What happened to Roy Jones Jr popularity?

He turned in reliably big ratings on HBO, he only couldn't crossover as a ppv seller. He did have the personality and of course talent to have been a greater star. I don't want to say he should've been better managed and fabricated himself as a celebrity. And while he fought some bad mismatches in his prime, did he really avoid anyone but Michalczewski? During his 'reluctant years' he did manage to fight outstanding guys Reggie Johnson and Eric Harding.

I don't think he could've found the fights to make a much greater career, or make himself a much bigger star. The opposition just wasn't there. If he had a serious rival at light heavyweight who was also an established attraction, then he could've had the chance. I'm sure a win over a Kovalev would've done way more for him than it did for Ward. Or if he was more limited and put on exciting fights he could've been bigger, but he was also too good for his own good.

 

They must have forgot!

https://g.co/kgs/5Wj3Et

 

I was a teen in the nineties and I never heard of Roy Jones Jr. I never saw him fight until the early 2000s. But he was never fighting on regular television and was never a household name like Mike Tyson. Maybe, it was because boxing isn't popular here or maybe it was because I didn't get HBO until I went to college.

He was redhot around here though. Go look up forum posts from 2005 and everyone says he's the greatest fighter p4p ever. Around 2007 people started talking about Mayweather like that. The next couple years will probably belong to Lomachenko or somebody else.

 

Or Eder Jofre in Ali's. I think Mayweather and Pacquiao owe a lot their success to Wladimir Klitschko deciding to fight primarily out of Germany. The lower weight classes thrive when the heavyweight champs stink. Holmes ducking and cherry picking made Duran, Leonard, Hagler, and Hearns have to fill the vacuum in the 80s.

I wonder if something similar weren't going on with Britain's adoration of their super middleweights in the early 90s before they got Lennox Lewis?

 

Without Tyson, Holyfield, and Oscar in the late 90s/early 2000s Roy Jones could well have been the megastar face of boxing. Or if Roy had a Trinidad, Quartey, and Mosley at light heavyweight and ww was thin he would've beaten Oscar as the non-heavyweight star. More than Klitschko not basing himself in the US, Mayweather and Pacquiao became huge because Oscar, Tyson, Lewis, Jones, even the Mexican stars Barrera and Morales were gone or were leaving.

 

A prime version of Roy in today's social media age would have been huge.


The following factors are what prevented Roy from being a huge star:

He wasn't media friendly.

He fought in an era with huge names.

He never had a true rival like Ali and the "Fab Four" etc.

He was too good for his own good.

 

It was boxing politics more than poor management that cost him the biggest fights.

I was always thought that the "Reluctant Roy" tag was extremely unfair. I can understand the frustration of the fans, but they didn't know what was happening behind the scenes. From memory, the "Roycott" incident came at the Gonzalez fight. And that had come directly after the Harmon fight. But leading up to Harmon and Gonzalez, he'd fought: Reggie Johnson, Richard Hall, David Telesco and Eric Harding. He unified against Reggie, Hall was seen as a decent fighter going into the fight, Telesco had been running his mouth off for about 12 months, and Harding had recently beaten Tarver. So they weren't scrubs. And he only took Harmon and Gonzalez as keep busy fights whilst HBO were trying to negotiate with Peter Kohl for a Dariusz M fight, and they were looking at Roy fighting the winner of Hopkins-Trinidad.

 

He wasn't media friendly? Isn't he a commentator? Didn't he release rap albums?

Huge names casting shadows I give you: Tyson, Holyfield, Lewis.

The rivals are Hopkins and Toney. How much more do you need? The problem is he got them before they were legends while they were in their primes. To get famous off a name you have to cherry pick them when they are old and well known.

 

Good post.

It's unfair to say avoided Dariusz though. He just wasn't willing to go to Germany.

 

He used to no-show at pressers and be late.

He didn't give a lot of interviews, as he enjoyed his privacy.

He was never really open to the media, as he thought that some writers were ignorant. He felt under appreciated as he was being penalised for being too good for his own good.

If you listen to the lyrics of: "Ya'll musta forgot" you'll hear the line:

"They got the nerve to say I ain't fought nobody, I just make em look like nobody"


Regarding his rivals, yes, Toney and Hopkins were rivals. But neither could push him into giving really close, competitive and exciting fights, which had fans demanding rematches or trilogies.

A Hopkins rematch in 2002 was the nearest we got, but Hopkins didn't want it.

 

Yeah the 'Roycott' was for the Gonzalez fight. The fight shouldn't have been on ppv, Gonzalez had only beaten Letterlough on ESPN before that, so it was fair enough for fans to boycott it. To put the fight in perspective as a disappointment we should also remember that it was sandwiched between legitimate ppv superfights Barrera-Hamed and Hopkins-Trinidad.

Your runthrough of his opposition is spot on though. Roy shouldn't be blamed for not getting the Michalczewski fight, and he otherwise cleaned out light heavyweight from 1997-2001. Even the lesser guys you mentioned, Hall, Harmon, Gonzalez were solid, deserving contenders. Just check out light heavyweight rankings from those days: the rankings look like Jones' record. The only opponent that he deserves every criticism for was Richard Frazier in 1999, that might have been the worst mismatch to ever air on HBO.

 

Good post.

The Frazier fight was a disgrace. But Roy had nothing to do with that. And apparently, Don King had been involved in getting Frazier into that mandatory position.

 

The Toney Jones beat in 1994 was prime, debatably p4p best, and was favoured to win. That's by far the greatest win of Roy's career. Toney made Jones a boxing elite and HBO headliner, and it could've catapulted him to greater stardom. But it went stale because he didn't fight another opponent perceived to be as challenging and who was a decent enough attraction till he fought Ruiz. A 2002 rematch with Hopkins would've been pretty big, but apparently Hopkins didn't like the 40/60 split he was offered.

 

You are missing the point.
The people in USA are in a considerable percentage really ignorant and not aware of their roots, cultural significance and own history.
The primary and secondary education is really bad and the colleges compensate that but they aren't accessible for a huge amount of people, that's why is a considerable percentage of the US that believes that the sun goes around the earth or that South America and North America are two different continents.
Yes, i saw what I posted, I will wait for it...

 

Once RJJ started losing his fans abandoned him and hitched their collective wagon to Floyd.