Roy Levesta Jones, Jr. vs. Santos Saúl Álvarez Barragán

Jack straw,

That’s true, but Canelo especially wouldn’t have given Roy too much to think about. He’s a diminutive counter puncher who struggles with technical, mobile fighters. Of course, he’s still a great fighter. But stylistically, Roy’s speed would have nullified Canelo’s arsenal.

Jack, we’ve gone at this for years. And I’m sure that we’ll still be debating it in another 10 years. Ha! But I’ll never back down on this. Because I know the facts.

Roy wasn’t risk adverse at LHW. It’s one of the biggest myths in boxing. And the ‘Roycott’ was completely unfair and was only born out of frustration.

Go and look at the LHW division back then. Take into account that he had mandatories from all three of the main org’s, as he had all three of the main belts. Ask yourself why he went up to HW?

He was getting hammered in the press for his easy victories. Most of his fights weren’t competitive. So there was no intrigue. No excitement. The PPV numbers were poor because most people saw the bouts as a forgone conclusion.

The truth is: Apart from the low level mandatories he fought, the majority of his opponents were decent fighters. Decent fighters who had, or would go on to have, competitive fights with the rest of the division’s top 10.

Now everyone knows that his biggest omission at LHW was Dariusz . And I know that it’s been discussed to death on here and everyone is sick to death of hearing about the saga. So I’m not going to go into detail about it again. Not unless you wanted me to. But I’ll just leave you with one fact. Not just my opinion, but an actual fact:

Universum and Roy’s advisors and HBO never met. Not once. No official negotiations ever took place. No dates, venues or any specifics were ever discussed, because Universum would not meet. HBO reached out on a number of occasions to try and arrange a meeting, but each time they were rebuffed. And that’s just a fact. So people can claim that Roy ducked Dariusz as much as they want. But the fact is, Universum wouldn’t meet. And if the relevant parties can’t/won’t meet, then any potential fight is completely dead in the water.


The only other two potentially great challenges for Roy back then were Bernard Hopkins and Joe Calzaghe.

Now I’ll give you two more facts:

1. Joe Calzaghe would not move up to LHW and fight in the U.S. back then. And without doing those things, a fight with Roy could never have happened.

2. The week following Roy and Bernard’s famous live argument on HBO, HBO approached Hopkins privately in the hope that he’d fight Roy at a C-W in the summer of 2002. They told him that they had a $14m package in place, where Roy was to be paid $8m and he was to be paid $6m. The $6m also included a fight on HBO if he lost. Yet the deal was turned down flat, with Bernard demanding $10m or no fight. Not a 50-50 deal which he’d initially demanded on air, but $10m or no fight. This was a guy who’s biggest ever purse had been less than $3m, with most of his fights being for just over $1m.


Now you can label me as being a biased fan boy etc.

It’s been said for many years by a few posters.

However, everything that I’ve written above is 100% factual.


Dariusz M, Joe Calzaghe and Bernard Hopkins, would not fight Roy back in the early 00’s.

Two of them wouldn’t even negotiate for a fight, with one of them asking for more than 3x his biggest ever purse.


Now the facts are out of the way, I’ll give you my honest opinions.


IMHO, he wasn’t risk adverse.


Fighting John Ruiz was a risk.


Losing muscle and fighting Antonio Tarver was a very big risk. Tarver was a very difficult match up for him stylistically.


After struggling badly with Tarver in their first fight, rematching him at that stage of his career was a huge risk.


So whilst I’m more than happy to debate you, without wanting to offend you, I think your opinions on Roy are nonsense.

A risk adverse fighter does not fight ANY HW at 34, and they don’t burn muscle quickly at an advanced age in order to fight extremely motivated challengers who present them with very tough stylistic challenges.

Antonio Tarver was a bigger challenge to Roy than what Canelo would have been. That does not mean that I’m saying that Tarver was better than Canelo, as he clearly wasn’t. But looking solely from Roy’s perspective, specifically at the stylistic match up with the weight loss etc, fighting Canelo pre-Ruiz would have been easier for him.


So don’t compare Roy with Floyd.

Roy was fighting Ruiz, Tarver and Johnson, at the time that Floyd was fighting Berto and McGregor.

Floyd would never have fought those types of fights at that stage of his career.

Their egos could have been a stumbling block. But again, Roy took on stylistic challenges which were tougher than what Canelo would have brought to the table.

Out of the two, Canelo would have been the one with the biggest reservations. Because stylistically, it’d have been even harder for him than what the Floyd fight was.

Ha!

Very good.

Honestly, this was brilliant!

It gave me a great laugh.

 

Canelo would be plodding around hitting thin air while Roy potshots bouncing lead rights and left hooks off his head. Roy 12-0.

 

Canelo would lose but do better than McCallum.

 

I think a prime Roy crucifies Canelo at 168-175 pounds when Jones was at his best.