WHAT IF...Roy Jones had stayed at heavyweight?

[porkypara]

People forget now that after Jones beat Ruiz there was talk of him fighting Tyson,Holyfield and even then champ Lennox Lewis.

I remember reading an artical asking is Jones greater than Ray Robinson.


WE all know of course that he dropped back down to LHW and got KOed and beat a few time.

But what would have happened to Jones and the HW divisoin if he had stayed at HW.

[GAME]

He would have got knocked out

I rate Roy Jones as one of the greatest fighters that have ever lived but he wasnt a heavyweight .

Ruiz wasnt anywhere near good enough to land on Jones and thats why Roy fought him instead of the better guys.

[Kel]

He could have beat a select few of the poorer heavies

[JonesJrMayweather]

He would have made a lot of money beating maybe holyfield, byrd, rahman, moorer, botha and tyson. Then if the money was right he could have possibly been beaten by lewis or one of the klitchs. Hell he might have even went to cruiser to beat Jirov just to add another belt to the collection.

I still believe had he retired after the first tarver fight he would have been top 5 all time easily on most historians lists. I remember in the 90's bert sugar had him 2 behind SRR. Me personally I still rate him greatest and best ever since SRR.

[paddy448]

for me roy jones is the most naturally gifted fighter to ever grace the sport, he made some bad decisions in his career moving back down from heavyweight the way he did. if he would of stayed at heavyweight it wouldnt surprise me if he beat any of the top ten heavyweights at that time, i just watched some of his highlight vids again, and it is just unreal the way he went about his business in the ring

[El Kabong]

Roy could have beaten a couple decent heavyweights, I think he could have worked over Evander and the old Mike Tyson simply because of his handspeed.

I think Chris Byrd (of the smaller heavyweights) would have been a very tough fight for him though. A rematch with James Toney would have been interesting OR even more interesting a fight with Vassily Jirov which had been talked about for quite some time.


No way he would have been able to hang with the big boys though, Lennox, Wlad, Vitali....all too big, too strong, too skilled for Roy to be able to use his skills to his advantage.

[Dr. Steelhammer]

All I can is Roy is lucky he didn't stay there long enough and meet his demise.