Sometimes in the sport of boxing, it’s how you go out and forget all the great stuff that came before the fall. You know what I mean: the great Muhammad Ali, all but untouchable in his prime (or primes), but he went out on the back of two desperate defeats, one of them against a guy he would have barely broken a sweat against when he was the real Ali.
Sugar Ray Leonard, all but flawless in his prime (or primes), went out on the back of two painful losses, one of them a stoppage loss to a guy who was never considered a puncher.
And the original Sugar Ray, the greatest to ever do it, yet fighting on for far too long and going out having suffered over a dozen post-prime defeats as a result.
And then we look at the few greats who managed to go out on top, without having pushed their luck for too long, with them forever boasting an unbeaten record – Rocky Marciano, Joe Calzaghe, Ricardo Lopez, Floyd Mayweather, Andre Ward……and one or two other guys.
Which brings us to Roy Jones Jr, AKA “Superman.”
Jones could have gotten out almost flawlessly, almost untouched. Yet today, younger fans don’t fully realise how truly great, how super-special Jones was in his prime (or primes). Some of us know how Jones did it all, as a middleweight, super-middleweight, and light-heavyweight, even making his mark at heavyweight. But Jones fought on and on, and he ended up losing ten times overall, with nine of these losses coming at a time when RJ was no longer anything like Superman. When fans today look at Jones’ record, they see how he was beaten ten times, and they see how he was KO’d five times, and as a result, they tend to dismiss him as a true great. Never let it be said that the power of an unbeaten record cannot sway a mind.
But Jones could have done things differently, and in a new interview with Mail Online, the living legend says he regrets the fact that he carried on after his first fight with Antonio Tarver. Jones had at this time moved up to heavyweight to befuddle and dethrone WBA heavyweight belt-holder John Ruiz; this, for some experts, was Jones’ finest, most exceptional performance. But then Jones pushed his body through so much to get back down to 175 pounds, and he took the Tarver fight. Jones, already a veritable shell of his former greatness, scraped by via a 12-round majority decision win, his light-heavyweight titles, along with his supremacy, retained. Just about.
Now, looking back, this was the perfect time for Jones to depart, to retire. To accept his flowers. Instead, Jones boxed on for almost a decade. And men such as Tarver (in a rematch), Glen Johnson, and Joe Calzaghe beat him. Jones could perhaps live with this, but losses, KO losses, Danny Green, Denis Lebedev, and Enzo Maccarinelli surely haunt Jones today as they haunt Jones’ fans.
Jones said in the Mail interview how it could have been a different career end for him.
“I probably should have won that first fight with Tarver and stopped,” Jones said. “I still today would be no question the greatest fighter ever, which I am still, but people wouldn’t even think about it because they already know. Nobody’s ever done what I did – still to this day.”
And to repeat, those young fans do think, and they question Jones’ true greatness, and it’s because of those past-his-best losses. Had Jones gone out after that close call with Tarver, this at a time when the Pensacola native had absolutely nothing left to prove to anyone (apart from, perhaps, himself) – where would he be ranked by the ‘experts,’ by the old fans and the young, today?
As the greatest fighter ever? Very possibly. Jones, from 1993 to 2003, really was sublime. Jones could fly, and it looked like nobody could ever bring him down to earth.
Imagine today, Jones at 49-1, that DQ loss to Montell Griffin beautifully and brutally put right. Where would YOU rank him among the pantheon of ring immortals?
