Roy Jones Jr vs Michael Nunn

They turned down $2m guarantees.

 

And?

 

You've lost me.

 

There’s no need to be sarcastic and argumentative.

I lived through the era like you did.

I have a huge amount of respect for Eubank.

He had a great career.

What he went through against Watson, must be unimaginable to anyone who’s not experienced that first hand.

It changed him as a fighter.

You know that.

You can post up post-fight interviews where he’s in fight mode and running on adrenaline. That’s okay. But I’m not going to ignore who he fought, and what he’s said in various interviews after his retirement.

Again, I’ve seen numerous interviews.

There’s many old threads on here discussing his opposition.

Excerpts from his autobiography etc were posted.

Amongst his old interviews, he said that a Toney fight had ‘Watson II’ written all over it, and that he’d already been through that, but Toney hadn’t.

He also said that fighting Roy in his prime would have been career suicide, as they both would have been damaged, and it’d have taken years off of his career.

He’s said numerous times that he didn’t chase the big name U.S. fighters, as he was just content to defend his WBO belt.

He said he’d only fight them if they became his mandatories. But whilst that may have been true, none of them could ever have been in that position, as non of them were ever ranked by the WBO.

I respect that he’s your favourite fighter and I respect the great knowledge you have on him. But you’re not going to try and convince me that whilst he was facing Schommer, Close and Amaral etc, that he was chasing down Toney, where he hoped for a fight with him at the end of his deal. It’s absolute nonsense.

You can’t pick and choose which of his comments you take onboard.

You have to look at the whole picture.

This is what Joe Calzaghe’s fans do.

They pretend that he wanted to fight Roy because he called him out after some of his fights. Yet they completely ignore the fact, that years later, he was still in the exact same position, where he was defending a lightly regarded title against mostly C class opposition. Saying and doing are two completely different things. Actions speak louder than words when fighters are active. It’s only when they’ve retired, that most fighters show their honesty.

You know who Eubank fought on his Sky deal.

You know how often he fought.

You know that he didn’t try to fight Toney after the Benn fight when he didn’t have any more contractual obligations.

He chose his Sky deal, and he fought the guys who he wanted to fight.

 

He's never been quoted as saying 'career suicide', that's made up. He said 'SUICIDE'. A Jones fight would've been his last and taken years off his LIFE, not career. Get it right.

Even worse than the Watson tragedy was killing a roadworker with his car a week before his next fight against Sugar Boy Malinga. The guy was close to superhuman.

 

And yes he did try to fight Toney, according to himself at the time. I believe him over you. His integrity is proven, yours isn't.

 

I don’t think they earned anywhere near that.

The reports I’ve read, is that they were looking to clear around $3m each.

I’ll have to do some research.

Either way, they weren’t fighting for peanuts.

 

After his career, there's no way he's going to bring up Toney and Jones and dwell on not fighting them because he doesn't have to - he has one of the most successful careers in history. He's not Frank Liles who made no money and got no recognition, or some bitter contender who never won or defended a title. So of course he's not massively bothered the fights didn't happen, and in his pomp he wasn't going to fight them in the midst of everything unless it was his last fight. In the end he didn't need to because he got his respect against Calzaghe and Thompson

 

Don’t be labelling me as a fantasist, when you are saying that he was chasing a LHW, after not even negotiating with him after the Benn fight, before signing his Sky deal to fight lower opposition.

You are the fantasist.

 

It's 40% less when you realise the PPV was 29.99 and not 49.99

 

Calzaghe wasn't Eubank, by any stretch of the imagination. Eubank was obviously a far greater fighter. For 95% of Joe's career, he was an undercard fighter, unable to sell tickets and pulled out of at least six or seven title defenses - when he headlined an event, he failed to sell out Cardiff Ice Rink in 2005 (held about 1,500).

The Lacy fight gave him 10x more press than the rest of his career combined. And all Hatton fans were urged by Ricky to pack out the MEN late on their Sat night in support of him. It made him. But that was 8 years after he beat Eubank for the title, so he mostly fought once or twice a year, against obscure opposition at that...

Eubank laid the foundations for the likes of Joe to make a living from boxing. He fought every 7 weeks in front of 10-20,000 and 15+M on TV, against killers like Watson twice, Benn twice, Rocky in Germany, Wharton and Holmes, and Collins in Dublin on St Paddy's Weekend, and Calzaghe and Thompson twice.

 

Get a hobby.

 

I state facts. You two make **** up. The two are different. One is real and one is fantasy.

 

Neither of those were going to fight Eubank in the Middle East. And both guys were looking for bigger fights.

Toney had a fight lined up, before rematching Montell Griffin and Mike McCallum.

Roy had a fight lined up before going on to fight McCallum in his LHW debut, after failed negotiations to unify with Liles.

 

Why do you think?

To make more.