Roy Jones Jr. legacy and continued trainer influence debated in boxing mailbag

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From saad: How much difference do you think a trainer can make? If you were building a fighter from the ground up, what trainer would you choose to develop him? If you had to pick a trainer to get a world level fighter ready for one big fight, who would you choose? I think a trainer CAN make a lot of difference. I’ve said before that I think trainers get too much credit when fighters are doing well, and too much blame when they aren’t. There are obviously exceptions to that idea, and those exceptions are always pretty clear. But end of the day the fighter has to execute the game plan, and I think you can generally get a sense when it’s a bad plan vs when it’s a tough performance. The biggest thing is the mesh of personalities with trainer and fighter. That doesn’t get enough focus, you can take a truly great trainer And honestly, if I were picking a trainer and everyone ever is available, it’d definitely be one of the old-timers, someone long dead like Eddie Futch, even if they don’t understand what a “pool noodle” even is. If I had to pick from today’s field, I’d go Robert Garcia. From Degys: A short one, open to everyone – who’s the boxer who reinvented himself the most in your opinion, past or present. There’s often sentiment (right more often than wrong) that trainer hopping, especially past the age of 30 won’t help, as in “can’t teach old dog new tricks.” But have there been cases where that actually did happen? Let me open this one up to answers from the questions thread, because these would be two possible picks by me, and these comments already said what I would say, basically. Tyler Neves: “For me, Manny Pacquiao immediately comes to mind. He started as a one handed tornado of a fighter and continued evolving to the point where the right hook was possibly an even better weapon than his straight left. As he aged, he settled into a role as more of a boxer puncher and was still successful with a lot less foot movement than what he used in his prime.” Sunzshock: “I’d also shout out Manny Steward and his rebuild of Wlad Klitschko. Transformed him from a glass cannon that got KOed by Corrie Sanders and Lamon Brewster into a very difficult to beat jab and grab dominant champion. 16-0 under Manny Steward. I’d argue they would have kept the streak going and beat Tyson Fury if Steward hadn’t left us too young at age 68.” But I always feel mainly limited to what I’ve seen happen live, in real time, in my life. Those of you older than me or more expertly-versed in history beyond The Big Stuff might have some other answers. From SetonSeton: While Roy Jones becoming a champion at middleweight and heavyweight is an all time great accomplishment, John Ruiz was definitely one of the weakest HW champions in history. So who do you think is the best HW champion that RJJ was good enough to beat, regardless of era? If we’re not counting these “WBA regular” types and whatnot, I think the list gets pretty short. Where it gets tough is you could say he might have had a shot with Joe Frazier, Joe wasn’t a big guy by modern heavyweight standards — 5’11”, about 200-215 lbs in his best years. But I think he hit too hard, and I don’t think Roy would have dented him. Realistically it’s probably one of the old time heavyweight champs, who were actually genuine champs but weren’t bigger than Roy, really, and might get touched up by him pretty awful. But he’d have to have his jab going against anybody, it’d have to be sharp. Maybe on paper it seems like he’d have a shot with Usyk, but I don’t think he would have done well with Usyk at all. From Victhegoat2022: Boxing is a sport where the name of the game is to “hit and not get hit.” Shakur Stevenson is the embodiment of that, but yet he is called “boring.” Do you feel like that’s a disrespect to the sport of boxing?? Do you find Shakur Stevenson boring? I find him boring if his fight is boring, which sometimes it is. Sometimes I like watching him more than other people do. The whole thing isn’t new to boxing, guys who fight like Shakur have long had problems getting people to want to pay to see them outside of their home area. I can’t say I think it’s disrespect to boxing, boxing is a spectator sport people spend their time and money on. Maybe the most paywalled sport in the world at this point. They want to be entertainined. Shakur’s style is not one that is going to tickle the fancy of the average fan. From CRUCIFILTH: What kind of chance do you give Mbilli to beat Canelo? It’s gonna depend on Canelo and what he has left, but there’s much more of a realistic chance for Canelo to lose this fight than at any other fight he’s had, like, at or nearer to this level than the fights he actually has lost or GGG. From sp0rtsfan86: I know you at one time kept some odd hours because fights were almost always 10-11 PM on Friday and Saturday. With a lot more fights emanating out of Britain/Saudi have you shifted your sleeping/working schedule? PS the Olympic boxing overnight threads were always a good time when it was at 4-5 in the morning. I’ve kept odd hours pretty much all my life, still do to a degree, but I’ve also just gotten older. It’s a lot closer to normal nowadays, and the changing geographics of boxing have definitely had something to do with that. I do still enjoy an overnighter from Japan or Australia, though. And I loved those Olympic boxing sessions from London, Tokyo, and Paris. Rio was still fun, LA will be, too, but something about starting a day for two weeks with morning boxing really just feels right. From NonStop890: Favourite boxing films? You recommended Fat City during covid, which I bloody loved, and a while ago I recommended Jawbone, have you seen it? Haven’t seen Jawbone. Along with Fat City, I’m a huge fan of Rocky; the sequels are fun junk but the first movie is a pretty great film, and I like Rocky Balboa for moving the material back toward the original tone. I really liked Cinderella Man. I always watched Gladiator (with Brian Dennehy, Cuban Gooding Jr, and James Marshall) and Diggstown when they’d come on Showtime or The Movie Channel when I was a kid, still enjoy both movies. Raging Bull is a great movie, Girlfight is a great movie which I actually hadn’t seen until a couple years ago, but I loved it. I liked Creed! I thought the sequels were not as good. The Harder They Fall with Bogart is a good movie more than a “good boxing movie,” but is about boxing within a film noir, and I love that genre. Also it’s sort of boxing-adjacent and you’ll have to be able to handle watching a musical, but It’s Always Fair Weather is a great film, a lot more cynical and downtrodden than the average musical, wasn’t a hit on release but has been greater appreciated over the decades. From NotJJAgain: With it looking increasingly like the Super Bowl window for the Lions is closed or nearly closed, are you, like me, grateful for the return of the SOLs we grew up with? Or do you lament the loss of opportunity to hear weird phrases like “Detroit Lions, Super Bowl Champions”? Oh, it’s closed. I think that team is losing some of its spirit, too, and even more than just him clearly being an excellent offensive football coach, I think we can say now that Ben Johnson played a real role in that team being as peppy and tough as they were, because he’s getting that same sort of thing out of Chicago. To me it seems like Campbell’s cracking now in his second season of trying to work with a deeply flawed, .500-ish team and lacking the play calling of Johnson yet again. That attempt at a final drive last weekend was horrendous, and the defense can’t stop anyone despite Hutchinson’s best efforts.

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Who’s the best heavyweight champ Roy Jones Jr could have beaten? Plus more!