By Jason Kim: After watching former IBF super middleweight champion Jeff Lacy struggle to win a 10-round majority decision over Otis Griffin recently, I figured that Roy Jones Jr. (53-5, 39 KOs) would have lost any interest that he ever had in fighting Lacy. However, according to an interview from Jones Jr. at Boxingtalk, Jones said “Jeff Lacy told me he wants to make this fight in Tampa and I think we’re going to make it happen.”
That’s pretty shocking news, because the latest word that has been going around the boxing circles is that Jones Jr. was looking at fighting IBF cruiserweight champion Tomasz Adamek rather than Lacy. I’m not sure what would have given Jones a reason to change his mind about Adamek, other than him being a much tougher opponent than Lacy because of his huge right hand power and his bigger higher weight class than Lacy.
However, it looks as if Jones sees the Lacy fight as one that he can win without too many problems. As much as Jones has looked really faded in the past five years in losses to Antonio Tarver, Glen Johnson and Joe Calzaghe, I think Jones is still plenty good enough to beat the Lacy I saw against Griffin.
Jones looked excellent in his last fight, a dominating 5th round TKO of former super middleweight title challenger Omar Sheika on March 21st. Jones put on a clinic in that fight, assigning different rounds for different types of punches. Jones used the 3rd for nothing but jabs, and then in the 4th round, Jones began to throw nothing but powerful hooks.
Jones continued to throw hooks in the 5th, landing at will until the fight was finally stopped by the referee due to Sheika not throwing anything back at Jones. The victory showed what Jones can do when he’s not pressured hard and doesn’t have to deal with an opponent with really fast hand speed like Calzaghe.
Lacy doesn’t have any better hand speed than Sheika, although he does have a much better fight hand than he does. That’s about all Lacy does have, because his left hook isn’t what it once was after injuring it several years ago against Vitali Tsypko. Unless Lacy can land a big right hand to Jones’ still questionable chin, I see this as an easy victory for Jones.
At the end of the day, Lacy might be a better opponent for Jones after all. Lacy is better known in the U.S., and well guarantee Jones a fairly large audience in Tampa. And the best part of all for Jones is that Lacy isn’t nearly as dangerous as Adamek is at this point in Jeff’s career.
Jones plans on moving up to heavyweight in 2010, and try to recapture a title at that weight. In March 2003, Jones bulked up and fought WBA heavyweight champion John Ruiz, beating him by a lopsided 12-round decision. Jones chose not to defend the title, however. A fight at heavyweight at this point in Jones’s career might be dangerous to his health, especially in light of Jones’s two knockout losses to Tarver and Johnson.
Neither of those fighters are anywhere near the kind of punchers that Jones would be facing if he goes ahead and moves up to heavyweight. However, Jones might have a decent chance if he’s able to get a fight with a heavyweight like Nikolay Valuev, who at 7-feet tall, is a slow fighter and one that Jones can probably box circles around.
Comments are closed.