Terry D wrote:he was a better athlete than boxer and it is showing in his current form
So are you saying that now Jones is 38, seemingly burnt out and at the end of his career, we are seeing the real Roy Jones as a boxer?
Surely a large part of being a great boxer is to be a great athlete??
No, we saw it at the age of 35. Jones never really had the type of fights that burn you out. His reflexes and hand and foot speed went and revealed a serious lack of fundamentals.
James Toney is old also, he has had more ring-wear and he stuck around at heavyweight yet he managed to avoid getting nailed to the canvas. Imagine Jones fighting a Peter type straight after Ruiz.
You need athletic gifts to be a great boxer yet to be truly great you could do with being able to box when physically you are on the wane. Jones could not adapt and hardly blocks or parries. His sole defence when not skirting around the ring, as he did in Tarver III, is to cover on the ropes and get caught.
I don't really give Toney that much credit for eating his way up to 17st and "competing" at heavyweight. Well done for not getting knocked out but he has hardly been successful.
I assume you are suggesting that Jones would have been steamrolled by Samuel Peter? I don't see why that would be a given after Jones thoroughly took Ruiz to the cleaners. I'd have given Jones an excellent chance of outboxing Peter before the calamitous drop back down to 175 in 2003.
I can conceed though that Jones Jr has not become a smart old veteran since the sudden decline. He has not been able to adapt to the change in his body and still tries to be the fighter that dominated opponents for so long, but his engine now only allows for cameos of his old workrate and general movement. He used to be one of a rare breed of fighters who could throw repeated combo's flat out, and not take more out of himself than his opponent. Time catches up with them all sadly.
I dare say that had he stayed at heavyweight, Jones could have been successful against some of those other guys. I don't see him having been able to beat a really skilled heavyweight like Lewis, but he would probably have been able to get away with the decline in skills a bit better against much slower men. Eventually someone would probably have clocked him, and I don't think Jones fancied the chances of getting hit by a full blooded shot from a hevayweight too much. Ruiz was so negative it was pathetic in their fight, he gave up trying after a couple of rounds.
Sam Peter, for all his flaws, would have been trying to take Jones' head off right until the last second of the fight, and would not have gone into 'let's not get humiliated mode' like Ruiz did.
I would have loved to have seen Jones v Toney at heavyweight. I suspect Jones would have got his ass handed to him by the one heavyweight with some handspeed and a dig.
I really wouldn't want to see RJJ versus Enzo Maccarinelli right now. Enzo is hardly the second coming of Joe Louis, but I suspect that Maccarinelli could seriously hurt Jones with one punch. Enzo has his flaws, but he can hit. I really don't want to see someone as gifted as Roy end his career being flattened by someone like Enzo. And I'm a fan of Enzo.
Terry D wrote:
He looked badly faded against Woods if you ask me.
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Tezza your ramblings are getting more odd by the day old boy! RJJ completely dominated and stopped Woods, yet he looked "badly faded"? WTF?!
And why all this talk of Sam Peter? What the hells he got to do with anything? As heavies go, after RJJ beat Ruiz it was Lewis, Tyson, or Holyfield and retire. Peter was not even a player at that point.
IMO RJJ should of hung on and if the big fight didnt come retire. The drop back down to light-heavy was an abortion.
