When Roy Jones made history
PLUS Joshua-Fury mayhem and an undisputed fight of the year contender
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The heavyweight gamble
THE LONG READ
In the aftermath of Canelo’s victory over Billy Joe Saunders, I pulled together some quick thoughts on what the Mexican megastar might do next. Already a four-weight world champion, Canelo will look to unify the super middleweight division first and foremost, with numerous possible fights in and around that weight class available to him subsequently before perhaps going up further.
It got me thinking about fighters who have scaled the divisions exponentially in the past. The thought of jumping from the middle weights up to heavyweight and even becoming champion might seem incomprehensible in today’s generation of the six-foot-five-plus giants at the top of boxing’s glamour division, but this kind of history-making move has been achieved in the modern era.
For this, we go back to the heady days of 2003, when Roy Jones Jr had already done enough in his career to be considered an all-time great. ‘Superman’ was the undisputed light heavyweight champion of the world, having enjoyed a near-faultless career that had seen world title reigns at middleweight, super middleweight and light heavyweight. He had invariably been in the discussion for pound-for-pound number one fighter in the sport over the course of the previous decade.
Roy had amassed a 47-1 record up to this point - with the sole blemish being a highly controversial disqualification loss to Montell Griffin six years prior - and had considered having a crack at heavyweight for the last year. If he could become a world champion at the weight, he would be the first man since Bob Fitzsimmons in 1897 to graduate from middleweight titlist to heavyweight champ.
When promoter Don King offered Jones a guaranteed $10 million to move up and challenge his fighter, John Ruiz, for the latter’s WBA heavyweight crown, he jumped at the chance. King wanted to use the name-value Jones brought to the table as one of boxing’s elite. He surmised that a win for Ruiz - in a historically significant event that drew the sporting world’s attention - could establish ‘The Quietman’ as one of boxing’s top stars.
Ruiz was not an enormous heavyweight, considerably smaller than the cream of the prizefighting crop of the early 2000s such as the Klitschko brothers or Lennox Lewis, but he still possessed a significant size advantage over Roy. Despite Jones weighing in at 193 pounds and being up to 199 on the night, Ruiz still had more than 30 pounds on him. Jones was in fact still below the limit for a cruiserweight. He also towered over Jones and possessed a four-inch reach advantage. A sizeable difference, but most did not believe it to be insurmountable, contributing to Jones being the betting favourite as the two fighters walked to the ring on 1st March 2003 before a sell out Vegas crowd.
Team Jones calculated his tactics superbly. Utilising his speed, movement and sharp punching, Roy established an almost insurmountable lead as the fight entered its second half. Ruiz’s physical advantages had been negated almost entirely, not just by the technical and tactical nous of his opponent but own inability to stamp his authority on the contest, as he waited to catch Roy out with a counter-attacking flurry which never really came. Jones kept Ruiz at distance for the rest of the fight, scoring effectively with the jab and delivering an outstanding display of boxing.
Roy took the victory on the scorecards (116-112, 118-110 and 117-111) under little pressure, and cemented his status as an all-time great.
HBO commentator Larry Merchant said that Roy Jones had managed to “expose a real paper champion”.
In hindsight, that feels harsh. Although John Ruiz was no Lennox Lewis (or Riddick Bowe, or Vitali/Vladimir Klitschko, or…) he later became a two-time WBA heavyweight champion and holds victories over the likes of Evander Holyfield, Andrew Golota and Hasim Rahman. He will not go down as a great heavyweight by any stretch of the imagination, and this was certainly not a time when the division was at its strongest, but he was a top five-or-so fighter in the division of the time and Roy Jones’ achievement on the night shouldn’t be discounted.
How would the newly-crowned Jones fare against the other top heavyweights of the time, perhaps even a Klitschko brother? We never got to find out. Roy returned from whence he came rather than taking on the challenge of maintaining his status in the glamour division. Roy eventually relinquished the title without defending it, and Ruiz (who had defeated Rahman for the interim crown just weeks earlier) was reinstated as WBA heavyweight champion.
