Straight from the mouth of our good friend Doug Fischer in today's mailbag. Let's take a look at this... I'm leaving Hopkins off in light of his likely retirement. 1. Joe Calzaghe - I scored the fight for Hopkins, but the judges and the majority of the boxing world has spoken, and the fight was scored for Joe. He made fantastic adjustments, he was active, he showed great poise, and proved himself to be the best right now in the division. 2. Chad Dawson - Young fighter with tons of upside, who just barely passed in his second "upper division" course. A certain Polish cruiserweight champ just gave Chad a much needed resume booster after some rough, but well deserved backlash for refusing to rematch... 3. Glen Johnson. - The Road Warrior is the guy no one wants any parts of in the division, and for good reason. 4. Antonio Tarver. - Absolutely embarassed Clinton Woods, and has a win over #3. 5. Zsolt Erdei. - Relatively unknown and under-appreciated, but quietly holding on to the WBO belt now since 2004. Now who, honestly, wants to make the argument that there are FIVE other fighters who should be ranked above Roy Jones currently at light heavyweight? Brahmer? Maybe. Woods? Hell no. Diaconu? Stretching it. Muriqi? :rofl The "what have you done for me lately" argument here comes crashing into the wall of common sense. Roy's CV at 175, and his slow, steady, and obvious physical recovery after his campaign at heavyweight (which let's be honest, probably involved steroid use), is enough for me to EASILY put him inside the current top 10 in the division. Is he a particularly significant fight for Calzaghe right now? Not compared to what he would have been five years ago. Does he no longer have a top 10 skill set? Please.
I hate to say this but I'd put tarver above Dawson. Tarver convincingly beat a champ in his last fight, Dawson was far less impressive vs Johnson EDIT - To answer the question, RJJ is still top 10.
I personally would put Roy in the top 10, but what the..... He's getting written off far too much I feel, personally i think he still has some left in the tank.
I think Roy does have something left, but beating an overblown welter/light middle ain't exactly the way to prove it - though it was a good performance.
Um Doug Fisher is the last person I would listen too ..Let me know when he finally acccepts Maywether as best fighter P4P and theI will listen to the the last mullet on earth ! Oh and by the way on interview on espn ring magazine has Jones listed at # 5..
You could make that argument, but Dawson was in tougher. If Tarver had offered Bernard any kind of resistance, I'd probably rank them that way, but Tarver basically got massacred, then took time off against tomato cans, while Dawson was beating Adamek.
You know, I actually like Doug most of the time. I'm nobodies PBF groupie, so that's got to be 90% of the reason why, I guess... But saying Roy is no longer top 10 at 175 just can't be supported by fact. If you want to, you can get into sanctioning body ratings, etc., but that is just some flimsy ass ground to stand on. I was surprised by this.
I don't know the subtitle on espn had him ranked at 5 ..I will look for it I think its on You Tube ..Not to say that I would disagree with him totally but Dougie somtimes sounds too much like a message board poster ..Its hard for me to give him full credibility ..And its not like Jones has beaten anyone worth mentioning at lt heavy but then again I don't know where these guys were ranked to begin with ie: Henshaw and Amaju ..I know Tito had no ranking so its up for debate ..
