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Jones’ prime is over, but he’s still game
By Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports
53 minutes ago
Everything seems to favor Joe Calzaghe. The odds do. Age does. The world’s boxing writers, it seems, do as well.
Roy Jones Jr., the one-time pound-for-pound king, stretches his arms, chuckles and shakes his head. He’s fighting the unbeaten Wales native on Saturday at Madison Square Garden in an intriguing light heavyweight bout, one of the few times in Jones’ illustrious career he hasn’t been the easy choice to win.
“Go ahead and pick against me,” Jones said, grinning slyly. “But just do it for fun. Don’t do it for money, though, unless you got a whole lot of that stuffed up under a mattress because you don’t trust banks. If you do it for money, believe me when I tell you this, you’re going to come crying to me on (Saturday) saying, ‘Roy! Roy! I done lost all my money. I should have listened to you. I shouldn’t have bet against you.”
It would be easy if this were, oh, 2000, instead of 2008. But it’s 2008 and Jones is two months away from his 40th birthday and far from the dominant figure he was at the dawn of the 21st century.
In the five-year period of what could be considered his prime, from 1994 through 1999, Jones went 16-1 with the only loss coming via a dubious disqualification that he avenged by winning with a first-round knockout in the rematch.
In that span, he defeated nine current or former world champions and three men who either already are in the International Boxing Hall of Fame or will be when they become eligible
He was even more superior to his competition in that span than Tiger Woods is over the PGA Tour now. Woods actually loses every now and again.
So, if Jones were meeting Calzaghe sometime in 2000, it would be easy to assume that he’d blow Calzaghe out.
James Toney, who is a first-ballot Hall of Famer the minute he’s eligible, was the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world when Jones met him at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Nov. 18, 1994. Jones won 30 of the 36 scored rounds in a stunning display of boxing ability.
Jones met Mike McCallum, who was inducted into the Hall and is now a first-rate trainer residing in Las Vegas, in Tampa, Fla., on Nov. 22, 1996, for the interim WBC light heavyweight title. Jones won every round on all three judges’ scorecards, including one round in which he dominated so much all three scored it 10-8.
And then on April 25, 1998, Jones stopped Virgil Hill with a pulverizing shot to the ribs, a knockout so fierce it is still shown on highlight reels of the game’s best knockouts. Jones had won the first three rounds of that bout before knocking Hill out in the fourth.
So against three future Hall of Famers, Jones went 3-0 and won 70 of 76 rounds. He’s winning 92.1 percent of his rounds against Hall of Fame fighters.
There is no boxer in recent vintage who has dominated that type of competition quite that way.
In 1993, Jones routed Bernard Hopkins, another future Hall of Famer, winning 24 of 36 scored rounds from him despite fighting with a broken hand.
This is a guy who, when he was at his peak, was so superior that not even the best fighters of the time could come close to challenging him. And as great as Calzaghe has been in a splendid career that hasn’t received nearly enough attention or nearly enough praise, he never would have come close to being able to handle a prime Jones.
But the Jones who will stand across from him on Saturday in Madison Square Garden will be something of a mystery man. He’ll be considerably slower than the man who literally would cross his hands behind his back, stick out his chin and dare an opponent to hit him.
And he’s clearly not nearly as powerful as the man who had the juice in either hand to knock out quality fighters with a single blow.
Felix Trinidad clearly was near the end of the line when they met in January and, while Jones dominated, he wasn’t able to finish a significantly smaller man.
Jones, though, is convinced he’s about to recapture his past. He said he struggled for three years to adjust to fighting at 175 pounds again after moving up to heavyweight in 2003 and becoming the first ex-middleweight champion in 106 years, since Bob Fitzsimmons, to win a version of the heavyweight belt.
He has now pronounced himself completely back and, despite his advancing years, won’t concede he’s anything less than the fighter who once lapped the rest of the field.
“When I look into the mirror, it looks like it’s 115 percent (of what I used to be),” Jones said. “I’m like, ‘Wow, how you can keep (getting) better looking as you get older?’ … I’m pretty close to 100 percent, trust me. Pretty, pretty close.”
Calzaghe slipped past Hopkins in April, largely by keeping his hands popping like fast-moving pistons. After a while, though the punches weren’t particularly hard, Hopkins simply couldn’t keep up and wilted as the fight moved down the stretch.
