By Jim Dower: This Saturday night, 8-time world boxing champion Roy Jones, Jr. (53-5, 39 KOs) will be fighting Jeff Lacy (25-2, 17 KOs) in a 12 round bout pay per view bout at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum in Biloxi, Mississippi. The bout will be showcasing two fighters that were once at the top of the sport, but have faded in recent years to the point where neither of them are much of a factor in the light heavyweight division.
What is disappointing is that to see the fight, boxing fans will have to be willing to shell out $34.95 to see it on pay per view, that is, unless they want to travel all the way to Biloxi and watch the fight at ringside. Given that both of them have hardly been brilliant in the past few years, I can’t see much of a reason for anyone but a true diehard fan of the two fighters to be willing to purchase the fight.
By all means, I’d watch it if the fight were on regular HBO or ESPN2, but I can’t see any reason to pay to see two fighters on the slide. I’m sure they both still have some of their boxing skills, speed and power intact, but not enough for me to want to pay out that kind of money to watch them perform.
I would feel differently if I felt they were going somewhere in the division after this, but I don’t see that happening. This kind of reeks like an old timers’ fight, even though Lacy is only 32-years-old. It seems like ages since he was a real factor in the super middleweight division – Lacy’s old weight class.
Jones, 40, has lost four out of his eight fights and has picked up his only wins against a shot Felix Trinidad and Omar Sheika, and two other average fighters. Jones looked really bad in losing to Joe Calzaghe last year by a 12 round decision, looking like a completely shot fighter. I expected Jones to retire immediately after that one-sided loss, yet here he is still fighting.
If he was still winning and fighting well, I could see his fight with Lacy being a PPV bout but not now. I would feel the same way about Oscar De La Hoya if he suddenly came back and announced that he was fighting a struggling fighter like Lacy or whoever.
I might be curious to see De La Hoya fight a champion like Shane Mosley or Miguel Cotto, but I would be torn about purchasing it because I know that De La Hoya would get outclassed and possibly stopped in the fight. I’d really like to see Lacy and Jones succeed after their fight on Saturday night, but I think it’s going to be probably more of the same.
I can’t see Lacy or Jones beating any of the current light heavyweight champions, and if that’s not what they’re fighting for then what’s the point?
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