Boxing News Presents Magazine

1 September 2023

BACK in the spring of 2003, if one had called Roy Jones Jnr the best fighter in history, very few would have disagreed. Fresh off his bedazzling victory over heavyweight John Ruiz, Jones was more skilful than Sugar Ray Robinson, his box of tricks deeper than Muhammad Ali’s, and even Sugar Ray Leonard would have struggled to match him for speed. Perhaps it’s unfair, then, that 20 years later, two decades in which Jones’ form plummeted as he stubbornly refused to hang up his gloves, Roy’s name doesn’t quite make that conversation anymore. Just because he fought on too long and his reflexes inevitably faded should not take anything away from what he once was. Because at his pomp, Jones was a genius so adept at hitting people in the face that the very idea of him encountering an equal was, for a time, borderline preposterous. As well as being a part-time fighter in 2023, he’s also a trainer. When Boxing News sat down with Jones recently, he could not disguise his offence when we asked if he was trying to turn the boxers, he worked with into the next Roy Jones Jnr.