Thoughts on Roy Jones Jr. Legacy

[The Old LefHook]

True, but from what I've read, Dariusz just didn't want to fight Jones outside of Germany.

Jones got spoilt from fighting abroad when the Jowltoners robbed him in Jowland.

There were heavyweights besides the loathsome, grabby Ruiz that Roy could probably have beaten. Too bad the great Tua never picked up a tin trinket. That fight would have been a natural for drama, and Roy probably wins, putting some real luster on his legacy.

Guys like Bowe and Douglas were simply sooo big. Tyson was not as large, but oh so dynamic! Holyfield would have had a major size advantage, as well. Toughness advantage he held over anyone anyway.

There was a lot less glamour and glory beating the likes of Pinklon Thomas et al, and that ilk could be pretty dangerous to a man Roy's size, too. They could all end his night with one punch--even Ruiz could have if he had been able to land something resembling a punch. Once he did land something almost resembling a punch and Roy's knees wobbled for a moment.

Roy chose not to seek ultimate challenges that would have forced an historical redefining of greatness after his example. Literally dozens of great champions all sought higher, more defining challenges than Roy Jones did. If Roy had possessed the same desire to scale peaks of accomplishment that Roberto Duran possessed (or just many another generic ATG champion), for instance, his career would look much different. It would more closely resemble what a boxing fan wants out of a career. We want to see the achievements of the past rivaled or even surpassed by our contemporaries. We want to see them go for the challenges that have this high historical rank and patina. Roy Jones did not do this very much.

If Duran behaved like Roy Jones, try to imagine his path and matchmaking as he forayed upward from lightweight. That path would look a lot different than the one the mighty Duran actually took.

Of course some of the heroic temper of Duran's middle and late career achievements may have been driven by his personal need for atonement after New Orleans. But the ascent prior to that -- Brooks, Palamino, Cuevas and Leonard--was already about as ambitious as one could imagine for a lightweight moving up!

Roy probably didn't have half the chin Duran had to back his quest. Perhaps it was exactly this that Roy knew or deeply suspected. We also feel he would deny this repeatedly unless God himself were the interrogator.

As fans, we hope to see ATGs go for all the mustard during their careers, thereby challenging not only all contemporaries but predecessors from past decades and previous centuries as well, as it were.

I submit, Duran's path through the higher weights would have been a lot less exciting than it was, if he had employed a Roy Jones-like model of matchmaking. It would have been damned near a shutout for boredom, like so much of Roy's itself was.

Chris Byrd would have been an interesting heavyweight foray for Jones who was not too dangerous but whom everyone knew could box with genius. He was probably just a little too good for his own good in the opinions of Roy's matchmaker--i.e., himself.

Why, heck, imagining a more exciting career for Roy Jones is one of the most pleasurable and easier assignments a fan could be given. Only a handful of his actual fights need to be kept, he had so many throwaway opponents!

Try it. Who else should he have tried hard to fight that he didn't?

[Anthony342]

He felt that he would have never won a decision in the states if it went to a decision.

And Roy felt the same way if they had fought in Germany. They should've just signed a contract to fight at least twice, first in the US and then in Germany, with a huge penalty if the contract is breached. There ya go, problem solved.

[OctoberRed]

And Roy felt the same way if they had fought in Germany. They should've just signed a contract to fight at least twice, first in the US and then in Germany, with a huge penalty if the contract is breached. There ya go, problem solved.

Jones refused to fight anyone overseas at that point regardless of money. He claimed that after he was robbed in the Olympics he would never fight outside of the US.

He only left the country once desperate for money.

[Anthony342]

Jones refused to fight anyone overseas at that point regardless of money. He claimed that after he was robbed in the Olympics he would never fight outside of the US.

He only left the country once desperate for money.

And that has caused his legacy to take a hit as a result. Even though it might not be completely his fault, he doesn't have some of those top names on his resume. I guess he'll have to settle for top 50-75 overall, one of the best all-time in natural talent and reflexes and best of the '90s.

[robertzimmerman]

Yes of course, Roy is the only big money man of a division to not be able to land fights in history.

Nobody wanted career high paydays.


Roy must be the must unlucky guy ever to be the biggest draw in his division and all of boxing for a decade and not be able to get opponents to sign on the dotted line for paydays.

I can’t believe frazier and Brannon were brave enough to.

Frazier and Brannon were low level mandatories with nothing to lose.

