Growing up as a young kid I was able to witness the amazing athletic abilities of Roy Jones Jr., he was almost like Neo from the Matrix in the ring, in his prime he could dodge and avoid punches with the quickness of a mongoose. When Roy lost his quick reflexes he got knocked out and was no longer the superman we once knew. For every boxer there comes a time when they should hang it up, and that is when they can no longer compete at the top level or their health is in question. Nobody can tell Roy Jones Jr. went to retire, only he can decide that for himself, but if he accepts a fight with Anderson Silva who is widely regarded as the best MMA fighter in the world, in MMA or boxing rules, he will be destroyed in a humiliating fashion.
Anderson Silva beats the Jones Jr. of today, but in his prime I think Roy Jones Jr. toys with him in a boxing ring, but Silva who is still in amazing shape and top of his game would beat Jones in a boxing match and possibly knock him out. If some journeymen boxers could put Roy down at this stage of his career what more would a guy like Anderson Silva in his prime who is no slouch with the hands do to him?
I personally hate to see the UFC throw washed up boxing legends into the cage just to make their product look better. What point does it prove putting an old James Toney in with a high level grappler like Randy Couture, everyone knows the wrestler will just take him down and that is what Couture did when he submitted Toney in the first round of an embarrassing mismatch. That point that a grappler would lose to a boxer was proven way back at UFC 1 when Royce Gracie submitted Art Jimmerson the one gloved boxer. To me it seems the UFC President Dana White is just using boxers to his advantage, he constantly has a love hate relationship with the sport, he bashes it and a minute later says he loves it, he uses Mike Tyson to go to his events and lets Tyson bad mouth the sport that made him millions, and then takes washed up boxers and throws them into the Octagon as prey for his lions. White would never allow any of his top MMA strikers to go into a boxing match to test themselves against the best boxers in the world even if it meant the fight would generate millions of dollars. The reason White won’t let it happen is because he feels if one of his UFC fighters would get humiliated or knocked out in a boxing match it would be a major blow to his product.
If I were an opportunist like Dana I would just allow Anderson to box Roy Jones in a boxing match in a ring not cage, and allow Anderson to fulfill his childhood dream. I highly doubt a washed up Jones beats Anderson Silva, Roy barely throws punches anymore. At least if Dana lets Anderson box Roy, which is what Silva wanted to do in the first place, it won’t look like he was severely handicapping Jones like he did to the past his prime James Toney when he tossed him in with Randy Couture. What’s next Dana paying nearly broke Evander Holyfield big money to go in the cage against Junior dos Santos?
