On October 2, 2004, the scene in the bowels of Madison Square Garden was almost funeral-like. Just a week removed from his frightening knockout loss at the hands of Glen Johnson – his second consecutive loss by KO ? Roy Jones Jr. agreed to meet with a small group of reporters before the Felix Trinidad vs Ricardo Mayorga bout.
It was uncomfortable at best as Jones sat down at the folding table and held court about his future. From one question to the next he changed his tone, from boastful to defiant to reflective, never once coming out and saying the words we all wanted to hear: ?I retire.? But what made Jones a great fighter was also what was keeping him from walking away, and at one point, just before he walked away from the table to get back to his commentating duties for HBO, he was asked about his friend and former middleweight champion Gerald McClellan, whose life was altered forever by a fight with Nigel Benn.
He normally wouldn?t talk publicly about McClellan, but after a short pause, he did.
?I used to be haunted like that anyway ? all the time that?s what I was afraid of, that you could end up like that,? said Jones that night. ?I don?t even want to be like none of the old fighters are. I want to be just like I am now. I can have a conversation with you without having somebody sit here with me, and I can walk around and do my own thing with my own self. That?s why I do make myself consider taking some time off and maybe changing my mindset for a minute. You did all you want to do Roy; if you?re not hungry, don?t go and get yourself hurt just because you want to fight. But at the same time, I do have a game chicken?s mentality. If I?m gonna fight, then you?re gonna have to kill me to beat me. Those are the two things I always battle.?
With that he left. There was no closure, no great exclusive that he was going to leave the fight game and move on to other exploits. We all knew what would be next ? a comeback, and a sad end to a Hall of Fame career. It was inevitable, and it happened to all the greats.
So if you asked any of us that night what the odds were of Jones headlining not one, but two pay-per-view megafights in 2008, we would have said that Vegas wouldn?t even take action on such a ludicrous proposition. The way we saw it, by 2008, Roy Jones Jr. would have been at least a couple of years into retirement in Pensacola, Florida.
But fighters like him don?t get to where they are in life by following the script or being average. Guys like Jones excel at doing the impossible, defying the odds, and making the ?experts? look like they know nothing at all.
And Jones has done that in the four years since he was knocked unconscious by Glen Johnson. A year after that defeat, Jones lost a lackluster decision to Antonio Tarver that drew even more loud calls for retirement, but then he reinvented himself and took himself on a woodshedding tour of sorts, fighting once each in 2006 and 2007, beating Prince Badi Ajamu and Anthony Hanshaw, and then defeating fellow oldies? tour member Felix Trinidad in January of this year.
Just like that, Jones is relevant again.
While Tarver?s career is in a shambles after a lopsided loss to Chad Dawson and Johnson?s road to the top is as long as usual after a controversial defeat at the hands of the same man, Jones is back on pay-per-view this Saturday night, headlining the big room at the Garden against unbeaten Joe Calzaghe. And should he beat the pride of Wales, Jones will have, at 39, set up boxing?s biggest event of 2009: a rematch against the man he beat way back in 1993, Bernard Hopkins.
Not bad career planning after all, eh?
?I told you I was smart,? said Jones during a recent media teleconference. ?I was born at night – but it wasn?t last night.?
But Calzaghe is no Kelly Pavlik either, and though Hopkins has become the talk of the boxing world for turning back the clock and dismantling the young middleweight champion, Jones will be in for a tougher night against a man many felt Hopkins beat in the 45-0 Calzaghe, a longtime super middleweight champion who finally stepped out of his longtime comfort zone with fights in recent years against Jeff Lacy, Mikkel Kessler, and Hopkins.
Yet even though Calzaghe is a southpaw, he doesn?t have the size or one-punch power that Tarver had to trouble Jones, and while the Welshman throws a lot of punches, he doesn?t put on the type of smothering pressure Johnson used to great effect in his win over Pensacola?s finest. Take those Jones losses away, and you?ve got a guy whose only other conqueror was Montell Griffin, who got his victory over Jones via disqualification. You can?t even give Calzaghe the significant youth edge, since he?s only three years younger than Jones and still at the age where you can walk into the ring one night and just not have it anymore.
That makes this a pick ?em fight, with Calzaghe?s only significant edge being his workrate. And that may just pester Jones, but it will also score points with the judges for Calzaghe, especially given the fact that Jones tends to work at his own measured pace. Then again, Hopkins is no Henry Armstrong in there and he was able to keep the fight with Calzaghe close.
So what Jones has effectively done with his mini-comeback over the last couple of years is take conventional boxing wisdom and toss it out the window. It?s like bizarro world. Young guys can?t fight, old guys can?t lose, UK fighters are headlining US pay-per-views, and two devastating knockout losses in a row mean nothing in the great scheme of things. And Jones is laughing the whole way. Why? Because his whole career has been based on doing everything backwards and getting away with it. Now, even after we screamed that he had no chin, no reflexes left, and no marketability, he?s back, he?s on pay-per-view, and he?s headlining in the Mecca of Boxing.
It?s the greatest revenge, because right now, four years after we insisted that he leave, Superman is far from taking his last flight?or fight.
