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Roy Jones loses to +300 underdog Danny Green in Australia
By Zach Arnold | December 2, 2009
Oh my. Michael David Smith has the video proof of RJ getting beat.
Jones losing takes the steam out of Bernard Hopkins’ fight tonight in Philadelphia, which is scheduled to air live on Versus. The idea was for both Jones and Hopkins to win and have their fights shown on TV to set up a re-match. Not anymore.
Green is the second big underdog in as many weeks to get a big win (the other was Andre Ward beating Mikkel Kessler).
- The Associated Press: Green stops Jones from capturing belt in fifth different weight class
- AFP: Will the Jones/Hopkins fight happen next year?
- The London Telegraph: Green produced one of the greatest performances by an Australian boxer in history
- News.com.au: Stars come out for Green/Jones bout
- The Australian: Fight for the ages over in a moment
- The Sydney Morning Herald: Danny Green puts Roy Jones on deck and into likely retirement
- The Sydney Morning Herald: Danny Green cruises, Roy Jones bruises
- The Sydney Morning Herald: Danny Green daze as legend blown away
- The Sun (UK): Defeat destroys Roy’s dreams
- Boxing Scene: Roy Jones offers no excuses, Danny Green blasts the critics
- Steve Cofield: Jones-Hopkins II ruined — Green raids the party with a knockout
Topics: Boxing, Media, Zach Arnold | 30 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Its not a totally shocking upset, but its definitely not one a lot of people were betting on. That +300 line is probably because the Aussies bet it down to that.
No idea what Hopkins does now. He won’t fight any of the young kids anywhere from 160-heavyweight – he can’t make enough money doing it, and a lot of them are in the Super Six. Can’t really fight Jones now. I’m guessing he announces his retirement tonight.
Since people love BIZ BIZ BIZ, its all about Green anyways. This sets up a few possible fights, including an immense rematch with Anthony Mundine. The first fight headlined an all day PPV in Australia and filled a football stadium. The rematch could be bigger.
It’s amazing how fast things change in the fight game. And on fight forums.
Mercifully, we’re going to stop reading the posts about how Roy Jones Jr. would “destroy” or “embarrass” or “outclass” Anderson Silva in a boxing match.
They’re going to disappear faster than the “Dana White is afraid sign Matt Lindland because he would destroy Anderson” posts.
Honestly, fighting Danny Green is different than fighting Anderson Silva. Danny Green was a former two division belt holder who should by all rights be 30-1 instead of 28-3. Anderson Silva, while a great MMA fighter, hasn’t had a boxing match of any sort in years, much less at a world title level.
Actually, Ultimo invoking Anderson’s name is a worthy thing. The Roy Jones fight was a big money maker for Anderson that he was looking to get out of his UFC contract to get. With that fight potentially off the table, Anderson may end up getting his elbow strength back faster than expected.
I hope Hopkins retires soon. He’ll be 45 next month and the reflexes can’t last forever
Zach,
I think this loss kills the Jones-Hopkins fight as PPV event. But Jones is still a big enough name, to where HBO may be inclined to put the fight on regular HBO.
Even before this last fight, I thought Hopkins would give Jones a lot of problems. At the age of 45, he is more durable then Roy at the age of 40. If this fight still happens, it’s going be a pretty one sided affair.
It’s sad to see guys like Couture, Shamrock, RJJ, Hopkins, and Holyfield fight. But it worse when they win because you know it will keep them around for another year or more…..
I don’t think Silva-Jones is hurt by this. The whole point of that fight would be seeing how one of the best strikers in MMA fares against a boxer to either give MMA striking its due or prove that boxers are superior. It wouldn’t be a title contention fight it’s a special attraction fight that’s closer to something like a pure boxing version of Ali-Inoki.
With Silva’s speed, accuracy, power and a granite chin, I think I’d put my money on him in a boxing match vs. RJJ.
If we went back in a time machine to watch today’s prime A.Silva vs. the prime RJJ of yesteryear, that’s a different story. But in 2010, I see Jones getting KTFO.
Badly.
With Silva’s speed, accuracy, power and a granite chin, I think I’d put my money on him in a boxing match vs. RJJ.
Displays of bewildering handspeed against Patrick Cote are a little different than a display of bewildering handspeed against someone like Jeff Lacy.
I’m not entirely sure about that. While he does have being in the prime of his career in his advantage, he’s going into a whole new world. In a MMA fight, yes Silva wins without question. But boxing is a different world, which lots of MMA fans (not saying you, Santa) can’t grasp. Their assumption is “I see Shane Carwin knock people out so he’d beat Wladimir Klitschko.” But in boxing an MMA fighter would have to deal with new angles, more movement, more blocking, bigger gloves, and most importantly guys who do nothing but train their fists all day while they split their time between kickboxing, wrestling, and jiu jitsu training. But at the same time Wladimir Klitschko would get destroyed in a MMA fight.
