Roy Jones, Junior: Pound for Pound Businessman

The January 19th Roy Jones vs. Felix Trinidad fight epitomizes what should be the defining characteristic of Jones's career. Jones is defined neither by historic bouts nor by triumphing over great rivals. Although Trinidad was a great champion, the fight is a good match-up for Jones: Trinidad has been retired for more than two years; the road to outboxing him has been trod by Oscar de la Hoya, Bernard Hopkins, and Winky Wright; the fight is set for a catch weight of 170lbs, Trinidad has never fought above 160lbs, while Roy Jones's best weight was 168lbs and he has campaigned above that weight for years. It is a shrewd match-up for Jones, and it will make money because of Trinidad's legion of Puerto Rican fans. That has been the defining characteristic of Jones's career: good business deals.

The fight that truly began to define Roy Jones as a great businessman rather than a great champion was the April 1998 bout with Virgil Hill. That fight would have been a spectacular match-up for Jones, except that it took place a full year too late. When Roy Jones initially moved up to light heavyweight, Hill was the leading champion of the division. He had enjoyed two lengthy reigns as champion, with ten successive defenses each, suffering only one loss between them to the legendary Tommy Hearns. He was also coming off of a title unification win with well-established German champion Henry Maske. Hill was the man, and he had the WBA and IBF belts. Jones was the star, and he had the WBC belt. A unification match between them would have been a real championship event.

Instead, Jones lost his 1997 fight with Montell Griffin by disqualification. Jones pursued his pay-per-view rematch with Griffin. Hill, getting nowhere in negotiating a fight with Jones, went to Germany instead and was defeated by a rising tough guy Dariusz Michalczewski. Hill, suddenly exposed as aging and vulnerable, got his fight with Roy Jones and was knocked out by a rib-breaking body shot in the fourth round. The only problem was that by then nothing was at stake. Hill was no longer the man and no longer had any belts. Michalczewski had already beaten Jones to a bout that would have mattered, and used it the foundation of his career.

Jones then compounded the lost opportunity for a historic fight with Hill by never meeting Michalzewski. Given that Jones was robbed at the Seoul Olympics, his reluctance to meet Michalczewski in Germany was understandable, but with a fat purse and clout of HBO at his back, Michalczewski could have been lured to a big money fight in the United States. Instead, Jones pursued his much easier, HBO-sponsored light heavyweight unification bouts. Michalczewski had been stripped of the WBA and IBF belts he won off of Hill for the usual "political reasons," leaving them available for Lou del Valle and Reggie Johnson to claim. What these two Jones victims shared in common were that the most noteworthy name in both their resumes were losses to men that Jones had already defeated: del Valle in a narrow loss to Hill, and Johnson to James Toney. Neither fighter had done anything noteworthy since, unless you count winning their respective titles against unimpressive competition. Jones picked up both belts in fights that were noteworthy only because the belts were at stake, but that didn't matter so much to Jones because like most of his fights, they were low risk bouts that were on HBO's World Championship Boxing, and therefore paid well. Michalczewski went on to defend his remaining WBO belt 14 consecutive times, and against opposition that was generally superior to the fighters Jones would face during the same period.

This saga of missed opportunities and low risk, well-paid bouts defines Jones's career, and speaks very well to his skills as a businessman. It says nothing at all about his merit as a champion. During the same period Jones was enjoying his lucrative, highly favorable HBO contract, he was serving as a commentator for HBO. While this pattern was established in Jones's super middleweight career, it was truly solidified at light heavyweight. While Jones never met some of the excellent 168 pound fighters of his era - Nigel Benn, Steve Collins, Chris Eubank - he did at least fight James Toney and Sugarboy Malinga. Toney has withstood the test of time better than even Jones, and Malinga went on after his loss to Jones to score wins over Benn and Robin Reid. There is no one as noteworthy in Jones's entire light heavyweight resume. It was only at 175lbs that Jones campaigned as the fighter who fought journeymen and faded champions, making good bank for little or no risk.

So now Jones meets Trinidad, a fight that is being billed as "Better Late than Never." There was a lot of talk about Trinidad moving up to meet Jones in 2001, but Trinidad met Bernard Hopkins and the rest became great boxing history. Dramatic, history-making fights like Hopkins v. Trinidad cannot be said to have eluded Roy Jones, because he never strenuously sought them in the first place. With his reputation as a pound-for-pound boxing phenomenon firmly established at middleweight and in the early stages of his super middleweight period, he shrewdly wrung a great deal of money out of HBO, fighting on prime-time cable television against second-tier opposition. Jones v. Trinidad is more of the same. It sounds very off to describe a fight against a great champion like Trinidad that way, but when you look at the facts, it fits the Roy Jones, Jr. business plan perfectly.