The natural order had been restored, the experiment was over.
Just eight months after becoming a heavyweight champion, Roy took on Antonio Tarver for the unified light heavyweight title and scraped a questionable majority decision victory, but the old magic was gone. His outstanding speed of thought and movement seemed to have been lost in the transition back down to the division he once largely dominated. Roy’s reputation, cultivated over more than a decade and enhanced by his heavyweight championship excursion, was crumbling around him.
By May 2004, that reputation was blown apart for good. After discussions around going back up to heavyweight to face Mike Tyson died down, the rematch with Antonio Tarver at light heavyweight (billed as “More Than Personal”) was confirmed.
It took less than two rounds for the cracks to be exposed for the world to see. Tarver, still a big underdog despite maintaining he had won the first fight, allowed Jones to control the first round. When Roy made a mistake in the second, however, Tarver capitalised with a left hook which sent Roy crashing to the canvas. For the first time in his career, the great Roy Jones had been stopped...
Roy attempted to get his career back on track four months later, challenging IBF light heavyweight champ Glen Johnson. Despite his fall from grace, Jones was again a huge favourite before the fight. In many ways, this was perhaps a more crushing blow than the previous Tarver defeat, as Johnson pretty much routed Jones for eight rounds before a clinical stoppage early in the ninth, with Roy genuinely knocked out and remaining crestfallen in the ring for some time afterwards. The mystique of the great Roy Jones was no more…
Some called on Roy to retire. Just 18 months earlier, with the world at his feet as he celebrated winning the WBA heavyweight title victory, this would have been unthinkable. Of course, those calls were not heeded, and Jones notched up some decent wins in the proceeding years - but he would never come near to being a world champion again. Roy fought actively until 2018, quite unbelievably, and finally got to box Mike Tyson in an incredibly lucrative Triller exhibition fight late last year.
There is a tale of both opportunity and caution here for any other fighter who might attempt such a massive future move up in weight.
Roy Jones took on a titleholder in the form of John Ruiz who he could feasibly defeat, and the gamble paid off. The novelty of the fight helped it to become the most successful pay-per-view event of Jones’ career, the 600,000 buys far outstripping HBO’s predictions.
Artistically and financially, he appeared to be at his career zenith.
Going back down to light heavyweight just months later though, and so rapidly dropping so much muscle to do it, clearly accelerated the decline of Roy’s career. The loss of 20 pounds to make weight for the Tarver rivalry, combined with the fact he was doing this in his mid-30s, had a huge impact on Roy as a fighter and ended up negating so much of what had made him such an exhilarating force across much of the 90s and early 2000s. The devastating knockouts which followed in 2004 ended Roy’s time at the top table.
Going back to Canelo, could he potentially look to make an even more audacious attempt to create boxing history as some have prophecised? Alvarez thinks he will fight for up to seven more years. He might stay at super middleweight for the duration, but then again he most likely won’t. If he continues to climb the divisions, could Canelo eventually even have a crack at heavyweight? It may sound unbelievable, incomprehensible even, for a fighter to go from light middleweight world champion to heavyweight contender or even title holder. Saul has been somewhat coy on the matter but has not ruled it out...
“Everything is possible. Look, as a team, we’ve always been a team to take on all challenges. That’s what motivates and drives me. But the door is open. It’s free, and it’s possible.”
Those who cannot learn from history are inevitably doomed to repeat it however, and the meticulous Team Canelo will surely be well aware of the pitfalls previous fighters have encountered when attempting to jump up drastically to the glamour division of boxing.
This is in part why I think a scenario in which Saul will attempt a crack at becoming heavyweight champion of the world is unlikely.
Roy Jones was not a natural heavyweight, but Canelo is considerably smaller still - so cast aside any ideas of Saul fighting someone the size of Anthony Joshua or Tyson Fury, it’s farcical and would be a non-starter. It would be careless, dangerous matchmaking. If the smaller heavyweight trend of the 90s and early 2000s had a renaissance, trainer Eddy Reynoso might hypothetically see a window for his man to attempt something in the future against a champion in and around the six-foot mark, but there isn’t a clear indication that will happen any time soon.
