Roy Jones Jr. vs. Harold Johnson

What, based on his prime, makes you say that?

 

Johnson UD15, technically superior by a big margin.

 

Jones is extremely difficult to outbox and I don't feel Johnson has the style or arsenal to beat Roy just too much speed and to difficult to time.

 

Harold Johnson was a very good light heavyweight, and a technician, but Roy Jones had some speical athleticism. To beat Roy Jones you have to swarm all over him or knock him out with a big punch.

Johnson was not a big puncher or aggressive fighter. The odds of him out pointing Jones are slim. Roy Jones via UD would be my call.

 

Johnson is considered to be among the top technicians ever to come out of Philadelphia, PA. Great athletes like Jones can outhustle and frustrate technicians but I gotta go with the tougher guy who was as unprotected as Jones was safety-first.

--this isn't nearly as confident as the Ezzard pick over Jones, but I'll give a slight edge to the technically sound, tried-and-true, take-all-comers over the athlete.

 

Hopkins already had the fundamentals when he fought Jones but he was very raw when it came to caginess. He only got real cagey late 90's. I don't think he ever acquired the skill that Johnson had though, certainly not in terms of slickness. Hopkins was more fundamentally sound than Johnson though, so the point about skills is arguable.

Montell was a good defensive fighter, but not a great one. I think Johnson would catch him in the later rounds once Montell's initial sharpness faded (it always did tend to fade imo, certainly in the Toney fights and the Jones fight).

Just sat it. I think I'll be a borderline pass or fail. Hope luck's on my side.

 

Fair point, though the Pastrano decision was pretty unfair imo. Had Johnson winning that fight clearly (but closely).

 

Not sure I understand what you mean by caginess. Hopkins not only had the fundamentals, he looked brilliant in the ring, both as an offensive machine (who swarms all over you and throws a lot of accurate compact punches from different angles, and doesn't get hit much in return) and as a clever counter-puncher who uses the ring very well and not only sees the openings, but creates them with his movement and feints.

Again, not sure what you mean by slickness.

We can't exclude Griffin getting caught with something, but I don't think Johnson hit hard enough to do a Michalczewski trick. We also can't exclude that Griffin may get passive and lose on points due to difference in workrate. But that he'll make Johnson miss a lot than he was used to, I don't think that can be disputed.

Good luck! You'll have a second chance if it goes wrong way though? I didn't prepare much for my exams in the university, but then I was studying for IT specialist, where I knew a lot even without all those books and lectures.

 

More than anything I mean his ability to be a ****. Headbutting, holding and banging with a free arm when the ref is on the other side of the action, hitting low, rabbit punching etc. Just the little things that can distract a fighter or take them out of their comfort zone. Hopkins became more of a ***** after the Jones fight, and it served him well I thought.

I think Johnson was more fluid than Hopkins, even more fluid than Hopkins at his best. Hopkins to me was always a little too predictable and unimaginative with his punches. Jones was reading Hopkins too easily, I don't think he'd read Johnson's punches anywhere near as easily.

I won't dispute it. I don't think Johnson will fall way behind on a scorecard against Griffin in any case though. Griffin's attack is rather limited. He'd make Johnson miss, but I doubt he'd really make Johnson pay. Maybe enough to take some early rounds, but he'd never build a sizeable lead.

Thanks :good Seeing that it is a summer school subject, there's no chance to re-sit if I get below a 50/100. I'll have to redo another subject and sit for it midyear if I fail this one. Hope I don't though, this being the last subject I have to complete for my degree and all.

So you became an IT specialist not having to prepare much? Nice!

 

He could be rough inside already before Jones. Not quite the way he used to do in his later years (after he slowed down with age and adjusted his style accordingly), but still.

I don't see anything unpredictable about Johnson either. As I said already, his jab won't be working, and I'm 100% certain that his punch-rate will be much lower than against any opponent you have him on film (I think I saw him vs Moore, Charles, Pastrano and a couple other opponents). What else is left in his arsenal? Does he have a pinpoint uppercut to slip it between Jones' raised arms when Roy goes to the attack, or turn it into an upward hook at short distance when Jones opens up (but due to the way he throws his punches it's almost impossible to reach his chin with a normal hook from either side)? I never seen anything like that from him. Johnson is an open book for Roy, and Harold wasn't as versatile as Hopkins, didn't have as many variants and modes as Hopkins, and wasn't faster than him either.