I know Silva would get significant training by a good boxing camp before taking the fight, but RJJ has way too much experience to say Silva winning is a gimme.
Maybe Hopkins will lose tonight and then they’ll have an excuse for the RJJ rematch to go on as planned.
On a personal note, I’m happy about this because my friend who bets everything asked me about this fight and I told him to bet heavy on Green.
The only people really interested in it only care about their superstardom rather of the fight being relevant to the boxing landscape so I see no reason to cancel it now.
If you see the reasoning behind UFC wanting to do Ortiz/Couture, it’s not different than why you’d want to do RJJ/BHop: $$$
I admit that I know very little about boxing. K-1 and MMA, sure. But the allure of boxing has always eluded me.
I know it’s a different world, but not SO different that a striker of Silva’s caliber couldn’t take out someone like RJJ who seems like his best days are far behind him.
But I could be wrong.
It’s not impossible, but it’s not a sure thing like lots of people believe. His age is a absolutely a huge factor against him since Silva is 6 years younger. But he’s not Evander Holyfield, he still looked good against Jeff Lacy this summer so it’s not like he hasn’t had a strong showing in 5 years or something.
But the main difference in boxing vs. MMA is the defensive differences. Silva can slip punches through boxers can’t because of MMA’s 5 ounce gloves versus boxing using significantly larger gloves. You also can’t endlessly circle away in a boxing ring like the Octagon, there is more bobbing and weaving to avoid since you don’t have to worry about eating a knee there obviously. Not saying it’s impossible he’d beat Jones, but he’ll have a harder time than most MMA fans believe.
And as Alan pointed out, when is the last time Silva fought a dangerous striker anyway? Does Leben count?
Dude, Anderson Silva is 1-1 in boxing. Think about that. RJJ is one of the most accomplished boxers in the entire history of the sport. Roy has lost to Calzaghe, Tarver, Glen Johnson, Montell Griffin (DQ), and Danny Green. All of those guys are elite fighters. Just because you saw Anderson Silva holding his own in sparring against a low-level professional boxer doesn’t mean he can hold his own against Roy Jones.
I promise you that if Roy fought in mma against Leben, Griffin, Marquardt, and anyone else and none of them tried to take him down, he would embarrass the shit out of them; all the fights would end in under a minute. He’s too fast, too experienced, too good. Anderson looks so good against them because they are all slow and awful strikers. In boxing, the fact that he has quick hands doesn’t mean anything, because everyone else is fast.
That being said I hope Roy retires because I don’t want to see him take any more punches to the head.
Under special Shaw Family Rules? I still don’t know. I still say the new landscape goes both ways and he’d have issues. You can’t learn how to deal with kicks, knees, and relearning how to block punches with small MMA gloves overnight. Even Chris Leben who loves to slug it out would wisely try to throw him off his game with kicks and Muay Thai clinching rather than trade bombs on a suicide mission.
Roy wouldn’t need to block any punch, he would just move out of the way. MMA guys are so slow it is embarrassing. Further, kicking isn’t a good idea unless you are actually good at it. Can you imagine the difference between sparring with a bunch of wrestler with no handspeed and no boxing skills and fighting with Roy Jones? It would be like the difference in rolling with a white belt in jiu jitsu and BJ Penn.
Fun note for the day: Internet MMA fans suddenly realizes MMA clothing company Hoezler Reich might be racist, acts in mock horror, desperately tries to tell self that there is no undercurrent of racism in the sport.
More newz 4 u: Versus still wants MMA, so Zuffa will keep it coming:
http://mma.fanhouse.com/2009/12/02/wec-confirms-extension-with-versus/
So much for the hope that they were gonna be cut off. Would be interesting to see the terms of the contract though. Will it allow the UFC to port over the big names in the 135lb and 145lb divisions?
Shame that Zuffa has to keep itself fractionalized for such a minor TV deal.
“MMA guys are so slow it is embarrassing.”
A boxer has to throw a lot of punches everyday during practice, perfecting his speed. A Mixed Martial Artist needs to grapple, which builds up different muscles in their body. All of those built up muscles don’t exactly make for the quickest hands. That’s why it is two different sports. That will never change. You could take some of the world’s best boxers and have them train grappling for 5 years, and you would also notice a considerable speed slowdown on them….
