By Patrick Kehoe
Roy Jones Jr has a smile on his face, a lot, these days. Trimmed back down into light-heavyweight range, he’s sporting a six pack, dashing off wise cracking threats and generally making a fun loving flirt out of himself. He’s even tossed the ball around with the New York Knicks and pulled a Rambo sporting some serious rifle range fire power with the state side troops, while shamelessly photo-oping with the godfather of tireless self-promotion Don King, himself. And most of the time on the stump he’s been spending face to face with his next opponent, Senor Felix Trinidad. For every Trinidadian flourish of a threatening, knuckle flattened fist and dire knockout prediction from the winking Trinidad, Jones instinctively counters with bubbling frivolity and a smirking shake of the head to make sure “Tito” gets an exact body language translation. “No way in hell, Tito!”
The listless boredom that defined his public persona in the weeks leading up to his fights with Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson has become a frown turned upside down. Where Jones was often a no show for public events and media days during those last days of his pound for pound reign, Roy has been reborn, glad handing the troops at Florida air force bases, stripping for cheese cake poster shots and generally making himself available to sell the commodity of the memory of his ring brilliance, matched up against that other famously eclipsed ring monarch from Puerto Rico.
As the currency of preference for the sports entertainment industry, memories are forever the gold standard, tradable collector’s items indemnified over time, insurable against all forms of diminution.
The major irony of Roy Jones and Felix Trinidad fighting in 2008 is that this is more likely to be a fair fight and almost certainly a compelling contest of champions because they are now nearer in ability than was ever the case in yesteryear. Roy Jones taking on Felix Trinidad – fighting when it was first floated, c.2000 – would have been a colossal mismatch, a ritual slaughter for the purposes of pay per view exploitation. Such a match-up would have effectively been a Roy Jones designed showcase complete with a special effects ending. Eight years later and the two fighters are much closer in relative performance arcs. Both past their athletic primes, they anxiously seek out the others vulnerabilities and limitations, for the sake of reprising their claims to being winners, significant figures in a sport desperate for superstar attractions. Even old superstars will do nicely for main event boxing telecasts, HBO or otherwise.
And Roy’s not having fun just because he’s taking the time – his precious time – to pose for photographs with fans or pit-stopping to share a word, shake a hand or scribble an autograph in the name of self-promotion. Jones may be having some serious fun promoting the Madison Square Garden showdown of champions, but, he doesn’t want to be taken completely out of context or leave any doubt about how he sees this fight coming out. On that point, Jones has been unequivocal and certainly close to the old Roy Jones, “Tito must go in fo!” Fo here meaning four for the purposes of rhyme and reason and getting a good laugh, while stating his case, his sincere conviction. Though he once amended that prediction to a possible six rounds, his point was made: Jones by violent knockout. Either way it’s all laughable nonsense, as far as Trinidad is concerned.
But Jones believes that Tito will be pressing him for a knockout and that puts Trinidad in perfect position to get caught, hurt and floored for the count. No one, no former junior middleweight, even with the pedigree of a Felix Trinidad, takes off close to three years and waltzes back into the ring and get the better of R.J. Yes, Roy’s been entertaining the faithful with promises to be at his best. His best being the alter ego, third person-ish acronym R.J., though interestingly, Roy’s been reluctant to use that famously haunting acronym; call it infer, with feeling?
Still, little guys don’t beat big guys, unless it’s Roy Jones laying on the beating; that’s how Mr. Jones sees the issue of ‘size matters’, relatively speaking. And Mr. Jones, who successfully challenged for part of a heavyweight championship, knows a little something about stepping up to big challenges. In the Floridian’s mind, against Trinidad, he’s the bigger man, the true enforce, in a one against one.
Though one could hardly tell seeing them side by side, for Tito does appear to be the larger physical specimen in 2008. Looking the part and playing the part to perfection can be two very different things; we all concede that. Tito’s not exactly been Mr. Dynamite since he left the ring against Ronald “Winky” Wright, in May of 2005, and that was fighting at 160, middleweight. How will Trinidad enjoy fighting at 170 for the first time in his career, as a professional; that weight range being old and very familiar ground for Mr. Jones. Thus, despite his own recent losses, Jones staunchly feels that Tito’s hunger for a knockout will be the seed of his own fate, that and Tito’s way beyond his speed-performance ratio, way beyond his comfort zone at 170, where big hitting really begins to register against flesh and bone.
We may be deep into a political year, but, boxers never need a political climate to spin their messages to an ever awaiting audience of the converted. For Roy Jones, the knockout losses to Glen Johnson and Antonio Tarver are not just water under the bridge of time, they have been recast as the ultimate price he had to pay in reaching the stupendous heights of an ex-middleweight king taking the thrown of a heavyweight: Jones taking John Ruiz’s WBA title belt over 12 rounds, March 1, 2003.
Fatalism entwines the future, when life is lived as heroic or hubristic. We thought Jones learned that life lesson on May 15, 2004, at the Mandalay Bay, in Las Vegas against Antonio Tarver.
For Jones, he wants to believe that having paid his dues for historical distinction he can now mount campaigns for glory anew, with only the limitations of mind and will standing in his way to test him. Listen to Roy Jones – perhaps a little too eager to make his case – and you will hear the word ‘sacrifice’ used to describe the past tense, and that which he had to be dragged through to get back to where he believes he now stands. For Roy Jones always believes, or at least again believes, he’s standing yet again at the threshold of something amazing.
The sense of performance genius which comes engrained from a youth characterized by prodigy status never leaves the chosen. And for Roy Jones that sense of unlimited ability at the precise moment of tumultuous measure and meaning has never been beaten out of him, never knocked beyond the black lights of unconsciousness, even having laid inert on the canvas, the world of recognition lost to him.
Time indeed heals. It also distends and distorts self assessment. Given enough time, the athletic mind begins to re-imagine experience and resuscitate addled confidence. Certainly, the more gifted the athlete, the more prone to delusions of self-inflating grandeur they are, forever and ever amen. The same can well be said of Mr. Trinidad. And therein lays the wonderful symmetry of Jones vs. Trinidad, at the Garden, on HBO. They meet as near equals. Only the contest of them battling will define for us all the differences remaining between them as professional fighters.
Each fight fan will make up his or her mind the exact value of finding out the answers to the questions these two champions ask to the other.
Sure, they are both getting ahead of themselves and projecting their star power onto the other significant names in the sport nearest them in weight. Roy Jones has a professional responsibility to project a large figure; after all, he’s also a promoter. But Roy Jones the fighter thinks of himself as back in the main stream, calling the shots for a big time boxing event in America’s big town and it’s nice to see him enjoying most of it. There have been times over the Holidays when Roy Jones looked like he was feeding off the electricity of being back in the mix, recorded, quoted, in demand.
Roy on the stump isn’t campaigning; he may be currently without a title, but, he’s still Roy Jones and that makes him president for life of his own constituency: Planet Roy.
Felix Trinidad may be eager to wipe the smile off Jones’ face; but, doing that in the ring will be no laughing matter. For whatever it’s all worth.
Patrick Kehoe may be reached at: pkehoe@telus.net