I was messing with computers for many years before I got into the university, I think I chose to become a programmer at the end of elementary school or thereabouts, and was reading about it and doing more than was required at computer classes in school, etc. As for non-IT exams at the University, like maths or philosophy, etc, they weren't too harsh with us about them, being not our specialty, and I wasn't too bad at maths either anyway, and philosophy I may not remember the names and years, but I can find premises and draw conclusions even about subjects I didn't read much about.

 

Just out of interest, how do you think Hopkins improved after meeting Jones?

Johnson could do all that sneaky stuff (he was throwing punches as you describe on the odd occasion against Doug Jones for example), but it was rare for him to do it.

Where I think Johnson was more fluid than Hopkins and where a great deal of his unpredictability came from was the use of his jab. Everything flowed from it and he could use it as a weapon in itself or as a trap for follow up punches. Hopkins never had a great jab, and against Roy for example, had to rely on coming in behind a weak one which didn't cause Roy any problems, allowing Roy time to concentrate on the follow up short hooks that were coming predictably, or the lead right hand which was Hopkins' great 'sneak' punch.

Though Jones was great at countering jabs, he never faced one near as good as Johnson's. I think a great jab would give Jones somehting to think about, and Johnson could follow up with some good stuff whilst Jones is reacting to it.

Computers, maths and philosophy. Nice combo. :good Philosophy is a passion of mine but I'm clueless about maths and computers.

 

I'd say his counter-punching skills improved, he learned some new feints or polished the ones he knew already (I think he borrowed something from Jones too, in some of his fights). He almost abandoned his swarming tactics, shifted the balance between offense and defense more towards the latter, dirty tactics included in it (doesn't allow the opponent to box as effectively as in a cleaner fight).

Well, unless the fighter showed that pretty often, I don't see Johnson being able to do those things vs Jones.
It requires much superior sense of distance and control of your own body to catch Jones, who rushes in behind a high guard, with an uppercut, to calculate the time and the angle of it (a fraction of a second too early or too late, and the punch either hits the elbows or the abdomen, instead of slipping in that short space, and even if you can do it, to find his jaw with your punch would be a task of difficulty as immense). I may sound like I'm exaggerating such a seemingly simple thing, but if you put on some fight where Jones does this, and try to think about it yourself, how would you get past that block to get to his jaw, it seems almost impossible, you can only go to the body in that position, but by that you open yourself and you can bet your house that Jones will be first to deliver.
As for half-uppercuts, half-hooks at close distance, it again requires timing, precision and you have to get Jones distracted by something before throwing it, just like Henry Armstrong was supposedly able to predict the opponent's actions by looking at their feet, Jones can read the opponent's actions at initial stages, "reading" the moves of their body to know what they gonna do next in the clinch or at close distance (or any distance, for that matter, they are not just the reflexes that were working for him, he can read the opponent better than anyone else I've seen, when he was doing commentaries at HBO he sometimes predicted things before anybody else saw them coming).

There's no reason to believe that Johnson's jab would work against Jones. I don't think his jab was any significantly better than Hill's and his reach was actually shorter (not that it matters much in Jones' case), Jones has many variants how to adjust to a jab to neutralize it, and I wouldn't hope in Johnson's place that subsequent punches after tha jab would work either. Combination punching doesn't work against Jones for many reasons I think I'd get everyone tired by explaining here. I could talk about him for hours, citing examples of this and that from actual fights.

Our university is heavily connected with the institute I'm working in, and most teachers are from it. And the institute is mostly about IT (artificial intelligence, supercomputers, medical informatics) and maths (system analysis, control processes), so there.

 

If Montell Griffin in there first fight gave Jones a difficult time then a fighter like Johnson,Who is worlds ahead of Griffith in skill, is going to give Jones a hard time.

If Lou Del Valle can find and drop Roy I think a precision counter puncher like Johnson is going to find Jone's chin.


You want to bring up Johnson's loss to Pastrano?LOOK HOW OLD JOHNSON WAS IN THAT BOUT.What about Roy's losses to Tarver?


Roy Jones is a great boxer but he took the easy road for years in his career.And it was Jone's fault.