Where does Roy Jones Jr rank?

Bernard Hopkins was just never the A side, many times he stunk the joint out despite wearing that executioners mask and rambled on about "slave" contracts in post fight interviews.

Jones was well known to the public and actually had a few exiting fights or at least provided some flashy skills vs Hopkins who was known only to the boxing purists while fighting on obscure channels or on Showtime late night when nobody watched against opponents nobody cared about.

His come out fight was Trinidad who was way over rated at that time, he had been exposed by DelaHoya and even Vargas, as a limited operator already and everybody with a brain knew that further moving up he would be derailed because he was simply to small to bull doze the bigger guys.

I watched Hopkins from pretty much the beginning including on USA Tuesday night fights and I was never a big fan of his skills, skills he had but his negative fighting style, i mean we are talking some extremely ugly dirty fighting, over the top acting, stupid trash talking he usually did not back up in the Ring while walzing for 12, playing the victim etc etc ............that was the reason he was never in the superstar zipcode because his salesmanship was poor for the general public where the real the money. is....... boxing purists will never make you rich.

 

He was ranked either 1 or 2. They fought for the vacant world title.

It wasn't a situation we sometimes see where two guys who turn out to be great fight early on in their development. They were established contenders when they met.

 

Hopkins was ranked #9 by Ring. One only has to look at his record leading up to the Jones fight to realize he would be no-where near #1 or #2 in any decent set of rankings. He'd beaten basically no-one. Hopkins was not an "established contender" in the real world. The division was ridiculously strong and some of those ahead of him were Julian Jackson, Toney, Reggie Johnson, Jones, McCallum, Kalambay and McClellan. Not a chance that Hopkins belonged ahead of that lot with what he had under his belt. The IBF rankings were often poor as we have seen with the rankings of various organisations over the decades and there were multiple titles too of course.

Jones himself was ranked #4. He hadn't done anything special at this point but his resume was certainly stronger than Hopkins hence his higher ranking.

 

It doesn't really make any difference though does it.

Despite not being highly ranked at the time, we can see how good he was by watching the fight back.

We know that Roy was injured.

The win enhanced over time.

 

The win is enhanced a bit over time but lets not pretend it was peak Hopkins in there. It was a good win over a green Hopkins by a less green but still improving (very rapidly) Jones.

Jones had no troubles with his hand during the fight.

 

I think using the word green is a stretch.

Roy's hand hurt a lot.

His trainer wanted him to try and postpone the fight.

We never saw Roy against a peak Hopkins, because a peak Hopkins was happy to call out the JMW champs instead.

 

Still a great win for Jones. Many of the guys you mentioned had titles at the time.

McCallum was moving up. Toney was moving up. Jackson was being exposed by McCllellan. McClellan was a great puncher but not a complete boxer. Jones outboxes him and wins unless he gets caught by something huge. Johnson was solid. But, I don't think he was any better than Hopkins and Jones would box circles around him. Kalambay was past peak.

That Hopkins went on a tear afterwards, winning the title Jones vacated and going undefeated for so long just underscores what a solid win it was for Jones.

I was at the fight.

Jones was masterful.

Probably would have beaten any 160 lb in the world that night.

 

Lol Roy beat Hopkins who was better than Hagler and Hearns

 

Roy is the #1 P4P of the last 60 years. He has the best resume
A+ level wins vs Hopkins and Toney
A- Hill and Johnson
B+ Castro Malinga Gonzalez Harding Griffin McCallum Ruiz and Woods

Controversial win Tarver 1

Just to give this context

Ali has
A+ Foreman
A Liston 1 and 2 Frazier 2 and 3
B+ Patterson 1 Lyle Quarry 1 and 2 Bonavena Shavers Terrell Young

A controversial wins Norton 2 and 3

 

Talent - Top 5 of all time.

Resume - Top 40, maybe top 30. Sorry but a green Hopkins, a weight drained and slightly overrated James Toney and John Ruiz as your best wins are not the CV of a top 20 ATG.

This topic has been done to death over the years but there are several fights that if Roy had taken in his prime and won he would be arguably top 15 or higher :

Dariusz (late 90's)
Rematch with Hopkins (late 90's-pre Ruiz)
Calzaghe (late 90's-pre Ruiz)
Defended his HW title against live full size heavy in their prime

Of course there are other missed opportunities that would have been good wins but perhaps not quite as impressive as some believe like Benn, Eubank, Collins, Nunn, Jirov.

 

Toney would have toyed with Hopkins at that stage but the funny thing was Hopkins fought better against Jones than Toney did in `94, Hopkins wasn`t rated anywhere when Toney beat McCallum.

 

No way were Toney and Hopkins better than Frazier was in his first fight with Ali! Hopkins was nowhere near the fighter he eventually went on to become.

 

Not at time he was beat by Roy, he was awful in that dud, Hagler would have boxed his ears off as he was at that stage.

 

Agreed, after that previous post opening statement pretty much discredits the whole thing … If it were true at all, RJJ would be in top 10 p4p all time, but precisely it's his resume that keeps him out. Talent is to broad a term for me personally, even though I have specifically used it before myself, lol … I would agree athleticism, hand speed, timing yes top 5 .. even top 3

 

Jones was negative and struggling to find openings because Hopkins cut the distance better than Toney did, pundits in Britain were not impressed with Roy as they discussed the fight in the studio after wards and Lennox Lewis said Roy didn`t live up to his rep as he spoke about the fight in a studio sometime after the fight, what did American pundits think about the fight at the time?