Did Roy Jones Jr blatantly duck / avoid Dariusz Michaelczewski? Why?

[lolpz]

Lol Jones would've ran through this guy.

Let's be brutally honest here people.

[IMDAZED]

Roy was always being tough on the negotiations, man. The B-Hop rematch could've happened in '02 but Roy had too much fun playing hard to get.

Nobody would've paid him 20-25 million to fight D.M. He even got less than 20 million for fighting Ruiz at heavyweight.

He never asked for $25m

[BodiesInFlight]

When i first started browsing here this was one of the most brought up topics along with Lewis Klitschko stoppage. Good to have it back.

[Legendary Hater]

Screw Roy Jones...this threadstarter ducked Intelligence...

Objecicici...uhhhhh

[N/A]

roy wanted $12 million to fight him in germany. he would have fought him in the US for much less.

the fight never happened because the fight never made any financial sense. roy was undisputed champion and everyone knew he would crush DM. DM had to weigh the pros and cons of one big pay day vs. roy, or very solid paydays for years to come hiding behind the unrecognized WBO title.

DM chose what was best for his wallet, as he should have.

[boliodogs]

I don't think anybody ducked anybody. Ducked is a term that is badly overused on here. Just because a particular fight doesn't happen doesn't mean any ducking was going on. Both men wanted the fight in their own country so they never fought. Jones was badly robbed in Korea in the Olympics and he didn't trust other counties to give him fair scoring after that.

[raf727]

roy wanted $12 million to fight him in germany. he would have fought him in the US for much less.

the fight never happened because the fight never made any financial sense. roy was undisputed champion and everyone knew he would crush DM. DM had to weigh the pros and cons of one big pay day vs. roy, or very solid paydays for years to come hiding behind the unrecognized WBO title.

DM chose what was best for his wallet, as he should have.

Thats it right there.

/Thread

[chrisJS]

I always thought it was B.S how Micaelczecswki (sp) was robbed off his WBA & IBF titles but I wouldn't have given him much chance against Jones.

Jones had a $6m a deal fight with HBO I believe and the terms are that he could choose to face whoever he wanted. He got that deal after threatening to retire and he was not about going overseas to fight. Michealczeski had a similar mentality since he'd probably have to take a pay cut to come to America so both did their thing until they got old.

[N/A]

I always thought it was B.S how Micaelczecswki (sp) was robbed off his WBA & IBF titles

DM chose to hide behind an unrecognized title. Back then, the WBA automatically stripped you if you refused to vacate the WBO. The WBC had a similar policy. Not sure about the IBF, but DM was stripped of IBF for not facing the mandatory within 90 days.

[robertzimmerman]

Why didn't this bout not take place? Dariusz Michalczewski was clearly a proven light heavyweight champion and arguably the number one at the time. Michaelczewski obviously was the lineal champion too.

Why didn't this bout take place? What were the causes? Whose fault was it, if it was the fault of specific members for the bout not taking place?

This has been done to death on here. Ha!


Basically, neither guy would make concessions to travel.

You can look back objectively and see how things looked from each guys perspective:


Dariusz:

He beat Hill first and was unfairly stripped of his titles, and was therfore the lineal LHW champ.


Roy:

He was the consensus P4P no.1 fighter in the world who'd beaten the likes of Bernard and Toney, and was the WBC, IBF and WBA champ at the time of negotiations.


Both of them were well within their rights to put the onus on each other to travel.


Below is a summary of what went down:


Dariusz's promoter, Peter Kohl, offered Roy $5m to go to Germany.

Roy refused, as he'd been robbed in the 88 Olympics, Germany was notorious for bad decisions at the time, and he felt as though Dariusz was still unproven against top opposition.

Kohl reportedly offered the same again.

Roy again refused.

Kohl then made a statement saying that if Roy and HBO wanted Dariusz to go to the U.S. then they'd have to make it worth their while.

Kerry Davis of HBO along with Roy's advisors, repeatedly tried to make contact with Kohl.

Kohl purposely refused HBO's calls, as he was still pi$$ed that Roy had turned him down twice previously.

HBO sent a fax across of a proposed double header, which would have introduced Dariusz to a live U.S. audience.

Khol was insulted by the offer, claiming that Dariusz wasn't an undercard fighter.

All negotiations fizzled out.


Afterwards, Dariusz continued to milk his WBO belt in Germany, against mainly B and C class fighters, whereas Roy ended up fighting Ruiz and Tarver after missing out on Trinidad and Hopkins.

Both guys had/have huge egos.

I don't blame either guy really, but I didn't like the fact that Dariusz claimed he was ready to go to the U.S. when clearly that wasn't the case.

I also think that Roy was well within his rights not to travel, especially after the 88 Olympics, and he'd seen Dariusz feign injury in order to get Graciano Rocchigianni disqualified in their first fight.

I don't believe that Roy ducked him. I believe he would have fought him in the U.S.

Roy proved by offering Hopkins huge money, and then going on to fight Ruiz and Tarver, that he was serious about pursuing big fights.

It's a real shame we never saw the fight.

If Dariusz hadn't lost his belts, things could have turned out very different.