It would seem logical that Calzaghe, who has always been a high-volume puncher, would try to keep his hands in Jones’ face.
Jones, though, said it won’t be a factor.
“I feel great and I would never be able to match the punch output that Joe will throw,” Jones said. “What you have to think about is if Joe will be able to match me. In pro boxing, you always have to worry about one big punch. Against Bernard, he threw those punches for about half a minute at a time and that is why he only won by a split decision. This is pro boxing, so I don’t have to match his output.”
Have no doubt, though, that Jones knows very well that he has to do something about those fast-moving hands of Calzaghe’s. He’s noticed them plenty and he’s spent plenty of time in his out-of-the-way training camp in California, Pa., devising a plan to neutralize it.
And though other the last five years the world has seen Roy Jones flat on his back knocked cold not once but twice, it’s still difficult to imagine him not coming up with a way to pull it off again when he’s this motivated and this into it.
“Fighting Joe makes you get up, because when you sleep at night, you dream about him punching,” Jones said. “You lay down to bed you thinking ‘Oh goodness, I got to be doing something because he punching right now.’ When you wake up in the morning you say ‘Oh gosh, I’m already hours behind, he’s probably been up for an hour already,’ so you got to get out of bed because you know he’s somewhere punching. That’s all he does is punch, so you know he is somewhere punching.
“So you got to get up and go if you are going to keep up. You really have to get up at 4 a.m. to keep ahead of him. So it’s very difficult but, hey, it helps because it makes you get up off your behind. (Some) days you don’t want to get up, you get up because you know Joe is out there somewhere punching.
“You have to draw a mental picture of what you want to be on fight day,” Jones said. “And every day you should be doing something to draw closer to that picture. Today was an endurance day, a day that’s going to be most critical in the fight because Joe is capable of doing a lot of things. You have to change your rhythm, change your pace because he throws so many punches. He isn’t going to care whether you are tired or not. He isn’t tripping off that; he hopes you are tired. He’s still throwing 110 (punches) a round; he doesn’t care what you do. You have to be able to change up and adjust to that.”
By Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports
53 minutes ago
Everything seems to favor Joe Calzaghe. The odds do. Age does. The world’s boxing writers, it seems, do as well.
Roy Jones Jr., the one-time pound-for-pound king, stretches his arms, chuckles and shakes his head. He’s fighting the unbeaten Wales native on Saturday at Madison Square Garden in an intriguing light heavyweight bout, one of the few times in Jones’ illustrious career he hasn’t been the easy choice to win.
“Go ahead and pick against me,” Jones said, grinning slyly. “But just do it for fun. Don’t do it for money, though, unless you got a whole lot of that stuffed up under a mattress because you don’t trust banks. If you do it for money, believe me when I tell you this, you’re going to come crying to me on (Saturday) saying, ‘Roy! Roy! I done lost all my money. I should have listened to you. I shouldn’t have bet against you.”
It would be easy if this were, oh, 2000, instead of 2008. But it’s 2008 and Jones is two months away from his 40th birthday and far from the dominant figure he was at the dawn of the 21st century.
In the five-year period of what could be considered his prime, from 1994 through 1999, Jones went 16-1 with the only loss coming via a dubious disqualification that he avenged by winning with a first-round knockout in the rematch.
In that span, he defeated nine current or former world champions and three men who either already are in the International Boxing Hall of Fame or will be when they become eligible
He was even more superior to his competition in that span than Tiger Woods is over the PGA Tour now. Woods actually loses every now and again.
So, if Jones were meeting Calzaghe sometime in 2000, it would be easy to assume that he’d blow Calzaghe out.
James Toney, who is a first-ballot Hall of Famer the minute he’s eligible, was the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world when Jones met him at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Nov. 18, 1994. Jones won 30 of the 36 scored rounds in a stunning display of boxing ability.
Jones met Mike McCallum, who was inducted into the Hall and is now a first-rate trainer residing in Las Vegas, in Tampa, Fla., on Nov. 22, 1996, for the interim WBC light heavyweight title. Jones won every round on all three judges’ scorecards, including one round in which he dominated so much all three scored it 10-8.
