By William Mackay: In the past six years, Roy Jones Jr. has slowed down as a fighter, losing enough of his hand and foot speed to the point where he’s been knocked out three times in the past six years. Jones was nearly unbeatable for the first 14 years of his career, racking up an incredible 48-1 record until suffering his first legitimate loss at age 35 against Antonio Tarver in a 2nd round knockout in 2004. Things have gone badly for Jones for the most part since that loss, as he’s been beaten by Glen Johnson, Tarver again, Joe Calzaghe and Danny Green in December 2009.
Obviously, people point to the sudden loss of speed by Jones around six years ago as the reasons for the start of his problems inside the ring. However, other fighters have been able to adapt to a slight loss of speed like Jones by fighting smarter and knowing what their limits are. Jones, however, hasn’t been able to adapt like other fighters have done despite still having better hand speed then even many of the younger fighters today.
Some people suggest that Jones’ recent failures are because of a lack of fundamentals to fall back on to counter balance the loss of his once freakishly fast hand speed and reflexes. In the past, Jones’ hands and reflexes were so fast that it made it very difficult for his opponents to lay a glove on him. It also made it quite easy for Jones to land his shots almost at will.
His opponents never even had a chance to see many of Jones’ shots because they were thrown with so much speed that it made them difficult to see. But somehow even with the small amount of hand speed and reflexes that Jones has lost, it’s almost as if he’s a broken fighter. And that’s hard to imagine because Jones is still so incredibly fast with his hands.
Many boxers would be more than happy to have the hand speed of the 41-year-old Jones and they would be probably very successful if they had what Jones still possesses in the way of hand speed. But unfortunately, Jones isn’t able to fight at the same level he once was because of that slight drop off of speed. It’s crazy because he was so good and now he’s come down to earth to the point where he’s getting beaten by merely good but not great fighters.
Jones’ talent in his prime was so incredible that he stood out way above the other fighters, even Bernard Hopkins. Jones was the king for over a decade, but now he doesn’t how to succeed with the still great tools that he has. If there were some slight changes that Jones could make in his game, I think he could still the best fighter in the light heavyweight division. But there seems to be no way of fixing Jones’ problems.
He doesn’t move enough now, he makes silly amateurish mistakes of retreating to the ropes or corners and just covering up. This is really basic stuff that’s taught to young fighters when they start out. You don’t go to the ropes, yet Jones does it again and again in almost every fight nowadays.
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