Roy Jones Whole Career Has Been Smoke And Mirrors

Very well reasoned argument. Dude you should know better to post that here, ESPECIALLY on one of Rico's anti jones threads. Facts and logic are best left elsewhere.

 

It was both Roy and Hopkins' first title fight and Bernard's best win was against some guy whose claim to fame was winning the NABF light middleweight title. Roy at least had stopped a fighter who went the distance with James Toney 10 months earlier in 1 round. It was Bhop's 3rd title shot before he came back with it.

Moral of the story- They were both green, but at least Roy had his amateur career and better comp up to that point to better prepare him for that fight. Hopkins had fought nobody, but got better after that by stepping up his level of comp to USBA level leading into the Mercado fights.

 

The Hopkins argument is almost unwinnable though. His physical peak (let's say 97) came before his skill/competition peak.

If you beat him when he was young, he was green.

If you beat him when he was seasoned and established, he was too old.

Jones has to get credit for the Hopkins win because of what he became afterward. Without that dominating performance (not impressive but yes, dominating from a points perspective) from Jones, who knows if Hopkins would have made adjustments and growns.

Either way, it counts as maybe the only purely non controversial lose of his career (has anyone even seen his debut?)

 

I give Roy plenty of credit for the win, but I see exactly what you mean for the Hopkins conundrum. The way around that for me is to give the credit to whoever beat him regardless, because no matter if he was closer to being "green" or "past it", he's been a hell of a fighter for his career. Even if he was a little green, that's not an easy fight for Roy to have taken for his first title shot and he deserves the credit for winning it.

What acknowledging the real experience level of both guys does, in the end, doesn't take away from Roy's win- it just shows how much of a travesty it was that we never saw the rematch. That was a big problem of that era- there were great fighters, but alot of great fights got left on the table.