Jones was required to skip the cruiserweight division entirely in 2003 to take a much higher payday at heavyweight, something which Canelo would not need to do when he is already the biggest money-spinner in boxing. Given the scale of Saul’s drawing power, a future tilt at grabbing world honours at light heavyweight (again), cruiserweight or even the WBC’s new ‘bridgerweight’ class (stop sniggering at the back) would sell out any number of stadiums, almost regardless of the opponent.
Putting heavyweight ambitions aside, there is no guarantee of success for Saul above super middleweight anyway. Failure here, a distinct possibility taking into account the quality of the leading lights at 175 pounds, would surely stop any heavier moves in their tracks before they had begun. Seeing Canelo step up after his time at super middleweight to challenge himself against the likes of Artur Beterbiev or Dmitry Bivol - the current elite light heavyweights - would certainly make for fascinating viewing, even at a catchweight.
Canelo has fought for and won a world title at light heavyweight already, of course, viciously stopping Sergey Kovalev to win the WBO world crown at the weight in late 2019. He dropped back down against instantly, but Alvarez proved that he could negate a deficit in height and weight, within reason, as he claimed a world title in a fourth weight division. Kovalev was clearly past his prime at this stage but still offered an interesting puzzle for Canelo to solve. The jump from fighting an ageing Sergey at 175 to attempting to climb the heavyweight mountain is a big leap, and we are still a number of steps away from it being something that could be seriously countenanced.
No fighter will ever defeat the twin forces of nature and time, they are all human in the end, even if they might sometimes appear to be different to us mere mortals. They can offer thrilling - and financially lucrative - opportunities, but movements between the weight divisions must be managed sensibly and timed perfectly. For Roy Jones Jr, it was both a blessing and a curse.
Any time a jump for glory like that is attempted though, it holds a unique fascination for boxing fans that can rarely be matched.
MORE FROM DOUBLE DUTCH BOXING…
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Boxing's chaos theory: The fundamental disorder at the heart of the sport
Don't believe the hype: Examining the concept of the hype job in boxing
The enigma of Chris Eubank Jr
This past week, I contributed a piece on the fascinating, frustrating career-so-far of Chris Eubank Jr to The 13th Round (a great weekly boxing newsletter, so do subscribe if you haven’t already). The enigma of Chris Eubank Jr details how the younger Eubank’s achievements so far haven’t quite matched up to the hype built up around him, and asks what - with a new promoter, trainer and some renewed urgency - he might accomplish now.
Wilder’s law ignites AJ-Fury chaos
What a difference a day makes...within 24 little hours we went from Tyson Fury guaranteeing the undisputed heavyweight title fight with Anthony Joshua was happening on 14th August in Saudi Arabia, to Deontay Wilder’s legal team securing a big win when a judge ruled in favour of their man in arbitration to enforce a trilogy fight with ‘The Gypsy King’ by 15th September. Now Eddie Hearn is saying that this issue needs to be sorted by the end of THIS WEEK or else team Joshua will be turning their attention to Oleksandr Usyk, and Bob Arum has revealed he had Allegiant Stadium in Vegas provisionally booked for Fury-Wilder III this Summer all along.
Phew. In the words of Ferris Bueller - life moves pretty fast. What do I say about boxing never being boring? Frustrating, infuriating, but not boring. We might not always get the big fights at the right times, but as boxing fans at least we get to live secondhand through the chaotic soap opera of the fight game. What happens from here? Given that the Wilder rematch clause in the contract has been ratified, there are really two scenarios...
Deontay Wilder accepts x amount of millions (Fury claims his price is $20 million) has to step aside and allow Fury-Joshua to proceed as planned
The contracts and mandatories are honoured - we then likely get BOTH Wilder-Fury III and Joshua-Usyk I next
Deontay’s new trainer claims his man "wants blood, not money", which seems to indicate that he will be rejecting any overtures to step aside. Wilder hasn’t helped himself with rolling out some crazy conspiracy theories since his humbling defeat to Fury last February, but if the contract clearly allows for the rematch clause to be triggered then surely the blame falls on Bob Arum (and Frank Warren, Tyson’s UK promoter, if he has any influence) for not dealing with the situation at an earlier stage of negotiations for Fury-Joshua.
