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 Roy Jones: I'm the Number One Heavyweight
By Eddie Goldman (March 19, 2003)
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NEW YORK, March 18 — A relaxed, smiling, and on-time Roy Jones Jr. held court with the New York media Tuesday afternoon at Gallagher's Steak House in Manhattan. If the large crowd of reporters from almost all of this town's newspapers and television stations was any indication, Roy Jones Jr. may have finally arrived as a star on the general sports scene.
After being a guest on Howard Stern's radio show and ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange earlier in the morning, the WBA heavyweight champ appeared at this media luncheon with business associates Murad Muhammad, Akbar Muhammad, and Kevin McGovern, all of Roy Jones Jr. Enterprises. Murad Muhammad opened this show by portraying Jones as a businessman, and declaring, "You're an industry." But the assembled media was far more interested in hearing Roy Jones's take on the business and sport of boxing. The champ was more than happy to oblige, amicably answering almost an hour of questions with a wide-ranging commentary that touched on not only his role and plans, but offered many not-so-sweet evaluations of many in the boxing game today.
The discussion began with Jones defending himself yet again against those persistent critics who downplayed his victory over John Ruiz.
"People are always going to say, 'Well, would you fight a more credible opponent?' How much more credible can you get?" said Jones.
"Holyfield beat Tyson twice. This guy beat Holyfield twice. Tyson didn't knock Holyfield down. Lewis didn't knock Holyfield down. Both of then had two opportunities. Neither one of them did it. This guy knocked (Holyfield) down within two opportunities. This guy also knocked Kirk Johnson down, who I projected would be the next best heavyweight of the class. He knocked him down twice to me. And really people say, 'Why did Kirk Johnson hit him low?' That power scares you sometimes. They don't know what to do, they get caught like that. So, when they say more credible, they can't be talking about as far as fights go, because here's Lennox Lewis, their great British champion, who's been knocked out twice, but he's still heavyweight champ of the world. Does that take away his credibility? He didn't get knocked out once, like John Ruiz did. He got knocked out twice, both times as champion. So what makes him any more credible than John Ruiz? He struggled with Frank Bruno. I don't think John would struggle with Frank Bruno. So when they say credibility, I guess they mean a bigger name."
Jones acknowledged that Ruiz had an "ugly style," but began to talk about styles and marketability, a theme he would return to later.
"There are a lot of fighters out there who are actually great fighters, but people don't care to see them because of their style. A perfect example was, look at Vernon Forrest. He sure could outdo Shane Mosley every time, but his style does not call for the fan following as a Shane Mosley or Roy Jones Jr. Doesn't mean he's not a credible fighter, because he can beat Shane Mosley every day of the week."
Asked to rank the top three heavyweights, Jones laughed, and gave a version of the heavyweight rankings more designed to sell a potential fight with Holyfield than anything else.
"Of course you know I'm going to be number one. I'm the smallest guy. I came to that division and made a guy that they have trouble with, I made him look like he was nothing," he said. "So now that I make him look bad, he's nobody, I guess. I can't really buy that. That seems to happen in every weight division that I go to. And if I beat Lennox Lewis that easily, they're going to say the same thing. 'Ah, well, he got knocked out two times before. So since you knocked him out, that's just the third time. We knew he would go to sleep. Go do this. Go climb Mt. Everest. Go do something else. Go jump off the Himalayas or something.'"
He went on, "They never going to give you credit. So when you say the three heavyweights, I'm number one. I came from junior middleweight, really, to heavyweight. And every time I get somewhere, they say, 'Ahh, there was nobody in that weight class.'"
After himself, Jones claimed, "I really got to take Evander second, mainly because, the first fight Lennox Lewis did beat Evander with the jab. But the second fight where he was really supposed to come back and prove his point, I think Evander won the fight." And third? "Thirdly, I might say Lennox Lewis."
Just who his next opponent is has not been determined. "Whatever the best opportunity is," said Jones. "I got to add up safety to money, safety to cash, safety to opportunity, safety to doubt. There's a lot of variables out there for me."