Frankie Liles turned down a career high pay day. This has been confirmed by his former manager, Jack O'Halloran.

Bernard Hopkins demanded $10m or no fight, for a 168 C-W in 2002. He then had a year out of the ring before coming back and facing a low level mandatory for $1.3m.

Chris Eubank said that facing Roy would have been career suicide. He's admitted that he never pursued Roy, Toney and Nunn etc, as he was just content to defend his WBO belt in Britain. He said he'd only have fought Roy had Roy been his mandatory. But it was a throw away comment, as Roy would never have been ranked by the WBO.

Dariusz Michalcweski said he was willing to go to the U.S. to meet Roy. But when it came down to it, his advisors would never sit down with Roy's advisors and HBO. After failed negotiations, he carried on doing what he'd before, which was to milk his WBO belt against B and C class fighters.

Joe Calzaghe had no intentions of ever fighting Roy when he was anywhere near his best. He killed himself to make SMW, to milk his WBO belt for 10 years, with his main objective to retire undefeated.

[robertzimmerman]

True, but from what I've read, Dariusz just didn't want to fight Jones outside of Germany.

I don't think he wanted to fight Roy at all.

Look at how he behaved against Rocchigianni in their first fight.

[robertzimmerman]

Jones got spoilt from fighting abroad when the Jowltoners robbed him in Jowland.

There were heavyweights besides the loathsome, grabby Ruiz that Roy could probably have beaten. Too bad the great Tua never picked up a tin trinket. That fight would have been a natural for drama, and Roy probably wins, putting some real luster on his legacy.

Guys like Bowe and Douglas were simply sooo big. Tyson was not as large, but oh so dynamic! Holyfield would have had a major size advantage, as well. Toughness advantage he held over anyone anyway.

There was a lot less glamour and glory beating the likes of Pinklon Thomas et al, and that ilk could be pretty dangerous to a man Roy's size, too. They could all end his night with one punch--even Ruiz could have if he had been able to land something resembling a punch. Once he did land something almost resembling a punch and Roy's knees wobbled for a moment.

Roy chose not to seek ultimate challenges that would have forced an historical redefining of greatness after his example. Literally dozens of great champions all sought higher, more defining challenges than Roy Jones did. If Roy had possessed the same desire to scale peaks of accomplishment that Roberto Duran possessed (or just many another generic ATG champion), for instance, his career would look much different. It would more closely resemble what a boxing fan wants out of a career. We want to see the achievements of the past rivaled or even surpassed by our contemporaries. We want to see them go for the challenges that have this high historical rank and patina. Roy Jones did not do this very much.

If Duran behaved like Roy Jones, try to imagine his path and matchmaking as he forayed upward from lightweight. That path would look a lot different than the one the mighty Duran actually took.

Of course some of the heroic temper of Duran's middle and late career achievements may have been driven by his personal need for atonement after New Orleans. But the ascent prior to that -- Brooks, Palamino, Cuevas and Leonard--was already about as ambitious as one could imagine for a lightweight moving up!

Roy probably didn't have half the chin Duran had to back his quest. Perhaps it was exactly this that Roy knew or deeply suspected. We also feel he would deny this repeatedly unless God himself were the interrogator.

As fans, we hope to see ATGs go for all the mustard during their careers, thereby challenging not only all contemporaries but predecessors from past decades and previous centuries as well, as it were.

I submit, Duran's path through the higher weights would have been a lot less exciting than it was, if he had employed a Roy Jones-like model of matchmaking. It would have been damned near a shutout for boredom, like so much of Roy's itself was.

Chris Byrd would have been an interesting heavyweight foray for Jones who was not too dangerous but whom everyone knew could box with genius. He was probably just a little too good for his own good in the opinions of Roy's matchmaker--i.e., himself.

Why, heck, imagining a more exciting career for Roy Jones is one of the most pleasurable and easier assignments a fan could be given. Only a handful of his actual fights need to be kept, he had so many throwaway opponents!

Try it. Who else should he have tried hard to fight that he didn't?

I'm a huge fan of Duran's, he's a true legend of the sport. But everyone's circumstances are different.

Roy did not have a SRL, Hagler and a Hearns to fight.

Roy's resume would have looked much greater if he'd fought the likes of: Liles, Calzaghe, Dariusz and Hopkins. But those types of fights couldn't be made.

