by David P. Greisman
At 37, Roy Jones Jr. is as close to the acceptance of his impending midlife crisis as he was in proximity to his home in Florida while performing in Idaho last weekend.
Maturity doesn’t have to equal boredom. Seventeen years into his professional career, Jones is still the semipro basketball playing, rap album making, cockfighting rooster training man that defined his character during his prime.
The prime that, by the way, is years past, left behind like the pound-for-pound standing and the aura of invincibility disposed of by one Antonio Tarver left hand.
It was one thing when Jones lost his undefeated record by disqualification by striking Montell Griffin while he was down. That blemish, like those given to Lennox Lewis by Oliver McCall and Hasim Rahman, was removed by knockout revenge.
But three losses in a row are completely different, especially when two are by dramatic kayos and the third by an obvious and necessary desire to play it safe.
Jones needed confidence and he needed practice, and to get both he went the distance with Prince Badi Ajamu, taking a wide unanimous decision in the process.
An early scare aside, Jones exhibited much of what he wanted to see, like a car enthusiast taking an antique buggy out for a spin just to ensure that everything’s still in working order.
“I wanted to see if my reflexes were still there,” Jones told reporters in the post-fight press conference. “I wanted to see if I could do the things I used to do like catch him off balance. After tonight, I realized that I can still do the things that I’m not supposed to be able to do anymore.”
At 37, after three consecutive losses, Jones’ positive diagnostic check came at the eleventh hour, the latest and thus the worst possible time.
Like Henry Maske, Tommy Morrison, Stevie Johnston, Thomas Hearns and Axel Schulz Jones is addicted to the sweet science and its competition, adoring fans and potential paychecks.
While Jones’ situation is dissimilar in that he’s neither returning from retirement nor coming off of extended inactivity, he, too, is not what he once was, although his degree of fading is less pronounced.
But the fading is still there. The fighter who was taken to the ropes by Clinton Woods in 2002 had the same strategy applied by Antonio Tarver in 2003, by Glencoffe Johnson in 2004 and by Prince Badi Ajamu on Saturday. That Jones ended up as 3-1 in those instances is of little consequence, because his not losing does not counter what he has lost.
The legs, the willingness to constantly move away from an attack, tend to be the first thing to go. Instead, aging boxers will stay in the pocket and try to make their opponents miss, and as a result they begin to get caught when, in the past, they wouldn’t nor shouldn’t.
From the eleventh hour, though, Jones is so close to being in the midnight hour, when his love for the sport and its accompanying benefits come tumbling down. For all of Jones’ confidence that, based off of his performance against Ajamu, he “will be all the way back” to old form in two to three months, the odds are against that.
He is not Bernard Hopkins. In the twilights of their careers, their fates and capabilities varied due to their different styles and body types.
But Jones is still going to be in the midnight hour, and he’ll want more, more, more. His body and his history are telling him otherwise, but he rebels.
His career will continue until he realizes that it must truly end. He may fight the reality and declare, like Hopkins did recently, that a life without boxing can seem rather unexciting without the jogging, the workouts, the sparring and the fame.
The Ajamu win is like taking an old buggy out for a spin on country roads. The question, though, is if Jones can truly turn back time enough so that he can survive on the dangerous highways.
The 10 Count
1. It’s been a rough year so far for HBO’s Boxing After Dark, a broadcast that likely would much rather be celebrating its 10th anniversary instead of facing plenty of adversity.
In its April re-launch, the anticipated main event of Acelino Freitas-Zahir Raheem degenerated into an unpleasant clinch-fest. May’s Paul Williams-Walter Matthysse bout was enjoyable, but the Jhonny Gonzalez-Fernando Montiel headliner was on the tactical end.
Calvin Brock and Timur Ibragimov followed the trend in June by not being anywhere close to aesthetically pleasing, thus squandering the momentum of the clinic Carlos Quintana put on against Joel Julio on the undercard.
This past weekend’s airing included two bouts that did not go on as originally intended. Vivian Harris’ fight against Mike Arnaoutis was canned due to an injury Arnaoutis suffered in training camp, while Kermit Cintron dropped off the card to seek a title shot instead of facing Richard Gutierrez. Harris knocked out former lightweight titlist Stevie Johnston while Gutierrez lost a majority decision to Joshua Clottey, by the way.
The latest is that Andre Ward reinjured his left thumb in training camp, canceling his appearance on the Aug. 19 edition of Boxing After Dark, according to scribe Dan Rafael. As a result, the HBO broadcast will consist solely of Paul Williams against Sharmba Mitchell, although it wouldn’t be surprising if the network decides to show the previous week’s Hasim Rahman-Oleg Maskaev II pay-per-view bout.
2. In a shocker – and there seem to be many of late – featherweight titlist Takashi Koshimoto was knocked out by the unheralded Rudy Lopez, a fighter whose lone appearance of note had been a split decision loss to featherweight contender Tommy Browne in 2004.
