By Stuart Young – After a decade (1993-2003) at the higher echelons of everyone’s P4P list you would think any fighter would be more than happy with that resume, but we aren’t talking about a ‘normal’ fighter here, we are talking about Roy Jones Jr – aka Superman. Should he have done more, with the talent which he was blessed?
It’s hard to be critical of a man who’s the only person since Bob Fitzsimmons over 100 years ago to go from Middleweight Champion right up to Heavyweight Champion (albeit only picking up an alphabet strap rather than the linear title) but let us not understate his feat of excellence because lets be honest here – no one else has managed to do it..
However, as sad as it is, it’s hard to think of Roy Jones these days without conjuring up flashbacks of his devastating KO loss to Antonio Tarver or being ‘iced’ by Glen Johnson or more recently his 12 round beat down at the hands of Joe Calzaghe.
As a multi-weight world Champion & a multi-millionaire its hard to feel sorry for Roy but you just wonder, when he’s lay awake at night does he think about his career? & if he does, does he think to himself what might have been if he was just a little bit bolder, took a little more risks? should I have cleared out the Super Middleweight division after beating James Toney back in ’94?
The division was loaded with talent at the time & its no secret that Nigel Benn when interviewed on national TV immediately in the aftermath of his brutal & tragic victory over Gerald McClellan in Feb ’95 specifically called out Roy Jones Jr with his famous “you, me, lets get it on to see who’s the best” speech, should he have answered that call? should he have took on the duo of Chris Eubank & Steve Collins? should he have hung around & sleighed the young ‘Welsh Dragon’ Joe Calzaghe who at 23, was just 4 years younger than Roy & already making big waves in British boxing, should he have travelled to Germany to take on Dariusz Michalczewski in the days of his Light Heavyweight reign?
Because to be brutally honestly, these are all fights where he probably would have won, & won comfortably – these fights would certainly have done more for his legacy than him sticking around now at 40 years of age fighting people like Danny Green for the little known IBO World titles. There is no doubt he wasted some of his prime boxing years taking on ‘B’ or ‘C’ level fighters like Antoine Byrd, Vinny Pazienza, Tony Thornton, Eric Lucas & Bryant Brannon (bouts that all took place at Super Middleweight after Benn had defeated McClellan) when he could have been cementing a legacy as arguably the greatest boxer of all time.
You may think I am going overboard in that last statement but lets be honest here, Roy Jones Jr was a phenomenon, a Superman (excuse the pun) if he had retired after the victory over John Ruiz in 2003 with a piece of the Heavyweight Crown & with the above 5 names also on his resume, just take time to think about that statement for a moment…. hell, even without the above 5 names he was still being mentioned in the same breath as Sugar Ray Robinson & Sugar Ray Leonard after the landmark victory over Ruiz.
You have to remember, that to this point, no weakness had been found in his arsenal, he was unbeatable, well at least that was the global perception of him, he had hardly lost a round in his career never mind a fight! Alas, he had suffered 1 blemish, a defeat to Montell Griffin (by DSQ) which he had already superbly avenged by brutal 1st round KO.
Titles in the Middleweight, Super Middleweight, Light Heavyweight & Heavyweight divisions, a resume of names that included future hall of famers such as Bernard Hopkins, James Toney, Mike McCallum & Virgil Hill, his domination of the Light-Heavyweights for nearly 7 years (at one point holding no less than 6 different belts simultaneously) he was boxings equivalent of Picasso, he didn’t just abide by the rules, he reinvented them & wrote some new ones!
Roy Jones – a career that has been great, but you can’t help thinking it should have been so much greater!