It's unfair to say that he didn't seek the ultimate challenges. He did. Unless you're talking about him fighting guys like Lennox or Vitali, which would have been a challenge that was even beyond what Duran sought.

[New England]

Best fighter I ever saw live. It'll be interesting to see how that transfers over to reality in 30+ years as he starts to become history. Does he become seen as some modern era SRR who was the most unbeatable guy of his era at his best or do people focus more on him staying around to long & doing the things that hurt his overall rep? Idk thats for the next generation of boxing fans to decide more than I, but he's the best guy I've seen & I see him as a modern era SRR type cat.

robinson wrote the book on sticking around too long. johnson, langford, ali, they all did. but nobody remembers the bad days aside from the fact that they were just that, the bad days. roy's fortunate in that he's a very bright guy and he's got plenty of dough from what we can see. the past prime losses and performances don't take away from your wins. not in the slightest! your accomplishments don't go anywhere when you lose. that's something that people who have not seen many generations of fighters seem to understand. historic rank and contemporary rank are comletely different things.

how good was jones at his best? ridiculously f#cking good, like you said. speed, sharpness, and power basically beyond compare. was his peak any less good because enzo knocked him spark out 10 years later?

how much did jones accomplish? wins over prime, all time great hopkins and very good / great james toney. titles all the way to HW. best 168 lber i have ever seen by a mile. one of the very best 175 lbers and 160 lbers, too. john ruiz is nobody to write home about historically, but he was a HW and had decent wins there, and jones came up from MW, to SMW, to 175, and then straight to HW to beat him. that's insane!

[The Old LefHook]

I'm a huge fan of Duran's, he's a true legend of the sport. But everyone's circumstances are different.

Roy did not have a SRL, Hagler and a Hearns to fight.

Roy's resume would have looked much greater if he'd fought the likes of: Liles, Calzaghe, Dariusz and Hopkins. But those types of fights couldn't be made.

It's unfair to say that he didn't seek the ultimate challenges. He did. Unless you're talking about him fighting guys like Lennox or Vitali, which would have been a challenge that was even beyond what Duran sought.

Bull, friend, to be politely blunt. While Jones was fighting consecutive scrubs and shoe clerks and trying to form record companies and playing basketball on the morning of fights, real opportunities for lasting legacy were slipping away.

You think we cannot remember the disappointing scrubs he was fighting. You think we cannot remember a bunch of ham & egger mandatories all the time. He was just defending trinkets the easiest way possible. And throughout he never stopped touting himself as the greatest piece of work to ever come along in boxing. And then he would fight another scrub.

I am not giving him any breaks now. I made up my mind back in the day that bragging showboats who would not fight everyone that was a danger, would never catch a break from me. I was going to remember. And I have remembered. Do not try and remember for me, please.

An all time legacy suffers mightily if the ledger of competition is not what it should be. It is not only that Jones's ledger should have been better, it could have been better. Otherwise, he could damned sure have let the world know without equivocation that it was not himself preventing his biggest potential matches from coming to fruition, but a couple of boys across the wine-blue sea. He did not do that, either. He never continually called those guys out and gave them no rest. That would have given us assurances. He never did that. He was already great enough, in his own mind. Besides, he had already made up his mind he was never going over the wine-blue seas again to fight. So how could that ever be construed as doing everything possible to secure a match? In what universe could both be true at the same time?

Now if it is true that Calzaghe was never going to fight him because his main goal as you stated and I believe was to retire undefeated, then Jones should have made the Welshman's timidity a loud matter of public record, since he wanted to be in the record business. He should likewise have publicly shamed the kraut with challenges and some rap songs as well, since he also wanted to be a rapper.

Would his legacy be any better if he had done this? Actually, yes. With the same opponents on it, his legacy would top what it is now, which is a counter-intuitive realization. And all his baiting might well have brought an additional opponent or two out of the woodwork. In either case, his legacy would now be more secure. We would see he had done all he possibly could to make bigger and better matches.

By publicly refusing to fight overseas again, he gave the kraut and the Welshman the perfect means to avoid him. One might even name such an act itself as clever avoidance on his part. Shaming them and offering to fight in their backyards would have been the class act of a champion leaving no doubt he was doing everything in his power and possessed the appetite of a wolverine for legacy.

Ali was the king of bragging showboats. But his ledger leaves no doubt in any sane person's mind that he did everything in his power to prove he was the greatest. He did not just say it. Looking super slick and saying you are the greatest are not the same as proving it.