“I promise you that if Roy fought in mma against Leben, Griffin, Marquardt, and anyone else and none of them tried to take him down, he would embarrass the shit out of them; all the fights would end in under a minute.”
Typical BS that really has no basis of reality. The mere threat of a takedown automatically takes away a lot of speed and power away from a boxer’s hands. At least a pure boxer with minimal grappling experience. There are so many variables in just the stand-up aspect of MMA that are just non-existent in boxing. From various strikes to clinching (that isn’t broken up by a ref), to the takedown threats.
Gabriel Gonzaga vs. Mirko Filipovic is a perfect example of how the ground game can change a striker. The abuse Mirko took on his back turned him into C-Level kickboxer on his feet.
We have never seen K-1 guys completely take over in MMA. I can’t see the same thing happening for boxing. People want to believe in this fighting art form that is somehow unstoppable. First it was BJJ, then it was wrestling…. I guess boxing is the last remaining art for people to grasp at straws….
It is a common saying that if you hit a black belt once, he turns into a brown belt. Hit him again and he turns into a purple belt (or something like that)….
I believe the same thing rings true for boxers. Each time they are taken down, their level of striking goes down considerably.
45 you must not have read anything I wrote. I said in a fight with no takedowns. Sorry you had to write all that based on nothing. Also, LOL at grappling making people slower. That’s incredibly stupid. I guess all of Fedor’s sambo has hurt his handspeed, so has GSP’s wrestling training, so has Aldo’s jiu jitsu, same with Anderson Silva, Mike Swick, Paul Daley, etc. Honestly I have no idea how you can type that with a straight face.
I think you are trying to excuse the lack of speed in mma, and while most objective people would look and realize it is because there aren’t as many fast athletes, you want to say it is because of grappling, even though many of mma’s best athletes come from grappling backgrounds.
For the record, I don’t think any fighting art is unstoppable, I just am smart enough to realize that most mma fighters would be boxers if they were good enough because they would be making higher purses. Would Urijah Faber beat Floyd Mayweather in a mma match? Probably, but I guarantee you Urijah would rather have Floyd’s skill set and paycheck than his own.
Until MMA’s purses catch up with boxing’s, there aren’t going to be as many world-class athletes in mma as in boxing; it isn’t complicated.
LOL at K1. K1 is a joke. Outside of Thailand and Holland, Thai boxing/kickboxing is just for people who like to strike but aren’t athletic/tough enough to make it in boxing.
FFS Tom Erikson beat Mike Bernardo, Bob Sapp beat Hoost twice, and Rampage beat Cyril Abidi with basically the skills of a streetfighter. Francois Botha came into K1 at almost 40 yrs old and proceeded to beat Aerts and LeBanner, 2 of the 5 best K1 fighters of all time. K1 striking sucks.
Your post was also fairly inarticulate–“the threat of a takedown makes a boxer’s hands slower” LOL what is that? I didn’t know a takedown had the ability to physically change the attributes of another man. Takedowns must be magic.
Roy Nelson seems destined to be the Mac Danzig of this season, being the known quantity journeyman who beats a field of under and overachieving nobodies and rookies for a contract he probably should have had to begin with. This long episode was like a burial of guys, not an endorsement. Schaub I seriously doubt winning give Nelson’s strong wrestling (which held down Schaub in the first against Wren) and excellent chin.
Wren and Madsen are the next best, and they’re way, way off in the distance. I know there’s a cult fascination with Big Baby, but the dude is trash standing and has no chin. Bad combo in the UFC. He can’t really wrestle either.
For somebody who claims I wasted a post, you sure as heck had a long rebuttal…. And your comments basically said MMA without the threat of a takedown, which just isn’t realistic. Wheather a Nathan Marquardt shoots in on him or not is beyond the point. The fact that it is an option changes the mentality.
“Also, LOL at grappling making people slower.”
GSP’s strategy against BJ Penn was to grapple for the first 5 minutes to wear out his arms and make his striking slower. I think GSP knows more then all of us on how to fight. But I’m sure you know better then him.
Holding a guillotine choke really tight for a minute has been known to gas out the arms. That would also slow down the punches. Need I continue with how wrong you are once again?
“Your post was also fairly inarticulate–”the threat of a takedown makes a boxer’s hands slower” LOL what is that? I didn’t know a takedown had the ability to physically change the attributes of another man. Takedowns must be magic.”
If a pure striker puts all of his power into a punch, he is leaving himself wide open for a takedown. Very simple lower your level and drive through your opponent type of stuff. Beginner takedown lessons would work. It is much harder to fully commit to a strike when takedowns are involved. That means where the weight on your feet is balanced will be different, and so forth….
