Ahead of his final bout before retirement, 49 year-old Jones made a strong case of his own to being called the number one fighter of all time.
“The great thing today is it don’t matter what anyone says or what anyone writes, you can type “sickest boxing highlights” into YouTube or Google and you see Roy Jones Junior doing this thing. Nobody can change your mind after you see that. That is pound-for-pound! I did what I did – it happened – it is a fact,” said Jones Jr.
“Nobody else comes close. You can watch me side-by-side with anyone and it’s not close.
“Floyd Mayweather was TBE (The Best Ever) at making money, but look at his highlights and look at mine. You can’t pretend it’s the same. You can’t pretend there’s ever been anyone come close to doing what I did. Nobody you could name could touch me – and I’m talking about nobody who’s around now, nobody who was around in my prime, and nobody who was around any time you can mention outta your mouth.
“In my prime, I was the ruler. Simple as that.
“I understand there’s a lot of great fighters who’ve followed me already since I was the champ – and I hope there’s another who comes along does even better because want to see that – but I haven’t seen anyone do what I did yet. I haven’t seen anyone turn pro at 154lbs and win the heavyweight championship of the world.
“Even the great Sugar Ray Robinson, the pound-for-pound guy that he was, couldn’t win the light heavyweight title after turning pro as a welterweight. He had a difficult time trying that. So that tells you how hard it is to jump up that kind of weight and win.
“So, pound-for-pound the greatest of all time? It isn’t hard to figure out, Roy Jones Junior is your king of the hill,” he added.
Adding their input, stat-masters CompuBox provided evidence to back up either fighter’s case.
FAREWELL
In the lead up to his farewell fight tonight, Roy Jones compared his skills to those of Floyd Mayweather and said he, Jones, was the more accomplished fighter. In an effort to compare the two future Hall of Famers from a statistical standpoint, CompuBox crunched data from the primes of both fighters (Jones from 1994 thru 2002- 19 fights and Mayweather from 1998-2007- 22 fights) and compiled the following report.
Mayweather amassed a +23.8 plus/minus rating (due to better defensive numbers), while Jones’ was +19.8. Both threw and landed similar amounts of total punches. Jones was busier with his power punches and landed 56.1% to Mayweather’s 52.4%. Mayweather opponents landed just 22.5% of their total punches and just 26.4% of their power shots, compared to 27.9%/35.2% for Jones opponents. Mayweather landed 6.7 jabs per round (37.2%) to 28% (3.7 per round) for Jones, who used his jab sparingly, averaging 13.2 per round- 10 fewer than the CompuBox avg.
Jones was involved in three of the top ten Greatest Title Fight Plus/Minus beat downs in CompuBox history: +41 vs. Reggie Johnson; +40 vs. Richard Hall and +36 vs. Julio Gonzalez. Mayweather was involved in two: +47 vs. Marquez & +40 vs. Gatti. Floyd’s +47 vs. Marquez is the all time title fight plus/minus beat down.