[robertzimmerman]

Bull, friend, to be politely blunt. While Jones was fighting consecutive scrubs and shoe clerks and trying to form record companies and playing basketball on the morning of fights, real opportunities for lasting legacy were slipping away.

You think we cannot remember the disappointing scrubs he was fighting. You think we cannot remember a bunch of ham & egger mandatories all the time. He was just defending trinkets the easiest way possible. And throughout he never stopped touting himself as the greatest piece of work to ever come along in boxing. And then he would fight another scrub.

I am not giving him any breaks now. I made up my mind back in the day that bragging showboats who would not fight everyone that was a danger, would never catch a break from me. I was going to remember. And I have remembered. Do not try and remember for me, please.

An all time legacy suffers mightily if the ledger of competition is not what it should be. It is not only that Jones's ledger should have been better, it could have been better. Otherwise, he could damned sure have let the world know without equivocation that it was not himself preventing his biggest potential matches from coming to fruition, but a couple of boys across the wine-blue sea. He did not do that, either. He never continually called those guys out and gave them no rest. That would have given us assurances. He never did that. He was already great enough, in his own mind. Besides, he had already made up his mind he was never going over the wine-blue seas again to fight. So how could that ever be construed as doing everything possible to secure a match? In what universe could both be true at the same time?

Now if it is true that Calzaghe was never going to fight him because his main goal as you stated and I believe was to retire undefeated, then Jones should have made the Welshman's timidity a loud matter of public record, since he wanted to be in the record business. He should likewise have publicly shamed the kraut with challenges and some rap songs as well, since he also wanted to be a rapper.

Would his legacy be any better if he had done this? Actually, yes. With the same opponents on it, his legacy would top what it is now, which is a counter-intuitive realization. And all his baiting might well have brought an additional opponent or two out of the woodwork. In either case, his legacy would now be more secure. We would see he had done all he possibly could to make bigger and better matches.

By publicly refusing to fight overseas again, he gave the kraut and the Welshman the perfect means to avoid him. One might even name such an act itself as clever avoidance on his part. Shaming them and offering to fight in their backyards would have been the class act of a champion leaving no doubt he was doing everything in his power and possessed the appetite of a wolverine for legacy.

Ali was the king of bragging showboats. But his ledger leaves no doubt in any sane person's mind that he did everything in his power to prove he was the greatest. He did not just say it. Looking super slick and saying you are the greatest are not the same as proving it.

I lived through the same era as you.

I was as disappointed as you. But again, despite what you've wrote above, he did try and seek out the best fighters.

Now why on earth would he have tried to shame a relatively unknown fighter in Joe Calzaghe? Calzaghe was a very good fighter. Some will argue he was great. But when Roy was prime, Joe was unknown outside of the U.S. He was defending a lightly regarded WBO belt, on another continent, in a division that Roy had already left years earlier. His biggest wins were against a faded Eubank, Woodhall, Sheika and an S/D over Reid. He was a nobody outside of Europe. It would have been akin to Floyd Mayweather hunting down Ricky Hatton whilst he was still a WBU champ. Back then Joe was insignificant to the world's best fighter. He could have fought in the U.S. when he had a brief stint with Showtime, but he wasn't interested. He also wasn't interested in moving up to LHW.

Roy would have fought Dariusz in the U.S. and HBO did all they could to try and make the fight happen. Roy was well within his rights to not want to go to Germany. Go and recap some of Ottke's wins. Go and watch how Dariusz pathetically feigned injury to get Rocchigianni disqualified in their first fight. Go and look at who Dariusz fought in the early 00's. He had the same mindset as Calzaghe.

Roy agreed to rematch Hopkins at a C-W in 2002, but Hopkins demanded $10m or no fight.

Liles also turned down a career high pay day to fight Roy. His former manager has confirmed that.

If those guys had been added to Roy's resume, it would look absolutely great. But they weren't viable through no fault of Roy's.

Now unless you can refute what I've written, you have to acknowledge that you've been harsh.

You can't just list guys that he missed and then use them as a stick to beat him with.

What if Duran couldn't have gotten fights with the other members of the Fab Four, but Roy could have fought Benn, Liles and Dariusz etc? How would things look then? Everyone's circumstances are different.

Roy would only deserve criticism if we knew that he never sought out the biggest fights of his time. But again, he did.