After all this, it’s fair to say things have gone slightly west between Tyson and (an uncharacteristically outspoken) AJ on Twitter…
It’s a mess, boxing invariably is, so there could well be more twists and turns to come. For now though - will somebody please think about poor, fightless Joe Joyce in all of this?
THE NEXT ROUND
A far-from-exhaustive rundown of upcoming boxing calendar highlights…
22nd May 2021
Josh Taylor vs Jose Ramirez
Promoter: Top Rank / TV: FITE TV (UK); ESPN (US)
No two ways about it, the fact that this fight is available in the UK via pay-per-view on the FITE TV app is really, really poor. Nothing against FITE whatsoever, and I understand that boxing is a business, but for a major British broadcaster to fail to take an option on a British fighter attempting to become the first undisputed champion from these shores since Lennox Lewis just feels wrong. Top Rank and Josh’s management company MTK both deserve their share of the blame here. Josh Taylor’s career so far in the sport deserves a bigger platform in the UK - no other active British fighter can compare with his achievements after just 17 fights.
I’ve written before about the historical significance of what Josh Taylor is aiming to accomplish in the sport, but Taylor-Ramirez on its own merits as a contest is a really fantastic, must-see fight. The fact that it is for the undisputed super lightweight (a/k/a junior welterweight, also a/k/a light welterweight) world title - which encompasses WBC, WBO, WBA (Super) and IBF, with The Ring Magazine belt also up for grabs - just makes it even more special. Two undefeated fighters, two former Oympians, each carrying two belts in to the ring, both in their primes - this is the kind of fight which boxing does not deliver enough. If the first 90 seconds-or-so of the latest episode of the excellent Top Rank series Blood, Sweat and Tears doesn’t get you excited for this one then perhaps this isn’t the sport for you.
Taylor is perhaps the more naturally talented competitor, with a complete skill set - but he is walking into his first-ever undisputed title fight in only his second fight under trainer Ben Davison (after their first together lasted less than a round). Jose Ramirez, on the other hand, has now been working with the vastly experienced Robert Garcia for a number of years, and brings years of experience of world title fights. Taylor is the betting favourite, in part because he has looked more impressive in defeating their common opponents - Viktor Postol in particular, who Taylor dropped and dealt with handily in 2018 but Ramirez barely squeaked past last August. Boxing is often not as simple as following the through logic though - Ramirez on form is a relentless pressure fighter who has knocked out undefeated world champions in unification bouts before. A convincing win here would be a huge statement for Scotlan’d ‘Tartan Tornado’, and though I lean slightly towards Josh for the points win in a classic, Taylor himself sees this as his toughest test. Fight of the year so far.
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29th May 2021
Devin Haney vs Jorge Linares
Promoter: Matchroom / TV: DAZN (UK and US)
Devin Haney gets a lot of stick from boxing fans. Some of it certainly justified, like in relation to his controversial white boy-related Twitter rants. Some of it however feels less so - it’s not his fault that he was elevated from interim to full WBC lightweight champion in 2019 in the boardroom without beating the previous champion. It’s also not his fault that the fights against the other ‘new four kings’ of the lightweight division - Ryan Garcia, Teofimo Lopez, Gervonta Davis - are nowhere near to being made. All of which makes this defence against the vastly experienced, three-division world champion Linares even more important. Despite being 35 years old now and a few years removed from his dominant prime, Linares is the first genuine top 10 lightweight Haney has faced and will offer up a fascinating test for the precociously talented WBC champion. A really interesting crossroads fight, we will learn a lot about Haney’s prospects of becoming a genuine superstar in the sport - he not only needs to win, but also look good doing so if he is to grab the highest-profile fights out there.