After his pathetic performance against Bernard Hopkins on April 3, 2010, Roy Jones returned to the ring as a cruiserweight a year later on May 5th, 2011 in Moscow, the Soviet Union. He took on a guy named Denis Lebedev, weighed in at 198 3/4 lbs., but it made no difference. He was knocked out late in the tenth, and it could only make me scratch my head. Why was he still fighting?
Still refusing to quit, he fought a guy named Max Alexander in Atlanta, on December 10, and won a 10 round decision. Six months later, saw him win another decision against some guy named Pawel Glazewski. Eighteen months passed before his next fight, in Moscow again, where he won another twelve round decision.
I saw none of these fights, and quite frankly didn’t care. Roy’s name would pop up in Ring magazine, once in a while, and I just winced in disgust.
Jones to continue to fight mostly abroad for the next three years, and none of his opponents are worth mentioning.
On February 17, 2017, Jones came to Wilmington, Delaware to fight a bare knuckle boxer named Bobby Gunn. Out of curiosity, I made the 40 miles trek to see the ex-champion one last time in person. The fight went according to plan, with Roy stopping the overwhelmed Gunn in the eighth. Jones would in reality fight one more time, the following year of 2018, before finally hanging up the gloves at 49. I try to remember Jones in his prime, when for a ten year period, he was one of the best fighters I ever saw. Harsh reality has clouded those feelings though, because Roy became like too many professional boxers become. They simply stay too long.
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