And then on April 25, 1998, Jones stopped Virgil Hill with a pulverizing shot to the ribs, a knockout so fierce it is still shown on highlight reels of the game’s best knockouts. Jones had won the first three rounds of that bout before knocking Hill out in the fourth.
So against three future Hall of Famers, Jones went 3-0 and won 70 of 76 rounds. He’s winning 92.1 percent of his rounds against Hall of Fame fighters.
There is no boxer in recent vintage who has dominated that type of competition quite that way.
In 1993, Jones routed Bernard Hopkins, another future Hall of Famer, winning 24 of 36 scored rounds from him despite fighting with a broken hand.
This is a guy who, when he was at his peak, was so superior that not even the best fighters of the time could come close to challenging him. And as great as Calzaghe has been in a splendid career that hasn’t received nearly enough attention or nearly enough praise, he never would have come close to being able to handle a prime Jones.
But the Jones who will stand across from him on Saturday in Madison Square Garden will be something of a mystery man. He’ll be considerably slower than the man who literally would cross his hands behind his back, stick out his chin and dare an opponent to hit him.
And he’s clearly not nearly as powerful as the man who had the juice in either hand to knock out quality fighters with a single blow.
Felix Trinidad clearly was near the end of the line when they met in January and, while Jones dominated, he wasn’t able to finish a significantly smaller man.
Jones, though, is convinced he’s about to recapture his past. He said he struggled for three years to adjust to fighting at 175 pounds again after moving up to heavyweight in 2003 and becoming the first ex-middleweight champion in 106 years, since Bob Fitzsimmons, to win a version of the heavyweight belt.
He has now pronounced himself completely back and, despite his advancing years, won’t concede he’s anything less than the fighter who once lapped the rest of the field.
“When I look into the mirror, it looks like it’s 115 percent (of what I used to be),” Jones said. “I’m like, ‘Wow, how you can keep (getting) better looking as you get older?’ … I’m pretty close to 100 percent, trust me. Pretty, pretty close.”
Calzaghe slipped past Hopkins in April, largely by keeping his hands popping like fast-moving pistons. After a while, though the punches weren’t particularly hard, Hopkins simply couldn’t keep up and wilted as the fight moved down the stretch.
It would seem logical that Calzaghe, who has always been a high-volume puncher, would try to keep his hands in Jones’ face.
Jones, though, said it won’t be a factor.
“I feel great and I would never be able to match the punch output that Joe will throw,” Jones said. “What you have to think about is if Joe will be able to match me. In pro boxing, you always have to worry about one big punch. Against Bernard, he threw those punches for about half a minute at a time and that is why he only won by a split decision. This is pro boxing, so I don’t have to match his output.”
Have no doubt, though, that Jones knows very well that he has to do something about those fast-moving hands of Calzaghe’s. He’s noticed them plenty and he’s spent plenty of time in his out-of-the-way training camp in California, Pa., devising a plan to neutralize it.
And though other the last five years the world has seen Roy Jones flat on his back knocked cold not once but twice, it’s still difficult to imagine him not coming up with a way to pull it off again when he’s this motivated and this into it.
“Fighting Joe makes you get up, because when you sleep at night, you dream about him punching,” Jones said. “You lay down to bed you thinking ‘Oh goodness, I got to be doing something because he punching right now.’ When you wake up in the morning you say ‘Oh gosh, I’m already hours behind, he’s probably been up for an hour already,’ so you got to get out of bed because you know he’s somewhere punching. That’s all he does is punch, so you know he is somewhere punching.
“So you got to get up and go if you are going to keep up. You really have to get up at 4 a.m. to keep ahead of him. So it’s very difficult but, hey, it helps because it makes you get up off your behind. (Some) days you don’t want to get up, you get up because you know Joe is out there somewhere punching.
“You have to draw a mental picture of what you want to be on fight day,” Jones said. “And every day you should be doing something to draw closer to that picture. Today was an endurance day, a day that’s going to be most critical in the fight because Joe is capable of doing a lot of things. You have to change your rhythm, change your pace because he throws so many punches. He isn’t going to care whether you are tired or not. He isn’t tripping off that; he hopes you are tired. He’s still throwing 110 (punches) a round; he doesn’t care what you do. You have to be able to change up and adjust to that.”
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