Roy Jones Jr. winning a HW title.

How much credit should Roy get for winning a HW title? Yes, he was the first fighter in a century to win titles from MW to HW, but he won a trinket belt by beating a slow, light-punching, undersized HW in Ruiz. He should get a lot of credit. He was a 34 year old LHW who'd had 50 fights. He was a former MW, who even at close to 200 pounds, was outweighed by more than 30 pounds on fight night. He won the fight with absolute ease.

Ruiz at the time was rated. He wasn't just some washed up bum as some people are trying to portray him as. Yes, he wasn't no Lennox or Tyson, but RJJ would be the first to tell you he would have never dared get in the ring with one of them. This was a one-off fight because he saw some weaknesses in Ruiz he could exploit and figured he could avoid his punches easily. Ruiz was NOT feather fisted and could seriously hurt if Roy lost focus for one second. It was an impressive win.

John Ruiz was not the most exciting heavyweight, nor was he the best heavyweight, but he still doesn't get the recognition he deserves for being one of the best heavyweights of his era. The idea that anybody could beat him or that he wasn't a great fighter is very unfair. He's a two time WBA heavyweight champion of the world and has quality wins over Holyfield, Rahman and Golota, among others. He's one of only six fighters in history to hold the WBA world heavyweight championship on more than one occasion. MUHAMMAD ALI. EVANDER HOLYFIELD. GEORGE FOREMAN. MIKE TYSON. JOHN RUIZ. NIKOLAI VALUEV. So while it's always going to be fun and cool for people to knock John Ruiz, we should each ask ourselves what we've done in our lives that was so great that we're in a position to mock a man who was the world heavyweight boxing champion two times and made millions of dollars?

I'm pretty sure all of us in this forum could have beat Ruiz.

Roy beat the weakest champion and safest option in sleepy man ruiz.

toney went from 160 and did the same exact thing so it cant be that amazing if 2 guys did it in a row

Ruiz was a walking corpse and it messed roys career up cutting the weight so waste of time

If Roy retired after the Ruiz fight, people would regard him as possibly the greatest fighter ever. It would at least be in the question. It doesn't take away from his accomplishments who he won that title off. He did it. Unfortunately he tarnished his legacy.