Don King Boxing: Roy Jones And Felix Trinidad Ready To Go For Saturday’s Showdown

Two of the greatest boxers in history, Felix “Tito” Trinidad and Roy Jones Jr., will face each other in a battle boxing fans have been waiting for years to see at New York’s famed Madison Square Garden on Saturday (Jan. 19) and will be produced and distributed live by HBO Pay-Per-View.

Tickets for this event dubbed “Bring on the Titans” are available at all Ticketmaster outlets, online at www.ticketmaster.com or at the Madison Square Garden box office. The event is being promoted by Don King Productions in association with Madison Square Garden.

Trinidad (42-2, 35 KOs), from Puerto Rico, and Jones (51-4, 38 KOs) from Pensacola, Fla.,—both destined for the Hall of Fame—have built a staggering list of accomplishments and will enter the ring for this highly anticipated 12-round fight at or below the catch weight of 170 pounds.

Trinidad is a five-time world champion with a stunning career knockout ratio of 80 percent that has won titles in the welterweight, junior middleweight and middleweight classes. He also holds the distinction of having defeated three Olympic Games gold medalists: Pernell “Sweet Pea” Whitaker, “The Golden Boy” Oscar De La Hoya and David Reid.

Jones is an eight-time world champion, winning belts in the middleweight, super middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions, becoming the first former middleweight champion to win a world heavyweight crown in over 100 years.

“Some of the oddsmakers have me as a five-to-one favorite,” Jones crowed at a pre-fight press conference. “They don’t know what they’re talking about. I should be a 50-to-one favorite.

“Tito asked for me. I didn’t ask for him. He is naturally smaller than me and it will be hard to not try to knock him out. Trust me, he is not going to go 12 rounds with me. It will not last longer than 4 rounds. “I’m going to take Tito down in four. He must go in fo’. Just to win the fight would not be good enough for me at this time. He has to go. I really don’t care when. He’s just got to go.”

Jones continued, “He comes to fight all day long. He’s bringing his left hook to the game and he thinks he is going to knock me out if he can land it. So if you want to see a wonderful fight—two guys who are going to go at it for real—and you want to see a good fight with him getting knocked out, then you want to put your money down and check it out on January 19.”

It has been a long time since Trinidad has been an underdog, and he’s not taking well to it.

“What are you going to do when I knock you out in the second round, Roy?” Trinidad retorted to Jones. “I think Roy has a bad memory when he says he’s going to win in four rounds. He is just one more fighter to say something like that. It does not matter to me at all what he says.”

Trinidad explains, “It all began at a press conference when he told me he was going to knock me out in four rounds. I then told Roy Jones that he would not be able to do that because he will not last two. Since then, everyone has been talking about knockouts but I am ready to fight 12 rounds. I can beat him under two, under four, or the full 12, it really doesn’t matter.

“One of his weaknesses is that everyone he has fought that punches well has knocked him out. And I punch well, so let’s see if he can stand in there with me. I have too much boxing left inside of me and I want to show that I am still one of the best fighters in the world. I feel good at this weight.”

Promoter Don King is especially proud to be promoting this fight.

“I’ve been trying to put these two superstars in a match for a long time and to get this done just leaves me breathless,” King exclaimed. “This will be a fight for the ages and will be remembered among the greatest events I have ever staged. Tito and Roy, it doesn’t get any better than that.”

HBO Pay-Per-View’s Mark Taffet shares his excitement.

“Tito Trinidad and Roy Jones are two legendary fighters who have participated in some of the biggest and most memorable fights of our generation,” Taffet said. “We’re thrilled that boxing fans will finally get to see this matchup of superstars.”

The Mecca of boxing is proud to be hosting the event at the world’s most famous arena.

“Two legendary fighters at Madison Square Garden in the greatest city in the world, it just can’t get any better than that,” said Joel Fisher, senior vice president, Madison Square Garden Sports Properties. “The Garden is strongly committed to the sport of boxing and Trinidad versus Jones is certainly an event our loyal boxing fans have been waiting to see.”

From 1993 to 2004, Jones was regarded by most as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. He was Ring magazine’s “Fighter of the Year” in 1994 and was voted 1990’s “Fighter of the Decade” by the prestigious Boxing Writers Association of America.

The list of top-name fighters Jones has defeated reads like a Who’s Who and is even more impressive when one considers the opponents’ records going into the matches: Bernard “The Executioner” Hopkins (22-1); Thomas Tate (29-2); James “Lights Out” Toney (44-0-2); Vinny Pazineza (40-5); Eric Lucas (19-2-2); Mike “The Body Snatcher” McCallum (49-3-1); Montell Griffin (27-0); Virgil “Quicksilver” Hill (43-2); Lou Del Valle (27-1); Otis Grant (31-1-1); Reggie Johnson (39-5-1); Julio Cesar Gonzalez (27-0); Clinton Woods (32-1); John Ruiz (38-4-1); and Antonio Tarver (21-1).

Trinidad is the greatest and most revered fighter ever from the boxing-crazed island of Puerto Rico. He was named the BWAA Fighter of the Year in 2000 and in that same year participated in the BWAA and USA Today Fight of the Year when he knocked out then-undefeated “Ferocious” Fernando Vargas.

His list of vanquished star foes provides a similar list to that of Jones: Maurice Blocker (34-3); Hector “Macho” Camacho (43-2); “Yory Boy” Campas (56-0); Oba Carr (32-0); Freddie Pendleton (40-20-4); Pernell Whitaker (40-2-1); Hugo Pineda (36-1-1); Oscar De La Hoya (31-0); Fernando Vargas (20-0); William Joppy (32-1-1); and Ricardo “El Matador” Mayorga (27-4-1).

Trinidad’s father, manager and trainer Felix Trinidad Sr. was named BWAA Trainer of the Year in 1995 and again in 2000 as well as Manager of the Year in 2000.

The Trinidad vs. Jones “Bring on the Titans” domestic pay-per-view telecast will begin at 9 pm ET/6 pm PT and is being produced and distributed by HBO Pay-Per-View, available in more than 61 million pay-per-view homes at a suggested retail price of $49.95.

This domestic telecast will be available in HDTV for those viewers who can receive HD. HBO Pay-Per-View is the leading supplier of event programming to the pay-per-view industry. For your Trinidad vs. Jones fight week updates, log on to www.hbo.com.

The event will be distributed internationally by KingVision, available through DK International Sales, a division of Don King Productions, Inc.