By Jason Kim: 42-year-old boxing great Roy Jones Jr. 54-7, 40 KO’s) will climb into the ring once again despite a string of rotten luck in his last two fights when Jones takes on 31-yer-old cruiserweight contender Denis Lebedev (21-1, 16 KO’s) on May 22nd at the Sport Complex Krylaskoe, in Moscow, Russia.

Lebedev has pretty much ever advantage you can think of in this fight except for hand speed. Jones has lost back to back fights to Danny Green and Bernard Hopkins. Green stopped Jones in one round last year in December. Hopkins didn’t have the power to trouble Jones the way that Green did. Jones has been stopped by Antonio Tarver, Glen Johnson and now Green in the past seven years.

Lebedev is a bigger puncher than all of those guys, so this isn’t looking good for Jones. It’s unclear why Jones is continuing to fight because he now has an HBO gig as one of their analysts. Perhaps Jones just loves boxing and feels that he could actually beat Lebedev.

It’s hard to see how Jones could believe this because he’s moving up in weight to take on a bigger fighter and bigger puncher than the guys that Jones has been already having problems with. John Wirt, the CEO of Jones’ Square Ring promotional company, feels that Jones will have an advantage in this fight because he won’t have to strip down to 175 like he’s been doing to fight at light heavyweight, according to ESPN.

Jones walks around in the low 190s, which means he has to take off a lot of water weight to make 175. He won’t have to do this in the Lebedev fight because the weight limit is 200 for cruiserweight. However, Jones’ problems seem to be more of a case of him having problems letting his hands go like he used and his ability to take hard shots. If he stands like a frozen statue against Lebedev, Jones will get knocked out fast. Even if he moves around, he’s still probably going to get knocked out because of how hard Lebedev can hit.