By Sean McDaniel: It was sad sight to see last Saturday night, Roy Jones Jr. (52-5, 38 KOs) taking a vicious pounding at the hands of the much more youthful, energetic Joe Calzaghe (46-0, 32 KOs) at Madison Square Garden, in New York City, New York.
Despite taking a terrible beating, absorbing a tremendous amount of punches from Calzaghe and having his left eyelid cut badly, Jones, to his credit, lasted the full 12 rounds, losing by a one-sided decision.
In losing, however, Jones did himself no favors by taking an awful lot of head shots from Calzaghe. It matters little that the punches weren’t the huge variety; Calzaghe hit him hard enough and often enough to cause much more damage than if Jones had been taken out quickly.
The bout was so one-sided, it ceased to be interesting to watch after 3rd round, when Calzaghe began battering a terribly old looking Jones at will with flurries, and daring him to respond back by keeping both his arms down by his sides.
As bad as Jones was beaten, probably the logical thing would be for him to retire from boxing promptly so as to avoid any future beatings of this kind. However, in the past week, Jones hasn’t made any comments about retiring, and looks for the most part to want to continue soldering on with his once great career, even though he’s no longer half of what he once was in the ring.
I would have hoped that Jones would have taken a good look at his fight with Calzaghe by now, seeing it for what it was – an indication that he needs to call it a day and retire. Jones, however, doesn’t look to be getting the message and will likely continue fighting. My question is: how affected with Jones be after getting hit so much by Calzaghe?
Before this fight, Jones had never been hit nearly as many times before in a fight as he was against Calzaghe. Up until now, Jones has always been able to avoid getting hit by most of his opponents, using his superior speed and movement to keep from absorbing punishment. That began to change starting in 2004 with losses to Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson.
However, Jones has stayed safe in the past two years by fighting lower level competition, who although good in quality, weren’t nearly in the class of Calzaghe. Now that the damage is done, one has to wonder how well Jones will look in future fights against light heavyweight competition. I suppose that he can still continue winning if he hand picks his opponents carefully, looking for someone with little power, a poor work rate, terrible movement and a bad chin.
But, nothing can be certain for Jones after Saturday night. He took way too punishment from Calzaghe, and it’s unclear how much of a toll it took out of his aging body. As bad as Jones looked against Calzaghe, his next performance could be worse, even against a much inferior opponent, because of all the needless punishment Jones absorbed from Calzaghe.
The smart thing for Jones to have done, once it was clear that he wasn’t capable of stopping Calzaghe, would have been to quit at some point rather than taking punishment. At least in doing that, Jones would have been able to preserve himself a little more for future fights. Now, however, one has to wonder what will become of him if he does decide to step foot in the boxing ring against other light heavyweights.
Hopefully, if Jones does decide to fight on, he picks someone very beatable, because anything short of that, I see him getting beaten even worse than he did on Saturday and probably knocked out.
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