“The older I get…the better I get.”
This was Roy Jones claim on the VT that ran before his ring entrance. Roy Jones was able, somehow, to keep a straight face.
Walking to the ring, he looked ancient. During the American national anthem he appeared to age. Lebedev is not a great puncher, but he is a cruiserweight with a 72% KO ratio and Jones is a fighter whose best days were some 32 pounds south and whose punch resistance had evaporated. The opening bell was a nervous moment.
Roy handled himself well though, and although he wasn’t moving particularly fast, he was moving well and with good economy. Retaining his energy was going to be a necessity against Lebedev. Although his footwork was not particularly graceful or quick he was well organised and looked to keep the pressure on. Roy flashed out a lightning right hand reminiscent of his younger days at the two minute mark and nicked the round, seemingly feeling good after his dead-man walk to the ring, hooting as he boxed..
Lebedev was still to find his range in the second and Roy was allowed to do what he liked for the first minute of two, which was nothing. Coming to life a little in the last minute, he threw out one of his glamour-feint right hands, showing the birdie and then lunging in full-blooded, but Lebedev neatly sidestepped in what was an excruciating moment for Roy.
As we’ve been saying for nearly a decade now, a couple of years back, Jones would have killed this guy.
Lebedev is not a great fighter and arguably can only be named “contender” in the bereft 200lb division in an era with four belts available. He was clearly in the fight though, and there was a horrible sense that “Superman” was beginning to tire even towards the end of the second.
In the third, Roy moved far to much and started to look tired. In his prime (was there ever a more referenced prime?), Roy’s fits and twitches were pre-cursors to hard counter-punches, launched-from-nowhere over the top hooks, all time-great body punches and blinding speedster combinations. Now, they are just expended energy. Roy brought little or nothing in behind these weird shucks and jives. Still, the opportunity to win the fight was probably there. Lebedev spent the whole fight begging to be jabbed, his right hand low, coming forwards in tiny increments, chin propped up when he threw or pawed. Roy threw a handful of jabs at best. His fans will remind you time and again that it was “not a punch he even needed” in his heyday, and that might even be true, but the consequence was that he never learned to win a fight with it.
In the fourth, he looked harassed and uncomfortable, pushed around by Lebedev’s limited physicality and cuffing punches. The fifth was a closer round, but Roy was incapable of keeping any kind of pressure on behind the occasionally hurtful pot-shot. Lebedev was being allowed to bring attacks when he chose and relax when he chose whilst Jones was forced to fight in an alarmingly disorganised fashion sometimes, whenever Lebedev wanted to bring it.
The sixth saw a hopeful mini-resurgence for Roy as he tossed out some cute shortarm blows which made up a pair of decent one-twos, as well as landing the harder shots overall, but in the early part of the seventh he was caught by some borderline rabbit punches which disturbed him greatly. He had made a similar but more reasoned complaint in the first, here his attitude was disturbing as he seemed to want to cry off for a moment when the referee waved them in, indicating that no infringement had occurred. Roy dipped his head, half turned away, they eventually touched gloves and boxed on.
Roy did nothing in a round that Lebedev completely failed to stamp his authority on despite a near-shade filling the other pair of gloves in the ring.
The ninth was the best round of the fight, Roy Jones looked lively, like he was perhaps even enjoying himself for the first time since the first round (or arguably 2002). He countered both the space and the man beautifully, and landed a genuinely great left hook to the body at the 1:30 mark. For a moment it looked like he might make a surge and for the first time in the fight take real control, but a hard punch down the pipe discouraged him. Still, he was able to box back when Lebedev came on strong, landing the best punch of the fight so far, a hard left hook upstairs which had his man in a seconds worth of trouble. Of course, nine years ago a second was all Roy would have…you know the rest.
The tenth round looked like something that the two men were going to see out. Roy likely knew that he had not done enough to win a decision and Lebedev knew that he likely had. Looking once more for the ropes, Jones was backed up all the way, Lebedev advancing with a steady but unspectacular pressure when he suddenly split the Jones guard with an innocuous looking left, and then another more serious looking punch. Jones, suddenly disorganised and sagging now had only a strict technical guard to protect him, and Lebedev crashed through it with a right hand, following this up with a screwed-on uppercut as Jones began to sag forwards. Referee Steve Smogger was looking and looking, but like most of the rest of us just hadn’t seen anything all that disturbing until the uppercut. Likely, by the time that punch landed, Jones was already on his way to the canvas unconscious.
Lebedev did not celebrate. He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. Likely unconvinced by his own knockout punches he was also concerned for Roy’s health, all of us watching were, there was not a spark of movement as he was rolled onto his back. Lebedev’s seemingly good rather than great punches had knocked Jones every bit as unconscious as the blows landed by Johnson or Tarver.
The relief was palpable when Roy gingerly opened his eyes and tried to sit. He would remain seated on either the canvas or the his stool for the next six minutes whilst Lebedev was interviewed at length.
There comes a time in a fighter’s career where he begins to hurt his legacy and reputation by fighting on. Then, if he fights long enough all of that stops mattering because the damage has been done. Jones likely reached that point when he was stopped in one by Danny Green. Everybody knew his fight with Hopkins was just a sideshow and everybody knew that Roy was going to Russia to play second fiddle, for the first time in his career.
If a fighter continues to fight on past this point, people become deeply concerned for their physical and mental well being. But this is the fight game. For as long as a corpse can make an old man money he will be allowed to put himself at great risk. Even this can become normal as it has done for Evander Holyfield.
But Holyfield hasn’t started to accumulate dangerous knockouts like they were scout badges. I remember Roy when he lived a dream so impossible it was sometimes hard to believe what you were seeing. He made lightning look slow. Roy, you must retire now before you get seriously hurt.
Roy’s time in front of the microphone was brief post-fight. The only memorable thing he said:
“I don’t give up easy! I still might come back!”