By Eric Thomas: In a hilarious interview by Ben Thompson at the Fighthype website, Roy Jones Jr. had a good time telling it like it is ripping apart both Bernard Hopkins and Oscar De La Hoya. Jones, 40, had this to say about Hopkins: “Hopkins don’t look impressive against nobody. Let’s face the music. Hopkins has never been impressive.” Jones then went on to correctly point out that Hopkins usually wins his fights by wearing down his opponents rather than stopping them with one punch or outclassing them like Jones unusually does.
Jones isn’t exactly happy with Hopkins nowadays after Hopkins turned down a fight with Jones this past month in which Jones offered a deal where the winner of the fight would get 60% of the purse and the loser 40%. Hopkins was totally uninterested in the deal and hung up the phone during the interview.
Jones took that as a sign that Hopkins isn’t confident in his ability, even after all these years. Jones defeated Hopkins by a 12 round decision in May 1993, even though Jones fought most of the fight using only his left hand because he had injured his right hand early in the bout.
Jones wasn’t finished with the topic of Hopkins, making fun of Hopkins’ statement on the Calvin Murphy show where Hopkins said “Why would I want to fight Roy Jones when the fans want to see me fight Chad Dawson and Adamek?” Jones thought that was silly, saying to Thompson, “But the fans don’t want to see this crap. They want to see you [Hopkins] fight Roy Jones and see you redeem your loss or try to redeem it.” Jones has a point there.
Although Dawson and Adamek might be doing better in their careers than Jones at this point, neither of them would likely bring in a ton of fans the way that a Jones-Hopkins fight would. That’s pretty much a given. I doubt that anyone other than hardcore boxing fans would want to see Hopkins fight Adamek, simply because the casual fans have no idea who Adamek is. He has only been shown on American television a handful of times and is still mostly an unknown fighter to many of the more casual fans of the sport. The same applies for Dawson. He might be the best fighter in the light heavyweight division, but few people really know who he is at this point in his career.
That could change in the future if he fights the right kinds of opponents and looks good in beating them. But Jones is right, boxing fans would probably much prefer to see Hopkins fight Jones rather than Adamek or Dawson. I’m surprised that Hopkins can’t see that himself. How can he compare Adamek and Dawson, two fighters that are still basically unproven, with a former pound for pound star like Jones.
Jones also had some comments to make about De La Hoya after Thompson left Jones know that De La Hoya thinks that Jones should retire. “I don’t even think he’s got enough respect to talk about me. I never gave up, He [De La Hoya] gave to a smaller man [Manny Pacquiao]. I ain’t never quit in the ring, so tell me what I need to do.”
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