IS ROY JONES JR BOXING CAREER OVER?

It’s all over. At 40 years old after a 20+ year career and winning eight belts in four divisions from middle weight to heavy weight Roy Jones Jr. was knocked out in just 122 seconds.

Australian IBO world cruiser weight champion Danny Green laid Jones out with a strong right hand to the head. It looks to be the end for Jones Jr. He’s only lost six times since 1989 (he won 54) and this blow should knock him out for good.

I doubt Roy will want to go out like that though, getting knocked out in the land down under in an Aussie’s backyard while the man that punished him says that he feels bad because he saw Roy as an idol. Jones set his self up going to a champion’s homeland to fight and I’d bet Jones’ mentality won’t let him go out like that. I just hope he does the right thing and retires or at least wins his next fight so he can hang his gloves up for good.

We don’t need another Muhammad Ali being wheeled around for the rest of his life because he refused to call it quits until he’s knocked absolutely senseless.

It’s been an illustrious career Roy; please learn from the other boxers that fight for too long. No one will remember you for your last fight, heck I bet barely anyone even knew you were fighting today. What everyone will remember you for is the near flawless career you exuberated so please, do your family and fans a favor and retire while you can still function.

Roy Jones Jr. has been made to be a complete disgrace in the sport of boxing.  Roy fought Danny Green the other night and got rocked again in the first round.  The fight was called to an end after Roy stopped throwing punches back.  Roy just give it up, your legacy is very tarnished.  Peep the video when you

Via ESPN:

SYDNEY — Australian Danny Green stopped Roy Jones Jr. in the first round of their IBO world cruiserweight title fight Wednesday, preventing the 40-year-old American from claiming his ninth title across five weight classes from middleweight to heavyweight.

The 36-year-old Green retained his title and improved to 28-3 with his technical knockout over Jones at the Acer Arena, in the American’s first professional fight on foreign soil in his 20-year career.

It was only Jones’ sixth loss since 1989, along with 54 wins, 40 by knockout.

Green floored Jones with a right hand to the head after one minute. Green moved in to apply more pressure, and following a series of blows, English referee Howard Foster stopped the bout after just 122 seconds.

Jones offered no excuses for a defeat which could signal the end of his career.

“We don’t make excuses, it was a great performance by Danny,” Jones said.

Green was almost apologetic for handing such a defeat to one of his boxing role models.

“He’s one of the greatest fighters of all time and the opportunity to fight him in Australia, thanks, Roy Jones Jr.,” Green told the crowd.

“I almost feel bad doing that, that almost hurt me to do that to someone whom I aspire to look up to as a professional fighter inside and outside the ring. He’s a bloody legend.”

After nearly a one-hour delay following an undercard bout, Jones entered the arena to mild applause. But Green, with the Australian band Men at Work’s song “Down Under” playing, entered the ring to an ovation moments later.

“I didn’t surprise myself,” said Green.

Green won the IBO cruiserweight title in Biloxi, Miss., in August with a victory over Argentina’s Julio Cesar Dominguez on the undercard to Jones’ NABO light heavyweight championship win over Jeff Lacy.

Jones had been stopped just twice in his career, by Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson, but Green warned ahead of the fight that he could end the Sydney fight early.

“I won’t name which punch, but there’s one punch, if I hit him clean with it, he is going to be knocked out for a week,” Green said. “His speed can baffle me, but my power — it can hospitalize someone. My fists are like bricks.”

Green has never been stopped, although he was knocked down but not out by Argentina’s Omar Gonzalez in 2004.

The Australian twice lost bids for the WBC super middleweight title to Markus Beyer — one by disqualification and the other in a split decision. He retired temporarily in March 2008 before making a comeback in April this year.

Jones, who has eight belts across four divisions from middleweight to heavyweight, was a strong betting favorite.

Green weighed in at nearly 179 pounds while Jones was at just over 179.

ROY JONES JR.

Once invincible boxer Roy Jones Jr. suffered a humiliating, career-jeopardizing loss today in Sydney, Australia. The 40-year-old Jones was knocked out in the first round by Danny Green.

The loss pretty much kills any chance for the proposed Roy Jones Jr./Bernard Hopkins fight that was supposed to take place in 2010.