Nevertheless, Lopez joins the ranks of Chris John (who took a highly controversial decision over Juan Manuel Marquez) and Erik Aiken (who came out of the blue to knock out Tim Austin and beat paper titlist Valdemir Pereira) as the surprising new faces of a division that, Marquez notwithstanding, no longer has its stars like Manny Pacquiao, Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales, or even Rocky Juarez.
3. Meanwhile, Humberto Soto – who long ago should have had a shot at the title Lopez now holds – has joined in the migration to junior lightweight.
Last August, Soto stepped in as a late replacement for now-former WBC featherweight titlist Injin Chi and outpointed the aforementioned Rocky Juarez for the interim belt. When Chi returned in January, he lost a split decision and the actual title to Koshimoto.
Soto, of course, was allowed to pay extra sanctioning fees in the meantime with a defense of his interim belt when he knocked out Oscar Leon in February. Now, though, Soto has seen another opportunity slip through due to initial opponent Bobby Pacquiao dropping out of their fight on the undercard of the Rahman-Maskaev II pay-per-view. Instead, Soto will face Ivan Valle, a decent replacement but a name nowhere on the level of the Pacquiao surname.
4. After five years without a boxing commission, Minnesota announced that it has reinstated the Minnesota Boxing Commission, naming former heavyweight contender Scott LeDoux its executive director, according to the Associated Press.
Since the commission’s initial disbandment due to budget cuts, any bouts in the state had been watched over by commissions from other locales. But after last year, when the Association of Boxing Commissions took its stamp off of bouts in any states that didn’t have its own commission, boxing in Minnesota died off, with no cards taking place since last November.
LeDoux will have his work cut out for him as he attempts to eliminate the environment that created terrible mismatches, as well as the infamous Matt Vanda-Sam Garr scoring travesty in 2004.
5. Boxers Behaving Badly, part one: Former flyweight and junior bantamweight titlist Danny Romero started his 30-day jail sentence after pleading guilty to a drunk-driving charge from a March incident, according to the Associated Press.
Romero, who had gone 1-0-1 since returning from a two-year layoff, will be required to go to a first-offender program, DWI school and a victims’ impact meeting after he is released, and he must also have an ignition interlock device installed on his vehicle.
The terms of his plea agreement also included a suspension of 60 days from his 90-day sentence, on the condition that Romero cannot have another drunk-driving offense over the following year.
6. Boxers Behaving Badly, part two: Zab Judah went from one court to another after being arrested on a Family Court warrant following a celebrity basketball game in New York last week, according to United Press International and the New York Post. Judah allegedly owes a woman named Natashia Wright $60,000 in back child support for their 4-year-old daughter Annesia, and he had not shown up for previous court dates.
7. Boxer Behaving Dumbly: William Prieto gets to wear the dunce cap for intentionally dropping his hands 51 seconds into his bout with Peter Quillin on ESPN2’s Wednesday Night Fights. After dancing around for a few seconds, Prieto was promptly knocked out by a single punch.
8. This Saturday’s doubleheader of Ike Quartey-Vernon Forrest and Kassim Ouma-Sechew Powell on HBO looks to be a good one, with two non-title bouts that are nonetheless intriguing and potentially exciting.
For Quartey-Forrest, the winner gets to keep his career going at least a little bit longer while the loser must decide if he can accomplish anything else in the sport. As for Ouma-Powell, Ouma’s no longer in the high position he had been perched upon prior to his loss to Roman Karmazin, while Powell is taking a major step up in competition, seeking to use Ouma’s name to launch his fledgling stardom.
9. After dropping the light heavyweight championship and a $250,000 side bet to Bernard Hopkins in June, Antonio Tarver’s losing gambling streak continued Friday at the 2006 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Tarver was among the 2,140 entrants playing in Day 1A of the 8,580-person tournament, but before the day was over he had been eliminated far before he could recoup the $10,000 entry fee.
10. The Contender Update: On the third episode of Mark Burnett’s boxing reality series, two fringe contestants battled for the right to continue on in an underdog role. Gary Balletto and Aaron Torres, both of whom were essentially rising lightweights who had faced mostly suspect opposition and were coming off of long layoffs, went the five-round distance, with Balletto taking the split decision victory.
Balletto, who coincidentally was outpointed by ousted teammate Michael Clark in 2002, was the first member of the gold team to win a first-round bout. Going into next week, six members remain on the gold team: Balletto, Steve Forbes, Walter Wright, Vinroy Barrett, Ebo Elder and Jeff Fraza.
With Torres’ loss, the blue team now has seven members: Nick Acevedo, Freddy Curiel, Michael Stewart, Andre Eason, Norberto Bravo, Grady Brewer and Cornelius Bundrage.
Three contestants have now advanced to the second round: Bundrage, Bravo and Balletto.
