1a) I will repeat. There is no evidence to back up claim that Jones relied a lot on excessive foot movement, a-la Leonard, Ali, Pep, etc. He wasn't spending his energy on such useless things, when he could instead use slight in and out movement, sidesteps, and defensive arsenal to protect himself. Not a single fight out of over half a hundred.
1b) The Glen Johnson fight it is clear to anyone who is open for new knowledge, that Jones didn't even attempt to use foot movement in this fight. Not a single time did he rise on his toes and attempted to dance at least one circle around the ring. He was walking around flat-footed all the time. Not because his legs were shot (look at his two other fights after that one), but because he didn't choose to. Anybody who is going to claim than Johnson simply didn't give him space or time to move around, should watch the fight beyond the 1st round (after Johnson took his foot off the accelerator pedal), giving Jones plenty of time to do something. Jones chose to work at close range, using bobbing and weaving style with counter-punching. The episode in which he was knocked out, was a repetition of his usual tactics (that he used in many other bouts, and used several times in this bout as well) - put your hands down, "inviting" the opponent to lead, then pull back slightly or duck to avoid getting hit, and then try to counter. In this case, he was a
fraction of a second late with his move to avoid the punch. It had
absolutely nothing to do with foot movement or "inept" guard, it was a usual feint from Jones' arsenal (the one you can see old-timers use a lot too).
2) Again, if you are attentive enough and keep your eyes open to see it, you will know that reflexes are not as important at close range as the right technique. Jones used vast arsenal of defensive moves while working up close, you name any move from the book, Jones knew them all and then some. Bobbing, weaving, ducking, slipping, rolling, blocking, parrying, holding, tucking your head on opponent's shoulder. Jones could do that for extensive time in some fights, 30 seconds a round, a minute, two minutes, he could do it non-stop the whole round if he chose to, without any dancing away (you will have hard time finding anything to back up this your claim, which I challenge you to do, name fights and rounds where you saw prime Jones "working briefly at short range then dance away"). If you never saw Jones' a lot better than average infighting skills, you probably wasn't watching it attentively enough, maybe your eyes are not trained to notice these things, I have no idea.
3) I have watched the whole fight at normal speed at least a dozen times, and in slow-motion at least two times.
I won't waste my time with bare words like you seem to be used to do.
Here are several typical episodes:
link1 (parrying)
link2 (ducking)
4a) How many times did he get hit flush by Johnson? Take first round, where Johnson was working most intensely, how many punches do you count that landed flush? No compubox silliness, please.
4b) What is a myth is your ability to provide anything other than nonsence, backed up by nothing whatsoever.
4c) My guess is you haven't seen the John Ruiz fight either, if you saw Jones use mobility more than on several seldom occasions in that fight.
5) Nonsence is taking Sibson, Obelmejias, Minter or Scypion as examples of great defensive skills, and thus of high accuracy of Hagler. We also all saw the
top-notch accuracy Tommy Hearns showed in two fights vs Barkley. I can pull out more similar examples for both Hopkins and Toney, them looking super precise and accurate versus average or slightly above average defensive fighters.
6) Which solid chins would they be? More solid than Tate's, Malinga's or Sosa's? The thing is Hearns doesn't have even such disputable stoppages as Jones' over Sosa, he simply never even dropped anyone even close in chin department to Merqui Sosa, I'm not even talking about doing that with one punch. Anybody who actually took time to review some Jones' fights at 160 or 168 pounds, would know that when Jones chose to put hurt on people, he could do that at will, with single punches, with either hand. In body punching department Hearns is trailing so far behind, it's not even funny. All he did impressively was stop old blown-up lightweight while being at his peak and fighting at his best weight (light middleweight).
7) As already been said, Hill was wasting his jab, same as
every other fighter who tried to tame Jones with their jab, without a single exception. And Jones didn't just dip his knees. He figured that Hill was trying to counter his every punch with his jab. He feinted a false left jab, knowing that Hill would try to counter it immediately, he ducks under Hill's counter-jab and counter-counter's him with a perfectly executed right hook.
8) Duran didn't have at middleweight the chin of 160lb Tate.
9) A bonus thought for you to ponder.
The hardest-hitting welterweight in history was known as a extremely poor puncher in amateurs (155-8 with less than 10 wins by KO).
The hardesthitting middleweight in history (well, argueably, it's G-Man), was not known as a hard puncher in the amateurs.
The hardest-punching flyweight in history (Wilde) wasn't known for freakish punching power, but for top-notch accuracy and timing
8)