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Today KG and The General speak with:

• Chairman of V8 Supercars, Tony Cochrane about the exciting changes for the 2010 season

• SANFL Glenelg Tigers player Brett Backwell will fill us in on his future at the Bay

• We take you to cricketer Brad Hodge’s media conference

• Former soccer coach Zoran Matic puts his neck on the line to support Adelaide United coach Aurelio Vidmar

• Kim Hughes is about to conduct a leadership program and he is extending an invitation to the West Indies cricket team

• Boxer Danny Green takes some time out of his training schedule to talk about his rumble against Roy Jones Jr.

PLUS: KG & The General will have a larger than life guest in the Locker Room AND:

• Jason Gillespie has the latest cricket news

• Brett Ogle caught up with his mate golfer John Daly and he tells us about his frame of mind

• Libby Hopwood cleaned up at the Thoroughbred Racing SA awards, tonight she talks about her future

Roy Jones Jr. once ruled boxing and was considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.  Now?  Not so much.  He had a swift fall from the top.  He’s a long way from the pinacle of the sport he made plenty of money for.  Well he’s not done fighting.  Peep who his next opponent will be in February….

Via ESPN:

LOS ANGELES — Sixteen years after they first met, Roy Jones and Bernard Hopkins will finally fight again.

For years, they talked on and off about a rematch, but the negotiations always fell apart over how they would split the money.

But with both men now past their 40th birthdays and no significant fights looming for either, they finally nailed down the elusive deal, signing an agreement Friday for a light heavyweight fight sometime in the first quarter of 2010, both sides told ESPN.com.

It will be televised on HBO PPV.

“Sixteen years ago they fought each other and went on and made history in their own way,” said Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer, Hopkins’ promoter. “Each one is considered today as ring royalty. That’s why I think when those two guys are going to fight it will be to determine who will be king of the ring. We went back and forth for so long, but we finally pulled it off. They both signed and they will fight. It will be a truly historic showdown. A lot of people didn’t believe it would ever happen. But guess what? It’s going to happen.”

However, the deal is contingent on Jones’ first winning a Dec. 2 fight in Australia against Australian cruiserweight Danny Green, which has been planned for a couple of months.

Also as part of their deal, Hopkins is allowed to take an interim fight before the end of the year. In an interview at Schaefer’s downtown Los Angeles office, he said Hopkins, who hasn’t fought since easily outpointing Kelly Pavlik 11 months ago, was inclined to fight a tune-up bout. Schaefer said he was working on a plan under which Hopkins would fight in his hometown of Philadelphia against an opponent to be determined on the same day as Jones’ fight in Australia.

Under the terms of the agreement, Jones (54-5, 40 KOs) and Hopkins (49-5-1, 32 KOs) agreed to split the revenue 50-50, which had always been the sticking point. If there is a knockout or a TKO, the winner of the fight will get 60 percent and the loser 40 percent.

“I don’t like that at all,” Jones, 40, said of the knockout provision. “I love it. I absolutely love it. Love it. That is all I can say. I’m definitely looking forward to this fight. The fans have wanted to see it for a long time. For the longest time, he wouldn’t take it. Now he’s taking it. I’m ecstatic. I can’t wait.”

Jones said he thought about pulling out of the Green fight but won’t because he had given his word and signed a contract. John Wirt, CEO of Jones’ promotional company, said Jones was receiving a “multimillion dollar payday” for the fight with Green.

“I’m in a very difficult situation,” said Jones, who would be 41 for the Hopkins fight. “I respect Green. I know we signed and I thought maybe I should just pull out. But I can’t deny Danny. This is one of the biggest fights in the history of his country. This is how it is. So I’ll give him the biggest fight in his country and that will get me ready for Hopkins and the biggest fight in my country. I’d rather let the Green fight go, but I’m a man of my word. It wouldn’t be fair to back out on him now.

“It’s time to take care of my business and then come back here and beat Bernard Hopkins.”