Besides Holyfield, also under consideration are Corrie Sanders and some other more familiar names.
"If Holyfield really can't seem to come to the right mindset, then I guess me and Corrie Sanders will start talking. And if me and him can't come to the right mindset, then who knows? I could start back talking to Bernard Hopkins." Later Jones added that he expects to fight before or during the summer, either against Mike Tyson, Holyfield, Corrie Sanders, or the winner of the Antonio Tarver-Montell Griffin fight in April. "Everything's open. So it all depends on what happens."
He is still somewhat ambivalent about whether he will stay as a heavyweight, revealing that now he weighs 190 pounds. At heavyweight, he said, "I can't really say I'm not comfortable, because to be honest with you, I was more comfortable in the ring in front of a heavyweight than I was in front of a light heavyweight."
But he is also realistic. "I also know that I am not a true, legitimate heavyweight," adding "I'm a heavyweight at heart, and that's what counts to them, too." He believes this attitude makes him feared by larger heavyweights. "To be honest with you, they're all threatened by the little man, because they know the little man is dangerous, courageous, deadly, and he will attack."
One group he is satisfied with is the WBA, which has given him until April 15 to decide which title to keep, since he cannot hold both the heavyweight and light heavyweight titles at the same time under their regulations.
"It seems like they gave me an awful lot of time to make up my mind," he said. "So it seems like we ain't really trying to come to blows here. They're trying to be considerate of what I'm doing here, and I really like that. Because it seems to me as though they really respecting me as their champ. Because other people, when I want to go make history, they take their title away." (That was a reference to the IBF, which stripped him of their light heavyweight title when he fought for the WBA heavyweight title.)
"You'd rather see me fight Antonio Tarver than fight the heavyweight champ of the world, when you've been crying that I'm not fighting nobody?" he asked. "You want me to go stab a polar bear with a pocketknife, and you don't want to go see this? You'd rather me go down here and smash a beetle with a sledgehammer, than to stab this polar bear with a pocket knife? Are you crazy? So they take my title for that."
To the WBA, he said, "We're taking off our hat to you because you're doing things to help our sport here, our sport of boxing." He said he appreciated this extension beyond the usual limit. It is as if they were saying, "'We realize how full your plate must be after making history. It's been 106 years,'" Jones said.
As for fighting Tyson, Jones said there is an inverse relation between money and danger that he must calculate. "So they raise the dollars up, the danger starts to come down. And if it gets up way up there, it gets down to that, excuse my language, don't-give-a-damn point over on this side. So if the money gets way up there, then hey, I got to see Mike." Later he also said that he would like $100 million for that fight.
"I'm not fully interested in taking a fight with Tyson or Lennox Lewis, because it's too much risk, as we both know. But, at $100 million, it would be hard for me to tell you no," he said. "One wrong punch could be fatal to me." Still, he said, "It could be an opportunity to make a lot of money. If that opportunity is there, then maybe I will do it."
As for the potential Holyfield fight, being talked about for Madison Square Garden, which has been more of a desert than a garden of late for boxing, Jones said, "The status of that is TBA, to be announced." He did indicate that "they are very interested. I'm very interested. Holyfield's very interested." Negotiations continue. "If this is what the Garden wants, they'll show me that's what they want, and we'll do it."
He feels that a fight with Holyfield will be a good one for the fans. "Evander will fight me much, much harder than he fights Chris Byrd," said Jones. "Because Chris Byrd is a southpaw. Chris Byrd is elusive. And he doesn't see Chris Byrd as a threat, because Chris Byrd basically is moving away while he fights all the time. He's not really there doing a lot of damage. Now, he stayed a couple of times, but that's not threatening to Holyfield. This little fella, who is deadly dangerous, has to be dealt with." And he added, "He'll bring out the old Holyfield for that. So you know that means the old Roy Jones got to be paid for that."
