Quote Originally Posted by ElTerribleMorales View Post
he got old, the huge jumps in weight caught up with him, then he was KO'd and well IMO he never really came to grips with it
This is a good answer, he got old. Some people age earlier than others and for someone like Roy who needed his lightning reflexes, as soon as they lost that split second that was it for him. He tried to learn a bit of textbook boxing after his losses (to Tarver and Johnson) but he was too old to add that to his game and anyone in the world class bracket was just always going to beat him. The strangest part for me was his punch power totally leaving him, he used to hit like a freight train and most of the time the last thing to leave a great boxer is his power, but Roys power went with everything else.

I fooled myself into thinking he could return to his former greatness but I was wrong and I think he did the same thing to himself. The jump to HW and then dropping back down to LHW was the beginning of the end but he could well have lost it at that age anyway even if he hadn't made the jump.

Now I make do with watching the old films of his old greatness and for the first time in 17 years I haven't watched his last fight. I watched him beat Ruiz the other night (so I could compare it to Haye more than anything) and it really was the last time he was great. If he had a geniune HW's power he could have caused some serious damage up there, because he was just so damned fast and his reflexes were that fast that I don't think many could land anything of real magnitude on him.