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Still active today, at 46 years
of age, Roy Levesta Jones Jr.
grew up in Pensacola, Florida
where he started boxing and had
his first bout at ten. He was
reportedly outweighed by 69 Lbs.
(31 Kg´s) in that first outing,
but never-the-less gave his
bigger opponent a thorough
beating.
Between 1979 and 1989 he
defeated 121 of 134 amateur
opponents, and won several
Golden Gloves championships. He
should have been crowned the
1988 Olympic Champion in Seoul,
South Korea, but was blatantly
robbed (3-2) in the final
against local boxer Park Si-Hun
after out-landing his foe by
wide margins in all three
rounds.
After what was one of the most
corrupt decisions in Olympic
history, Jones was awarded the
Val Barker trophy as the best
boxer of the games, an honor
normally bestowed on a gold
medalist. He then decided it was
time to set his sights on a
professional career.
His first paid bout took place
on May 6 1989 at the Pensacola
Civic Center, in front of family
and friends, and was unusually
scheduled for eight rounds, as
opposed to the more common four
round distance for a debutant.
But it was never going to last
that long, as the
lightning-quick Jones floored
New Orleans journeyman Ricky
“Junkyard Dog” Randall (6-15)
three times before referee Mike
Boggs had seen enough in round
two.
In his next two fights, both
televised by NBC, he was made to
work harder for his pay-check,
as Stephan Johnson (9-2) and Ron
Amundsen (16-1-1), a four-time
Chicago Golden Gloves Champion,
was stopped in eight and seven
rounds respectively.
But from that point on, only a
few opponents would make it
through more than three rounds
with Jones, as he mowed down
good boxers such as former WBC
world champion Jorge Vaca
(48-9-1), who was knocked out in
the first, Glenn Thomas (24-0),
who was stopped in eight, Percy
Harris (15-3), destroyed in
four, and Glenn Wolfe (28-3-1),
halted by a body-shot in round
one.
After twenty-one professional
fights, Roy Jones Jr. had barely
lost a round, and only
Argentinean Jorge Fernando
Castro (70-3-2), who would go on
to win the WBA World
Middleweight title and make five
defenses, had managed to last
the distance.
Four years after his pro debut,
Jones was ranked number two by
the IBF, and was matched with
number one-ranked Bernard
Hopkins (22-1) for that
organizations World Middleweight
crown, left vacant when James
Toney beat Iran Barkley for the
Super Middleweight title three
months earlier.
In front of 8500 spectators at
the RFK Stadium in Washington
D.C., and TV viewers watching
Live on HBO, Jones won a
unanimous decision (116-112 on
all three cards) over fellow
future hall-of-famer Hopkins, to
lift what would be his first of
many world championships.
One defense of the IBF
Middleweight title followed, a
second round demolition of
number-one contender Thomas Tate
(29-2), before Jones moved up in
weight to challenge the
aforementioned IBF Super
Middleweight Champion James
Toney (44-0-2) in a true
super-fight.
On November 18 1994 at the MGM
Grand in Las Vegas, in a
Pay-Per-View extravaganza billed
as “The Uncivil War”, Jones
entered the ring as a 6-5
underdog against Toney, who was
ranked second in the Ring
Magazine Pound-For-Pound
rankings, while Jones was ranked
third.
But the fight was never close,
and Jones put on a scintillating
performance, even knocking Toney
down with a left hook in round
three, to win almost every round
(119-108, 118-109, 117-110). If
the Hopkins fight had not been
the coming-out party of RJJ, now
a two-division world champion,
the Toney white-wash definitely
was.
Jones made five defenses of his
world super middleweight title,
stopping Antoine Byrd (26-4-1),
Vinny Pazienza (40-5), Tony
Thornton (37-6-1), Eric Lucas
(19-2-2) and Bryant Brannon
(16-0), and then moved up to
light heavyweight in November
1996 to lift the WBC world title
against Mike McCallum (49-3-1).
He suffered his first loss in
March 1997, by disqualification
when he hit Montell Griffin
(26-0) while he was down, but
revenged the defeat, and
reclaimed the WBC title, by
first round knockout in an
immediate rematch before the end
of the year.
