Why did Roy Jones Jnr never defend the title at Heavyweight???

The fight with Lewis was seriously being discussed and marketed with the assumption that Lewis would walk over Kirk Johnson. When Vitali stepped in and put on a good fight it was clear that Lewis couldn't get away with ignoring a rematch so the Jones fight was obviously never going to happen.

 

Didn't you get the memo ... if a fighter gets caught flush and is knocked out, that means he has a glass jaw and when he is beaten in a fight that means he got "exposed", in fact we have just replaced the words defeated, beaten and stopped with "exposed".

 

Roy went up to HW just to prove he could do it.

I doubt he had plans to be competitive at HW.

 

This is true. He was waiting for Tyson but Tyson said he was no longer interested. So his interest at HW was no longer there.

Plus, the fact that Milkdud called him out at the post Ruiz fight press conference made it easier for him to find his next opponent. What a mistake it was.

 

Because he handpicked the weakest beltholder at the time and if he would have fought a legit Heavyweight he would have got his head knocked off because of his Glass Jaw. At the time of the Jones Ruiz fight (in 2003) Ruiz last legit KO was in 1998!


In hindsight Roy should have atleast fought Chris Byrd but he dropped the belt and went down to Light Heavyweight again and got brutally KOed. Either way he would have gotten KOed but it would have been less embarrassing for him if a Heavyweight did it.

 

Corrie Sanders was offered a fight with Roy jones Jr. back in 2003, after he beat Wlad Klitschko, but the WBO threatened to strip him on the basis that they did not view Jones as one of its contenders. Sanders ended up relinquishing the WBO anyway, and later fought Vitali Klitschko. This was a big mistake on Sander's part in my opinion. A fight with a named opponent like Roy Jones would have made him big bucks, not to mention he still would have had a shot at Jones' WBA title, even if the WBO stripped him. With wins over Roy Jones and Wlad Klitschko, along with Lewis vacating the division, he would have had the most marketablity at the time. Of course, there's no guarantee that Sanders would have beaten the much faster and skilled Jones, but his power would certainly have given him a chance.

 

I laugh at people who claim that RJJ had a weak chin all along. That's bull****. He was hit plenty of times before his KO loss to Tarver. He just took it well. Heck, again Ruiz, he was hit flush with a right hand in the very first round. It had him momentarily stunned for a second but he recovered. Anyone with a "glass jaw" like that wouldn't have been standing up.

Yeah, Tarver's KO probably weakened RJJ's chin. But i think what really did the trick was his 2nd KO that occurred so close to the first one. And that's what really did it. But to say he always had a weak chin is baseless IMO.

 

I think old age combined with fluctuating in weight classes too frequently is what led to Jones losing some of his later fights personnaly. A prime Jones would not have lost to Antonio Tarver, and had Jones stayed consistantly at lightheavy rather than going up to heavy and then dropping all that weight in a short time, he might not have lost to him anyway. Jones had the tendency to get a bit over zealous during his career, and times, probably should have taken a step back.

 

As if sayin Ruiz was no heavyweight. :rofl
You're right, I guess Roy only wanted to look good that time fighting one he knew he could just play or put a show with. I don't think he would last a round with another heavyweight after Ruiz.

 

YEAH!!!

everyone knows roy got knocked out because he had to lose 73lbs of muscle when coming down to LHW!

 

Ruiz was a carefully chosen opponent.

 

Well, I think there's a bit of an exageration there, but I still feel that gaining 20 Lbs, then losing the same 20 lbs, all in the same course of a year, could in theory impact a fighter, especially one who's past his prime. How much of an effect did it have on Jones? Who knows, but it might have been a factor.

 

It's not that RJJ had to lose 20 lbs. That's no big deal as everyone does it. But RJJ lost 20+ lbs of pure muscle. That is very different from draining down to make weight where you're losing mostly excess fat. RJJ built himself into a 200+ lb fighter and not just 200+ lbs of excess.

And i know people will say, "He weighed in at 193 lbs" but if you ever watched the ESPN special for RJJ's up coming fight with Ruiz, it showed him training with Macky Shilestone. And he was doing regular unofficial weigh ins and he was consistently coming in at 200+ lbs.

I think RJJ should've stayed at HW.

 

I feel that it probably was, if Jones had faced Tarver before the move up to heavyweight it would have been a mute point.

 

I honestly don't think that there were too many fighters at heavyweight for an aging Jones to beat truthfully. Sure, he was pound for pound lightyears better than anyone around at the time, but he just wasn't big enough. He might have eeked out decisions over Chris Byrd or Corrie Sanders, but I don't think he could have lasted against Lewis or either of the Klitschko brothers.