Why exactly did Roy Jones Jr not fight Lennox Lewis after defeating Ruiz?

[jmrf4435]

"Jones would have been killed"

Brah, you have nearly 40k people looking at your page. That's impressive and i am being 100% serious, make a twitter and be a boxing personality, your already doing it here--YOU MAY hAVE TO NEVER WORK AGAIN

[Dip_Slide]

Because fighters like Lennox Lewis, George Foreman, Tyson Fury, Wladimir Klitschko and so on need to have their own weight class which is super heavy weight, 220 lbs+ should be an independent weight class and I don't think it's fair for a former light middleweight to fight a super heavy weight, he barely made the heavyweight limit for the Ruiz fight.

[travestyny]

I remember Roy's father saying he wasn't going to allow Roy to take that fight, and saying something like, "You don't run a ferrari up against a Mack Truck."

[CatchAndShoot]

Because he didn't want to die.

[Earl-Hickey]

Funnily enough I read a few articles recently from back around that time and a lot of pundits were saying Lennox was looking old and might do well to avoid the "phenominal" Jones.

Funny what hype does to people

[robertzimmerman]

This fight actually almost happened. Does anyone know why it didn't? At the time, Roy was just coming off a nice win against Ruiz and looked great and fighting Lewis was the next big fight. But instead he moved back down. Why?

He definitely mulled it over.

Before Lennox had fought Vitali, he dismissed Roy as a threat and spoke of possibly fighting another 2-3 times. But after he'd fought Vitali, he decided it was time to let go. From what I've read, Vitali met Lennox in London to discuss a rematch, but Lennox' mum pleaded with him to retire.

Roy was only ever going to stay at HW for mega money.

Talks with Tyson also took place, but Mike couldn't fight until 2004. But by that point, both of them had lost.

The fight that came the closest to being made was against Evander. But they couldn't agree on the PPV split and King wouldn't pay Evander money that was owed to him from a previous fight. Which is why he went on to fight Toney instead.

[BEEHOP]

Holyfield or Chris Byrd would have beat him, Lennox would have possibly literally killed him.

[robertzimmerman]

Why didn't he go to Cruiser?

It was an unglamorous division.

No huge money fights.

Toney had beaten Jirov and was also fighting at HW.

[KillaCamNZ]

Lennox by Murder1.

[////]

He fought Ruiz because Ruiz was slow as molasses and had no intention of making a career at HW. Sums it up.