Roy Jones Jr‘s legacy in the sport of boxing still stands alone despite making his debut back in 1989.
The four-division world champion remains the only man to kick off his campaign at super-welterweight and go on to win a world heavyweight title, maintaining his spectacular reflexes and the power behind those leaping left hooks as he went.
His résumé consists of plenty of big names and talented fighters, but it was the super-middleweight ranks in which he feels he came up against the very best.
Whilst he reserves smartest for Bernard Hopkins and strongest for Merqui Sosa, Jones awards the top award to one James Toney. He explained why as part of The Ring Magazine’s Best I Faced feature.
“James Toney probably had the best defense of all of them. You couldn’t hit him flush; he was so elusive, the hip movement and the shoulder roll made it very difficult to hit him with a clean shot.
He had all the tools, he was hard to hit, he could knock you out at any time. He would be right there in your face and you still couldn’t hit him flush.”
‘Lights Out’ Toney was a three-weight world champion whose counterpunching and defensive prowess led him to an incredible 77 wins over the course of an almost three decade long career.
Jones was one of the ten losses on his record, a unanimous decision at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in which the referee ruled a knockdown against Toney when he was held up by the ropes in the third – only the second time he had been given a count in his 47 fight career at that point.
Like Jones, Toney would go on to challenge for a world heavyweight title twice. He won the first bout but it was overturned due to a failed doping test.
