By Jim Dower: Six-time world champion Roy Jones Jr. (53-5, 39 KOs) won an impressive 5th round stoppage over former super middleweight contender Omar Sheika (27-9, 18 KOs) on Saturday night to win the vacant WBA NABA light heavyweight title at the Civic Center, in Pensacola, Florida. Jones Jr., 40, looked the best he’s been in years, showing off his speed, combinations and excellent left hook in front of his hometown audience in Pensacola.
Jones battered Sheika at will in the 5th round, hammering him with unanswered left hooks and prompting for referee Tommy Kimmons to step in and halt the fight at 1:45 of the round.
Jones Jr., ranked #5 in the WBO, #5 in the WBA, #7 in the IBF and #12 in the WBC, showed off some of his old skills in beating the ring rusty Sheika around the ring. Though Jones hasn’t beaten a top ranked fighter since his defeat of fringe contender Anthony Hanshaw in 2007, Jones showed that he still has remarkable skills – at least when he’s not fighting someone like Joe Calzaghe, Glen Johnson or Antonio Tarver, all of whom have beaten him in the past five years.
Sheika didn’t have the speed or power to contend with Jones, which let Roy pretty much do anything he wanted in the ring. Jones pulled out punches from his huge offensive arsenal, blasting a badly overmatched Sheika with jabs, left hooks, uppercuts, lead rights and left hands at will. Sheika had his moments in the 1st through three rounds, in which Sheika came out fast, pinned Jones to the ropes briefly and hammered him to the body. However, those moments were fleeting as Jones easily spun off the ropes and began tagging Sheika with hooks and lead right hands to the head. In the past, Jones would have probably been able to beat a fighter in the class of Sheika without getting hit more than a couple of times per round. However, Jones showed that his reflexes aren’t quite what they used to be on Saturday night, because Sheika was able to land in the all too brief instances in which he tried to mount an offensive attack.
At the start of the 2nd round, Sheika pinned Roy to the ropes and landed some nice body shots. Jones’, though, motioned him in further, asking for more and setting a trap for him. In close, Jones Jr. nailed Sheika with a hard right uppercut and then a big right hand that got Sheika off of him.
At center ring, Jones did pretty much what he wanted with the slower Sheika, hitting him with hard left hands to the body and rights to the head. Jones, however, would periodically go back to the ropes and cover up and let Sheika get a chance.
It appeared that Jones’ legs can’t keep him fighting in the center of the ring for long without him needing to go to the ropes occasionally so that Roy can rest his weary forty-year-old legs.
Sheika began developing swelling around both of his eyes by the 3rd round, obviously a product of Jones’ hard hooks that he was nailing Sheika with repeatedly in the first two rounds of the bout. In the round, Sheika hit Jones several times really hard to the head when Jones was resting against the ropes.
In that brief moment, Jones looked every bit of his 40 years. He tried to play it off by looking at the audience afterwards and talking to them as if it didn’t bother him while Sheika continued to rain body shots down on him.
However, if this was a better fighter than Sheika on Saturday night, I would worry that Jones would have been flattened by those punches because they landed with full force and Jones was too slow to block or get out of the way of them. For the remainder of the round, Jones jabbed and landed fast combinations to dominate the action.
In the 4th round, Jones put on a jab clinic, doing little else but jab Sheika throughout the round. It was impressive showing a part of Jones’ offense that he rarely uses in fights. If he fought this way against Calzaghe, Tarver or Johnson, I’d have given him an excellent chance of beating all of them.
However, Jones being Jones, he likes to throw the flashy punches that made him so successful in his youth and hasn’t adapted over the years to compensate for his aging body. If he wanted to get more mileage out of his career, with his jab he has a tool to find success against some of the better fighters in the light heavyweight division.
In the 5th round, Jones came out looking completely different from any other round, throwing nothing but left hooks and putting a ton of power in each shot. Sheika took them over and over, his snapping back with each shot.
Even the handful of jabs that Jones landed in the round were thrown with a lot of power and snapped Sheika’s head back from the force of the blows. After Jones nailed Sheika with several really hard left hooks that snapped Sheika’s head back each time, referee Tommy Kimmons stepped in and halted the bout at 1:45 of the round.
Sheika seemed upset by the stoppage, although I don’t know why. He was taking a severe beating and it looked as if Jones was only getting warmed up. Had the fight continued, it would have only gotten worse for Sheika until he was knocked out or cut up. Jones then went into a big celebration, dancing around the ring and showing his happiness at his victory.
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