He does it his way!! – Roy Jones Jr.

By Davey Jackson: “Roy Jones ain’t fit to carry my gym bag. I don’t like him. I don’t like nobody…” so spoke James Toney prior to their 1994 super middleweight bout. Roy Jones Junior was dressed for the ball. Black bow tie and tuxedo jacket. Jones casually and confidently made his ring entrance with the look in his eye that suggested he had not been listening to the experts, whose words dripped in the nullification of his talents. Toney, like Mike Tyson, was the badman who spouted malevolence at every opportunity, a product of a fatherless upbringing in the excluding slums of the city streets.

Jones, like Floyd Mayweather, would have an over-bearing father who sought to vanquish his own failings through the ultra talent of his own son.

Raised in the deep south on a farm, Jones was never just a country boy, he could easily slip into the slang of hip-hop youth whilst carrying the persona of dangerous cool as exhibited by the gangsta-rappers of the era whilst boasting about his gun collection and pit bulls. It was Toney who carried in the ring the emblazoned motto of “Losing is not an option” and yet Jones, with his extra-ordinary athletic ability didn’t give him a choice. The hubris tic grin Jones carried in the ring that night suggested this was a man with an innate desire to do things his own way. And he did and always would.

Middleweight, Super middleweight then undisputed Light heavyweight champion, there was a time when many felt he was a contender for the subjective title of “Greatest of all time”. Challengers, whether top ranked or dangerously mismatched part-timers were dispatched with casual irksomeness whilst critics spouted a list of other talents of his era he had not faced. Yet we wanted to see him hurt, we wanted his recuperative powers tested and see him dig out of the trenches to provide us with the roller coaster thrills many of the great champions of the past have. We wanted to know how far he could and couldn’t go. So high were the demands of more and more it came to a point where he couldn’t satisfy us or his own self.

For a fighter who had once weighed as light as 153 pounds in his professional career, earning a portion of the heavyweight crown should have been the last roll call on a 14 year career for the then 34 year old. Had that been the case, he would now have been inducted in the boxing hall of fame with no memories of him sprawled on the canvas out cold and the hindsight of history would have been much more benevolent. Yet, just like his notoriously stubborn determination not to ponder to the big promoters of the time, Jones would always go his own way and the knock out losses eventually came.

So now, 20 years after embarking on his destination of gladiatorial excitement, at almost 41 years of age with a staccato of brilliance rather than the continuum splendor of old, Jones travels to Australia next week in an attempt to capture the IBO Cruiser weight title, a minor belt that will not count as a fifth world title under the qualifications of the hall of fame, but will provide an element of personal restitution on his current journey, providing of course he is victorious. After that his eye is cast upon the “Executioner” and that date will, either way, seal his fate.

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