By Eric Thomas: Roy Jones Jr. (54-7, 40 KO’s) still refuses to hang up his gloves after losing for the third time in his last five bouts. According to Dan Rafael of ESPN, the soon to be 42-year-old Jones is looking to return to action in October, possibly against 37-year-old cruiserweight Danny Santiago (31-4-1, 19 KO’s). Jones lost his last fight to Bernard Hopkins in April by the lopsided scores of 118-109, 117-110 and 117-110. It was Jones’ second consecutive loss. Jones has been previously stopped in the first round by Danny Green in December 2009. In November 2008, Jones lost a one-sided 12 round decision to Joe Calzaghe. In between the Calzaghe fight, Jones stopped Jeff Lacy in the 10th round in August 2009. Jones looked good in that fight, but Lacy looked absolutely horrible.

Despite Jones’ rotten luck in the ring in the past two years, he’s still ranked at number #9 by the IBF. At this point, Jones would likely be easily beaten by any of the current light heavyweight champions and probably would get stopped by all four of them. It’s unclear why Jones is still hanging around the division, because no longer has the physical tools to beat the better fighters. It’s now getting to the point where Jones would likely have problems with the lower ranked fighters in the top 15. That’s hard to believe when you remember how great Jones was in his prime, but he’s lost a lot of his physical tools in the past six years starting at around 34.

This would be the perfect opponent for Jones to pick up an easy win against, because Santiago has lost two out of his last fought fights and has never beaten a top tier opponent during his career. In 2007, the 5’8” Santiago was stopped in back to back fights by Zsolt Erdei and Antonio Tarver. Since then, Santiago has fought once in 2009 and another time n 2010, beating obscure opponents.

There are other opponents being considered besides Santiago for Jones’ next fight. That’s good to know. I think Jones would be better off at least fighting a fairly well known opponent if he’s going to continue fighting. If he loses, at least there will be the excuse that he was beaten by someone that had some talent rather than by an unknown fighter.