I can easily see why he picked him as his toughest opponent. Roldan was very awkward and strong as a bull and Hearns was lucky as hell to make it out of that fight with the W.
If someone never actually competed in contact sports its hard to understand this. A highly technical guy like toney can be annoying af to deal with. Especially for a fighter like jones who relies on speed and reflexes. Like you said, mental exhaustion. A big puncher might be more painful but may not necessarily be a difficult or complicated assignment. In that case you could be winning 11 of 12 rounds and made one small mistake and paid for it. Doesn't mean they were your most "difficult" fight.
To Roy's credit, he did qualify the statement by saying that Toney was the toughest opponent he fought in his prime. Also, when Roy started losing fights, especially those lost by KO, many were basically one punch. If you're schooling an opponent, or even just hanging with him competitively during a fight, and your night is ended outta nowhere on one single punch, I can see why a fighter wouldn't be thinking that those opponents weren't his most difficult fights. I very recently read an article* on Erik Morales that was done I believe at the time of the first Danny Garcia fight amd he's asked some very similar questions. He says that he knows the media guys wanna hear him say Pac or Barrera were his toughest opponents but that he, and I think he said most other fighters tend to look at this the same way in that, "“If you’re talking about the toughest opponent I’ve faced, to be honest, his name was Erik Morales,” he said in all seriousness. “When I did things the right way and had proper training, boxing was easy for me, but all too often I did not do that. So, as you know, I had a lot of struggles." later in article he says "“Honestly, I had too many tough fights to say one man was tougher than all the rest. I know fans want me to say that it was either Barrera or Pacquiao, but I don’t see it that way. That’s not how a fighter views things. There are fighters who people have forgotten about or never knew that were the toughest fights, the biggest fights for me at the time I fought them. **https://www.ringtv.com/124261-erik-morales-best-ive-faced/
I am attempting to make a similar point in a post here in this thread that, for whatever reason, is awaiting moderator approval an hr and a half now. But, this is pretty much what came to my mind immediately after reading some of the posts in this thread. Edit: this post isn't made to wait for moderator approval like the one I mentioned, which is still is. Is that something the site automatically does for posts that are of certain length?
