Two all-time greats came together during a new episode of the superb boxing podcast “All The Smoke.” Andre Ward, who of course hosts the podcast, got in the ring with fellow Hall of Famer Roy Jones, and the two discussed plenty of interesting things. Most fascinating among these topics was “dream fights,” or mythical fights.
Ward even asked Jones how a fight between the two of them would have gone, with the two having far too much mutual respect to come out boasting about how they would have done this or how they would have done that.
One very interesting mythical fight Ward quizzed Jones on was a fight between RJ and the lethal-punching Gerald McClellan. Now, as fans may know, Jones and McClellan did actually box back in the day, at amateur level, with McClellan winning on points. But as to how he would have tackled “The G-Man” in a pro fight, Jones had the following to say.
Forcing the G-Man to Fight on Your Terms
“G-Man was very difficult, because G-Man’s thing was, he always wanted to throw the right had. He’s gonna go through with it,” Jones Said. “If you threw a right hand and you rolled out to your right, he’s gonna jump in with a right hand/left hook – he did that a lot. So I understood that, and what I started doing was, I started keeping G-Man on the outside and forcing him to throw the fight, and then [I’d] go outside and fire back. You’ve got to force him to throw that [right hand] because that’s his best shot.
Leonard’s Model: Movement and Deception
“If you let him wait to throw it when he wants to, he gonna catch you with it. He’s used to hiding it and landing it. If you make him throw it, now you got it on your cards. That’s how I would’ve fought him. You cannot get hit with that right hand in the first four rounds. You cannot. I would’ve did the same thing that Ray Leonard did to Marvin [Hagler], I’d have made him keep moving around for the first four rounds.”
Jones basically said that McClellan, who was truly devastating
with his right hand, relied upon the shot a little too much, and that he would have had trouble changing tactics if the right hand wasn’t working for him. Again, a fascinating mythical match-up. Jones, at his blinding peak, was so hard to hit, but McClellan was so dangerous at every single moment a fight was in progress. This fight can be chalked up as one of the potential classics that never happened.
Sadly, we all know what happened in February of 1995, with Gerald being badly injured in his brutal fight with Nigel Benn. Jones has remained in touch with Gerald and he has helped out financially a number of times.
Who would have won had McClellan and Jones fought in, say 1995 or 1996, this if tragedy had not struck when it did?