“Until MMA’s purses catch up with boxing’s, there aren’t going to be as many world-class athletes in mma as in boxing; it isn’t complicated.”
and
“I just am smart enough to realize that most mma fighters would be boxers if they were good enough because they would be making higher purses.”
This is where you are flat out wrong. Most of the grapplers try to avoid damage. They don’t want 12 rounds of getting their heads pounded in.
Most MMA fighters come from BJJ or wrestling. Guys like Josh Koscheck probably didn’t even strike into his 20’s. So he somehow would have been a boxer if he was good enough? More like he was a great wrestler who wanted to test his skills in the next level of combat, which is MMA.
There is a very different level of articulation between a top level MMA fighter and boxer (Klitschko’s not included). Each sport actually attracts a very different type of athlete.
45 your post is intellectually dishonest; I hope you don’t tell your students to blatantly change their arguments midstream and then pretend it is what they meant all along.
Here is what you wrote:
“A Mixed Martial Artist needs to grapple, which builds up different muscles in their body. All of those built up muscles don’t exactly make for the quickest hands. That’s why it is two different sports. That will never change. You could take some of the world’s best boxers and have them train grappling for 5 years, and you would also notice a considerable speed slowdown on them….”
To summarize: Grappling builds up muscle and building up muscle makes you slower (this is not even true, but it’s beyond the point–do you think Pacquiao is much slower at 147 than at 130? Do you think GSP is slower now that he has added muscle?).
Then your argument morphs to this:
“GSP’s strategy against BJ Penn was to grapple for the first 5 minutes to wear out his arms and make his striking slower. I think GSP knows more then all of us on how to fight. But I’m sure you know better then him.”
Basically, you went from saying that grappling builds muscle which makes you slower, to saying that grappling can make you FATIGUED.
Briefly addressing your other “points”:
-Complaining that the “Shaw MMA” is unrealistic is not a valid counterpoint. It is not my fault if you kant reed gud.
-It is also not my fault if you don’t speak English well enough to explain the difference between making someone more hesitant to punch and physically making someone slower. You didn’t come through with some kind of magical breakthrough by realizing that a fighter’s weight distribution is different in boxing than mma. However, that doesn’t change a fighter’s real hand speed.
-Most of the grapplers avoid damage? Oh that’s funny, I thought most of them are prizefighters and want to win fight of the nite bonus, as well as put on exciting fights so they don’t get released from the UFC. Gee, next time I see Koscheck slugging it out the entire fight or see Gurgel pretending to be a kickboxer, I will remember your words. Thanks for dropping knowledge on me.
I do agree that boxing and mma attract different kinds of athletes. Boxing attracts fast ones, and mma attracts slow ones. Of the few fast ones in mma, they have a much higher success ratio than of their slow brethren who make up the overwhelming mass of fighters in the sport. Hopefully, as the purses grow, we will see more fast fighters in mma.
LOL at the notion that the mma guys wouldn’t become star boxers and make 10x the money if they could. Thankfully the UFC is starting to pay guys more, but the % of revenues an event generates that goes to the fighters is still a lot lower than boxing PPVs.
Glad someone else caught the classic 45 “moving target” argument technique. Gotta love when the whole position of the argument changes midstream and then they call you the idiot…
Gaijin I think 45 considers himself brilliant because he can pull off the moving argument against the kids he teaches, but it, like TKD, doesn’t work in the real world (of the internet, lol).
I see the point 45 is trying to make, equating it to the belief that the more muscle you have to carry around the faster your body becomes tired (which is why boxing trainers are totally opposed to heavy weight training that most MMA fighters will do) But that’s only part of it. In reality the reason most MMA fighters don’t have as fast handspeed is, well, because they don’t have fast handspeed. They’re gifted in other areas and concentrate on that. It’s why baseball pitchers don’t worry about becoming prolific homerun hitters or football linebackers don’t worry about punting: they don’t have that athletic gift so they work on what they can do.
I think if an MMA fighter was totally convinced they would beat a boxer with superior timing, handspeed and defense, they’d walk away from UFC’s piddly $250,000 paydays and try to set up a multi-million dollar earning MMA vs. boxer fight. Beyond just talking about it for 4 years like Silva has done.
I think K-1 was laughable around about 2002-2004 (The Sapp/Akebono Years) but before and after that, from 1993-2001 and post ’04 a joke it certainly ain’t.
And that’s not including K-1 MAX.
No less a fighting expert as Bas Rutten has tremendous respect for K-1 fighters. And that should be enough for anyone.
How does the old saying go? “Everytime you think you find the answers, I keep changing the questions.”