Roy Jones Jr would love to see a fight between two former world champions, Anthony Joshua and Andre Ward.
Joshua was once a unified three-belt ruler in the banner division with explosive punching power who stopped the likes of Wladimir Klitschko, Dillian Whyte and beat Joseph Parker on points.
Right now, he is without a belt, having been beaten twice by Oleksandr Usyk and then stopped by Daniel Dubois last time out in September 2024.
Ward once ruled the super-middleweight and light heavyweight division with wins over the likes of Carl Froch and Sergey Kovalev, though retired in 2017.
Another man who claimed world honours at 168lbs and 175lbs was boxing legend Jones Jr, and speaking to Talk Sport Bet, he admitted that Ward has long been keen on the fight with Joshua and that he sees it as an even contest.
“When you’re a warrior, just because you’ve retired doesn’t mean anything. That war still lives in your heart. That war still lives in his heart. And that was something he wanted to do even before he retired.
“So that fight has been there for a while, he just never said much about it. But that war, that fight right there, has been in him for a long time. He even had a knack that he could beat AJ for a long time.
“So, when a guy has a knack like that, it’s kind of hard to ignore that. It’s a reason, or it’s something he sees that makes him feel like he can pull that off. Now, that’s the kind of fight that the world should be willing to pay for.
“That’s a spectacle, and that’s gonna be a real, actually, 50-50 fight. AJ’s much bigger, don’t get a twist there, AJ’s a hell of an athlete, but Andre has impeccable skills and is impeccable with range. So, that makes it a 50-50 fight for me.”
Joshua is looking for an opponent after more than a year out and has said he would fight Jake Paul, though many are hoping he and Tyson Fury will instead be able to get it on sometime in 2026.