There is a lot he is not interested in, like testing his skills again. "Nah, I'll probably just go on over to Iraq, because I don't think one man can test my skills." Or finding out what it was like to be hit by a heavyweight. "I saw what it felt like. It didn't impress me." Or calling Lennox Lewis for a mega-fight.
"I don't call nobody," said Jones.
He went on to explain why a fight with Mike Tyson would be the most marketable.
"If you take two fighters out of the equation, there is no money. If you take Roy Jones Jr. and Mike Tyson out of the equation, there is no money fight. And that's really, really not too good. And that's not saying a lot for those other fighters," he claimed.
"We bring more people to the heavyweight division, more excitement and more entertainment to the heavyweight division, than do the so-called, what people say are the real champions. So in fact the question becomes, are they truly the real champions? Because they're not what people are breaking down the doors to see," he said. "When they say, 'Well, this cat wasn't the real champ,' well, you can say that about Lennox Lewis to me, because ain't nobody tearing down the table to see him fight nobody, except Tyson or myself."
Jones remains ambivalent about fighting Antonio Tarver as a light heavyweight, even after Tarver's challenge to him at the press conference after the Ruiz fight.
"I came into the heavyweight division strictly to make history," he reiterated. "Now if a beautiful opportunity approached me, of course, I'll stay for a second. But if it doesn't, there's still some unfinished business down there I wouldn't mind going to handle. I don't like you to talk crazy to me and I don't get a chance to oblige you with a battle. When you talk crazy to me, I want that, especially if you in my legitimate weight class. Heavyweights, I might let them get away with a little bit."
But as to Tarver, "I ain't rushing to do that. Because you got to remember, when I'm going to make history, to do something big for this sport of boxing, they stripped me of my title. And now they're letting him fight for it. Do I really want to become involved with them that quick again? No. But like I told him, me and him will go make a side bet, for our dog or something. I'll fight for a hot dog. The winner just buys the other dude a hot dog. That's good enough for me. We don't need no title, because I don't want his IBF title when I beat him." Jones's anger with the IBF runs so deep that he even said, "If they designate some individual I can give it to, I'll take it from him and give it to them. Because I don't need it. But I will take it from him, and give it to who I think need it."
His conditions for fighting Bernard Hopkins now sound more spiteful than anything else. Jones said he would now want to do it at "probably 175," and that, "I used to think about trying to be nice and considerate, but you see how they try to do you. They want all the money, all the everything, and all you did was beat a welterweight. You didn't beat nobody. I beat a heavyweight. So you went backwards. I went way forward." As to the financial terms, he said, "Ain't no 60-40 no more. Might be 82-18. But if you talk a little sense, I might work something out with you."
Jones elaborated on why he does not want to fight Chris Byrd.
"First of all, I really don't care to have their title," he said. "Second of all, Chris Byrd. Did you see the second Forrest-Mosley fight? Did you see how disgusting that was? Could you imagine that in the heavyweight division?" The fight would be, he said, "I'm watching him waiting on him do something stupid. He gonna watch me and wait on me do something stupid, because he don't hit harder than I do. And he don't want to get caught by me. So he definitely won't do nothing stupid. So it'll be a waiting contest. I'll be waiting on him to do something. He'll be waiting on me to do something. And people will get bored with another disgusting fight, which the heavyweight division does not need at this point. I just can't put myself through that, unless the money was so good that I had to go out there and do some stupid stuff to make it interesting. Because I can make it interesting, but the money for that fight ain't enough for me to do that."
Among his proudest achievements is that he has done things his own way.
"Roy don't do it the conventional way. Roy fight who he want to fight when he feel like it," he said, referring himself in the third person, as royalty have been known to do.
He also insisted that he takes on all comers.
"If you the number one contender, you can fight me. Simple. I don't rank them. I don't care who it is. I don't even care what their name is," he said, agreeing with his being characterized as "the most dominating in the last decade."
