By Geoffrey Ciani: I was utterly baffled when I first heard word of a fight signed between former elites, Roy Jones Junior and Felix “Tito” Trinidad. Upon hearing the news, all I could think to myself was, “WHY?” On the surface, this fight made absolutely no sense—none whatever—except, of course, in terms of the Almighty Dollar.
Roy Jones has spent much of his career opting for the path of “least” resistance. This is not to say that he is, quite literally, seeking out the softest opposition available, but rather, that there is always some angle being exploited when Roy picks and chooses his opponents. Case in point, Roy’s recent choice of opponent, Trinidad, has never had a single contest north of the middleweight division. Against Jones, Trinidad will inexplicably be fighting at the 170 pound limit! On the surface, this may seem like a reasonable jump in class, especially when one considers Winky Wright recently made an identical jump to square off against Bernard Hopkins.
There are, however, several differences between Winky’s jump against Hopkins and Trinidad’s jump against Jones. For starters, unlike Hopkins, who spent most of his career fighting as a middleweight, Roy Jones has spent the bulk of his career fighting in higher weight classes, having once even secured an alphabet title from heavyweight pugilist, John Ruiz. Winky and Hopkins had both competed with great success in the 160 pound weight class, and each made the jump up at approximately the same time. Trinidad never shared their level of success in that weight class. In fact, not only was middleweight the heaviest division Trinidad ever fought in, but he only had mixed success there, including two one-sided losses against none other than Hopkins and Wright.
Since being stopped in devastating fashion in his rematch with Antonio Tarver, Jones has made some peculiar career decisions. Instead of opting for a rubber match with Tarver in order to settle the score and prove he was still the best light heavyweight in the world, he instead opted to face Glen Johnson in a battle for the IBF belt. The fact that Roy chose not to settle the score was quite telling—he obviously did not believe the Tarver victory was a fluke based on a lucky punch, as many pundits claimed. The Tarver loss, considered by most the only true loss on Roy’s resume at that time, did something which rattled Jones’s confidence; instead of daring to be great and immediately jumping back into the ring with Tarver, he looked for an easier route to call himself ‘champion’.
As things turned out, the path of “least” resistance proved to be a better fight than Jones anticipated as Glen Johnson applied relentless pressure throughout the contest before brutally stopping Jones in the ninth stanza. The image of Roy Jones sprawled out on the canvas for several minutes after the knockout was surreal. At that moment, I thought Jones should have retired; over three years later, I still maintain this belief.
After losing back-to-back contests against Tarver and Johnson, Jones made another peculiar decision—he demanded the rubber match with Tarver. On the surface, this seemed a suspicious move, especially in light of how passive Roy was in his previous contest with Johnson. Once the fight happened, my suspicions came to light—Jones did not show up to try and win the rubber match, but instead, merely showed up to survive. Watching Jones clown around without making a winning effort was an even sadder sight than seeing the dazed look on his face after he was knocked out by Johnson. The biggest shame in all this is that the one round Roy actually put fourth some effort (the fifth), he tagged Tarver with some great shots and visibly hurt him. But instead of following this successful round with more of the same, Roy went into some weird survival-taunting mode that seemed rather unbecoming of a world class athlete.
After losing the rubber match with Tarver, it once again appeared to be an opportune time for Roy to hang up the gloves, but he was not quite ready to call it a day. Next up, Jones won an ugly one-sided affair against the unheralded Prince Badi Ajamu. Although Jones was the decisive victor, winning every round in the contest, barring the first, when Ajamu staggered him early, it was clear to all who witnessed this contest of mediocrity that the Roy Jones of old was finished, and he was never coming back. Worse yet, it was not as if Jones was just trying to secure one last win under his belt, as evidenced by his subsequent match-up against Anthony Hanshaw.
The strangest thing about this unholy pairing of Jones and Trinidad is that each fighter has a logical foe he could be facing at this time. For Jones, that man is personified in the form of one Bernard Hopkins, and for Trinidad, it is Oscar De La Hoya. A rematch between Jones and Hopkins makes sense in terms of both money and legacy as does a rematch between De La Hoya and Trindad. Although a match between Jones and Trinidad makes sense financially, and even though they are both marquee name fighters, I am hard-pressed to see how boxing historians will use this fight as a justification in any debate regarding the ‘greatness’ of either fighter.
Make no mistake, Felix Trinidad is a hand-picked opponent for Roy Jones. Trinidad provides big name recognition, big money, and the potential for huge PPV sales. Trinidad has not been even remotely competitive at a world class level in over seven years, when he was thoroughly outclassed by Bernard Hopkins. Since then he has had two wins—a meaningless fight against Hacine Cherifi and a decent scrap against Ricardo Mayorga, both of which he won by way of knockout. Other than that, he has only had one other contest, and that was a total mismatch in which he was thoroughly outclassed by Ronald “Winky” Wright in a fight where Trinidad clearly lost all twelve rounds of the bout. The loss to Wright, which happened in the middleweight division, was almost three years ago.
What does all of this mean? I think it means that Jones and Trinidad are both trying to cash out on their name recognition before calling it quits. A win for Jones should set up another lucrative bout with someone, and win or lose, I think Trinidad will always have the option of a lucrative rematch with the boxing’s ‘Golden Goose’, Oscar De La Hoya. In the meantime, both men can fatten their bank accounts by fighting each other—and that’s the only aspect about this fight that makes sense!
Expect Jones to outclass Trinidad, using his size and speed to his advantage. Trinidad’s only chance in this one is if Jones gets careless on the ropes, affording Trinidad an opportunity to blast him away with a punch Jones never sees coming, but I find this outcome extremely unlikely. Instead, I suspect Jones will probably win via mid-to-late round stoppage in a fight where neither fighter looks overly impressive, and both come across as shadows of their former selves. In fact, I would not be the least bit surprised if the under card match-up between Chicago heavyweights Andrew Golota and Mike Mollo proves more entertaining.
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geoff@eatthemushroom.com
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