Before either man became a star, they met for a vacant middleweight title on May 22, 1993 with Jones winning a clear unanimous decision. Jones would go on to dominate the sport as the pound-for-pound king for about a decade and win titles in four divisions. Hopkins would later claim the middleweight title after Jones left the division and go on to make a division-record 20 defenses before moving up and claiming the light heavyweight championship.

“I beat him with one hand the first time,” Jones said of their first fight, in which he fought with a damaged right hand. “What am I worried about?”

The sides have other smaller issues to work out, such as which fighter gets first billing, who walks to the ring first and who is announced first.

Wirt said the sides agreed to settle all of the outstanding issues with a coin flip.

“This is a straight up 50-50 deal,” Wirt said. “We’ll settle everything with a coin flip. We’re going to have a commemorative coin made with Roy’s face on one side and Bernard’s on the other and use it to decide everything. We’d like to get that televised on ESPN. It would be fun.”

Schaefer and Wirt gave a lot of credit to HBO’s Mark Taffet for bringing the sides together. Jones had been on board with a 50-50 deal. Getting Hopkins, who would be 45 for the fight, was more difficult, but they made a lot of progress during a meeting in Las Vegas last week among between Schaefer, Hopkins and Taffet.

“There have been a lot of people who worked very hard, but a lot of credit goes to Mark, who shepherded this thing through and really helped make it happen,” Wirt said.

Schaefer said there is no site yet for the fight, but that he and Wirt would speak to venues in Las Vegas, New York and Atlantic City, N.J., although they preferred Las Vegas.

Mediaoutrage-  We still want to see it.

A video from Lee about Roy Jones Jr…. arguably the most dominant boxer of all time.

Yall must have forgot about this horrible song and video

Born January 16, 1969 in Pensacola Florida, Jones began boxing at an early age.  In 1984 he won the United States National Junior Olympics in his weight class.  Then he won two National Golden Gloves titles before ending his ameteur career with a 121-13 record.  Jones won a silver medal in the 1988 Olympics, as he defeated every fighter without losing a single round, but controversy saw him lose in the gold medal match against South Korean fighter Park Si-Hun, although he destroyed him from start to finish.  As a professional, Jones fought the top competition early in his career with wins over Jorge Vaca, Jorge Castro, Benard Hopkins, and a convincing win over then champion, James “Lights Out” Toney.  Outside of a fight against Virgil Hill and Mike McCallum, Jones seemingly fought unfit opponents for years to come.  Often criticized for fighting “Cans,” and his pursuit for a secondary career in music and basketball, Jones stepped up on January 3rd, 2003 to win the Heavyweight title against John Ruiz.  But as the Light Heavyweight division started to become stacked with competition, Jones lost 3 fights in a row.  After winning a controversial decision against Antonio Tarver, which many ringside scored the fight for Tarver, the two fought in a rematch 6 months later.  Tarver knocked out Jones in the 2nd round with a devastating right hand and shocked the world.  In Roy’s comeback fight, he would be knocked out again, this time in the 9th by Glen Johnson.  In the third fight with Antonio Tarver, Jones would lose convincingly by a unanimous decision on October 1st, 2005.  He would then put together a 3 fight win streak, one over Felix Trinidad, before being dominated by Joe Calzaghe.  After a nice win over Jeff Lacy, talks between Jones and Hopkins began about a rematch.  The two woud have to win their upcoming fights, with Hopkins fighting Enrique Ornelas and Jones taking on Danny Green.  Hopkins dominated Ornelas in a 12 round unanimous decision, but Jones was knocked out in the first round after getting pummeled by a right hand.  With the Jones loss, the rematch all but may be over, as the stock in seeing this fight has plummeted.  And now one begs to ask the question, Is Roy Jones done?  Roy is 5-4 in his last 9 fights with two of his wins coming by TKO, but three of his losses resulting in knockouts.  Without a big payday ahead and the possible rematch of him and Hopkins losing its luster, this may be the end of Roy Jones Jr.  Personally, I do think we will see him once more in a fight in his home town of Pensacola, but it won’t be against Hopkins.

Roy Jones Jr.  54-6-1  (40 KO’s)

I was all pumped to watch the highly anticipated showdown (in Australia anyway) between Danny Green and the ‘legendary’ Roy Jones Jr in Sydney on the night of 2 December 2009.  Unfortunately I was stuck at work until midnight, though fortunately I managed to find a forum that was providing live updates.