In 1998 he added the WBA world
title with a unanimous decision
over Lou Del Valle (27-1), and
made two defenses, against Otis
Grant (31-1-1) and Richard
Frazier (18-3-1), before
acquiring the IBF version with a
landslide decision over Reggie
Johnson (39-5-1) in June of
1999.
David Telesco (23-2) and Richard
Hall (24-1) were fended off in
defenses of the WBC, WBA and IBF
belts, before the IBO title was
included in the collection in
September 2000 with a tenth
round stoppage of Eric Harding
(19-0-1), and all four titles
were retained against Derrick
Harmon (20-1) five months later.
On July 28 2001, on another
Pay-Per-View show promoted by
Top Rank, at the Staples Center
in Los Angeles, Jones squared
off with undefeated
Mexican-American Julio Gonzalez
(27-0) with the vacant WBF World
Light Heavyweight title on the
line.
More than 20.000 spectators
watched as The Pride of
Pensacola put on another clinic,
and knocked Gonzalez down in
rounds one, five and twelve,
before being awarded a clear
unanimous decision by scores of
119-106, 119-106 and 118-107.
Probably the only boxer in
history to hold six world titles
in the same weight class at the
same time (the vacant IBA title
was also on the line against
Gonzalez), Roy Jones Jr. had
already established himself as
the best fighter in the sport.
But he was determined to build
even further on his legacy.
In 2002 he twice defended his
WBF World crown, along with his
five other titles, stopping Glen
Kelly (28-0-1) and Clinton Woods
(32-1) in impressive fashion,
but 2003 would be the year where
he added yet another chapter to
the history books.
Weighing only 193 Lbs. (87,5
Kg.), he out-boxed defending WBA
champion John Ruiz (38-4-1), who
hit the scales at 226 Lbs.
(102,5 Kg.), to become the first
former Middleweight titlist to
win a world Heavyweight title
since Bob Fitzsimmons in 1897.
Many would say that Jones, 34
years of age at the time, should
have called it a day after the
Ruiz fight, and rode into the
sunset as the WBA World
Heavyweight Champion. Possible
blockbusters against Mike Tyson
and Evander Holyfield were
mentioned, but never
materialized.
Instead he moved back down to
Light Heavyweight, where he
barely got by Antonio Tarver
(21-1) by majority decision in
November of 2003, before things
started going bad for him.
In 2004 and 2005 he lost three
straight fights, first by
stunning knockout to Tarver in a
rematch, then he was stopped by
Glen Johnson (40-9-2), and then
Tarver won the rubber-match on
points.
It was speculated that the move
up to Heavyweight and move back
down to Light Heavyweight more
or less ruined Jones, and few
expected him to ever be any kind
of force in the sport again.
But he rebounded surprisingly
well, defeating Prince Badi
Ajamu (25-2-1) and Anthony
Hanshaw (21-0-1), and fellow
legend Felix Trinidad (42-2) in
front of 12.000 fans at Madison
Square Garden in a fight that
generated more than 500.000 buys
on US Pay-Per-View.
In November of 2008, the
Trinidad show-down proving he
was still very much relevant,
Jones was again taking part in a
so-called super-fight, when he
returned to Madison Square
Garden and fought undefeated
former Super Middleweight world
champion Joe Calzaghe (45-0).
Despite being past his prime,
Jones scored a knock-down in
round one, but couldn’t
capitalize on the good start and
lost a clear unanimous decision
to the Welshman.
Following the Calzaghe fight its
been very much up and down for
Jones. He stopped Omar Sheika
(27-8) and Jeff Lacy (25-2) in
2009, and then got beat by Danny
Green (27-3) in Australia,
Bernard Hopkins (50-5-1) in a
long overdue rematch, and Denis
Lebedev (21-1) in Russia.
But since then he has racked up
five straight victories,
defeating Max Alexander
(14-5-2), Pawel Glazewski
(17-0), Zine Eddine Benmakhlouf
(17-3-1), Courtney Frey (18-5)
and Hany Atiyo (14-2), and
claims he is still in the sport
to win a world title at
Cruiserweight.
Having won world championships
at Middleweight, Super
Middleweight, Light Heavyweight
and Heavyweight, his current
record stands at 59-8 (42).
Closer to fifty than forty years
of age, it looks very hard for
the boxer they once called
“Superman”, but stranger things
have happened than Roy Jones Jr.
also winning a genuine
Cruiserweight world championship
before finally hanging up his
gloves.
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