"These same guys they're putting pound-for-pound, you know what these guys do at nighttime? They go home and study the Roy Jones tapes to see what they can learn to use in their next victory," he said. "They don't want to tell you the truth. They don't want to tell you who the godfather of the game is right now. But all these young cats that they're putting pound-for-pound, them cats study Roy. They want to be like Roy, but they don't got the balls to be like Roy. Because Roy's a man of his own. Roy stand up. Roy tell you if he going to do it or if he ain't going to do it. And anybody who challenges Roy get obliged. I TAKE ALL CHALLENGES."
Of course, he stressed again, for the "big boys" he will first have to be paid accordingly because of the increased risk.
"Anybody can have a good day," he continued. "This is how they do this pound-for-pound nowadays. They don't do it like it really should be. They don't look at the longevity of a guy who truly reigns. The last guy who deserved to be the pound-for-pound the best fighter in his time before me was Pernell Whitaker. But Pernell Whitaker came from about 130 or 135, all the way to 154. Dominating. Nobody was beating Pernell in his heyday. That's pound-for-pound a good fighter, because he can deal with any and all circumstances."
Jones was less impressed with Oscar De La Hoya. "When Oscar edged him out for his title, they say he pound-for-pound the best fighter. How? You edged the man out. You ain't beat the man. When you put me and James Toney on the line, I crushed him, much like I did John Ruiz. I crushed him."
Jones also defended the difference in the way he performs against top opponents and lesser fighters.
"When they pay me right, I perform," he said. "I go get right and crush whatever they tell me is my most noteworthy opposition. When they bring me the number one contenders, ahh, I get in shape and beat them, but it ain't the same. I ain't making enough money to crush them. I'm making enough money to do my job. You bring me a Yugo engine, that's easier for me to deal with. I don't work as hard. I don't put in the overtime because this ain't that hard to deal with. You bring me a BMW engine, and you know we got something a little bit more difficult. So I got to work a little harder. But I'm going to really fix that, because I want you to know that when it comes to the big job, that's what I do. I really don't have to waste time with the Yugo engine. So they'll always tell you that people better than me, because they can't come up to you, up here on this podium, and talk for themselves like I can. They can't stand here and defend themselves like I can. They can't tell you that, without this promoter, without that promoter, they still would be what they're doing. Because they would not have. They would rather hide and let these promoters build this picture for them. That's how they build them up. They paint these pictures and give them these light fights and build their record. Then they go out and select their fights. I don't care who it is. Don't mean nothing to me."
As the discussion wound down, Jones explained his new business deal with Roy Jones Jr. Enterprises.
"This endeavor is to take Roy from the boxing ring onto bigger and better things that Roy can do after he's boxing," he said. He said he remains busy with his music, animals, kids, and Matrix 2, but added, "This is to take me to a whole 'nother world, a world where boxers don't go, mainly into the advertising area. We don't see many boxers with Wheaties boxes, or with brand Jordan deals, or with Nike or deodorant. You don't see boxers get these opportunities, And this is what we're trying to change. So being that I am pretty clean-cut, I am a legitimate fighter, I am the best that do it, why if there ever was an opportunity for a boxer to make a change, it's now."
Besides trying to be a role model and make some additional money, he has another, less obvious reason for this deal.
"If I don't start now, it may not totally benefit me now," he said. "But at least it will get the advertisers back into the boxing field, and give these other younger boxers coming up a chance to do something other than just box, because so many of them don't make it in boxing, and they're done. As you see, they just die out after that. Or they're hurt in the process of trying to make it as a boxer."
Later he would tell reporters that he is just like animals, who just love to fight.
"Had I not became a boxer, I'd be in jail now for fighting, because I was just going to fight, regardless," he said.
So while Roy Jones Jr. now basks in the spotlight of sports stardom, you can't say he musta forgot the lesser-talented boxers, those who didn't make it, or those who fell on hard times. Not only to the fans and an always-skeptical media, Roy Jones wants to be remembered as a true champion in life to those fellow boxers. Perhaps he has finally positioned himself well enough to achieve that goal as well.
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