So I see a post about Roy’s gay ring entrance.  Great, I say, the fight’s about to start.  Next upload a couple of minutes later…WTF?  Roy Jones Jr just got KNOCKED OUT!  Round 1.  By Danny Green.  The Danny Green that was supposedly too slow, too methodical, too dumb.  It was the most shocking result I never expected to see.  A Danny Green win I could see.  A KO win, perhaps.  But Round 1?  You’re a liar if you say you saw that coming.

I felt terrible for the fans who waited on the edge of their seat all night through the crappy undercards and delays, and blah, all over in 122 seconds.  Great value for money.  On the other hand, I felt relieved that I didn’t make the trek down to watch the fight on the big screen, not when the fight was available on YouTube in its entirety shortly after it was all over.

Since then I have watched the fight about half a dozen times.  Here, you can too, thanks to YouTube.  It’ll only take a couple of minutes.

Is there much point in recapping or analysing?  Contrary to the opinion of Jones groupies who refuse to realise this is a 40-year-old man who has been brutally knocked out twice (and has never been the same since), Roy Jones Jr did not throw the fight.  He was, as always, cautious in the first round, but I think it was clear he wasn’t prepared for Green’s pressure.  In the 122 seconds the fight lasted, Jones only threw left jabs.  Not a single right hand, not a single left-handed power shot.  All he did was back up and jab.  It only took Green 30 seconds to corner him for the first time and land some decent punches.

And the overhand right that knocked Jones down (74 seconds in) and effectively ended the fight landed in virtually the exact same way and the exact same spot as Glen Johnson did back in September 2004 – right in the temple – except back then, Jones didn’t get up for more than 3 minutes.  They say once you get knocked out like that, you’re never the same, and that was Roy’s second consecutive brutal KO (the first coming in his previous fight against Antonio Tarver some 4 months earlier).  Maybe Jones has a glass head (ala his mate Anthony Mundine), but he has always dropped his left hand low.  Back in the day when he had unparalleled reflexes, he could get away with that, but at 40 years old, it became a massive opportunity for Danny Green.

The fight probably should have been stopped earlier when Green pounced on Jones immediately after the knockdown, where Jones was fed a steady diet of ripping shots without throwing back or even attempting to tie up his opponent.  But the referee allowed things to go on (perhaps not wanting to be criticised for ending things too quickly), and for a while, it almost looked like Jones was going to last the round.  So I suppose there is some merit in arguing that the referee stopped the fight prematurely, but when a fighter doesn’t do anything except get pounded against the ropes for almost a full minute and with 40 seconds still to go in the round, you can’t fault the referee for stepping in.

To be honest, few people around the world cared about this fight (which is why it happened in Australia, where the time zone ousted the majority of boxing fans in the US and Europe).  The people that did were probably already looking forward to the now-in-tatters, 17-years-in-the-making fight between Jones and Bernard Hopkins.  However, this didn’t stop the Australian media from billing this as the biggest fight the country had ever seen.  Sadly, it may have been true.

Jones got paid a reported $10 million for making the trip down under.  That’s $5 million per minute in the ring.  I’m sure he wanted to win, but I think he’s more disappointed about the fight with Hopkins going down the drain (as Hopkins won his ‘tune-up’ fight) than losing to Danny Green.

Where to now for both fighters?  I think there is a chance they Jones-Hopkins II could still go ahead.  When mega money is involved, anything can happen, and Hopkins has already been trying to talk down the loss.

Of course, Danny Green and his team think (erroneously) that they are now going to get the big bucks.  I don’t think so.  Yes, Jones will go down in history as one of the greatest of his era, but the win won’t open up the type of lucrative deals they think will start flooding in.  Not to say Green isn’t a solid fighter capable of beating the top fighters, but let’s put things in perspective.  Green was relatively unknown outside Australia before the fight, Jones was way past his prime, the fight took place in Australia, and most of all – Green just doesn’t have the requisite charisma or flashy style to be a superstar.  They are already talking about possibly going up to heavyweight to take on 147-year-old Evander Holyfield.  Seriously.