By Jason Kim: Oscar De La Hoya thinks it’s high time that Roy Jones Jr. hangs up his boxing gloves for good, according to an article from The Ring. De La Hoya thinks that the 40-year-old Jones will likely win this Saturday night’s bout against former International Boxing Federation super middleweight champion Jeff Lacy in Biloxi, Mississippi, De La Hoya thinks that Jones should retire immediately after this fight.
The chances of that happening is very unlikely, because Jones seems to be on a mission and is talking about all kinds bouts against a range of opponents like Anderson Silva and Danny Green. De La Hoya points out that Jones has been knocked out twice in his career, and believes that the accumulative punishment that Jones has sustained during his long 20-year pro career has done a number on Jones. It’s probably bad news for Jones to be continuing to fight at this stage of his career due to the dangers of accumulative punishment.
De La Hoya has a point there. Jones didn’t used to take a lot of punishment early in his career when he was fighting at middleweight, but after he moved to light heavyweight he began to get hit a lot more often, especially from 2004 onward. Jones ability to get out of the way of punches eroded, as well as ability to get around the ring.
De La Hoya says “It sometimes takes fights like the one I had against Manny Pacquiao to make it clear. ‘Hey, it’s time to hang ‘em up.” Indeed, De La Hoya was well past his prime at the time that he was stopped in the Pacquiao fight, and had lost three out of his last six fights going into the fight.
The difference was De La Hoya was still fighting competitively with top grade fighters at the time that he took on Pacquiao. You can’t really say that for Jones. He was totally dominated last year in a losing 12 round decision loss to Joe Calzaghe.
Beyond that, Jones has been carefully selecting his opponents since losing three consecutive fights to Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson in 2004 and 2005. Jones has only fought one fighter – Calzaghe – that you could consider a quality fighter.
The rest of them have been hand picked opponents that weren’t truly world class and who wouldn’t make Jones look bad. He still looked bad in beating Anthony Hanshaw by a 12 round decision in July 2007, needing to lean against the ropes for most of the fight because his legs were too weak to carry him around the ring for the full 12 rounds.
De La Hoya thinks that Jones is still trying to prove that he’s one of the best in the sports, and De La Hoya doesn’t like that idea. De La Hoya thinks the pressure for Jones to stay on top has led to him to stick around and take on dangerous opponents.
De La Hoya doesn’t like Jones’ chances for getting back to where he once was at the top of the heap. Although the light heavyweight division is very weak now with few quality fighters other than Chad Dawson, Glen Johnson, Beibut Shumenov and Jurgen Brahmer, those fighters are still probably too good for Jones to beat at this late stage in his career.
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