Your forgot the 1 in front. 12 fights at LHW. 8 inside the distance. 4 defenses of his undisputed title. I grew up in the 70 and 80’s so I got to see a lot of that.
And he didn’t carry guys like Lou Del Valle for 12 rounds when he could have and should have been finished in 3.
Did I mention that time RJJ blitzed that full time policeman and part time boxer Richard Frazier?
You may know me as Joe the Policeman from the What’s Going Down episode of That’s my Mamma.
He fought basically nobody at LHW my nigga lol.
He was an absolutely amazing athlete. He was also an NBA level point guard (not star level or anything, but could hang)who would regularly have pickup games with gia NBA buddies at his mansion in Pensacola. He was also a state champ wrestler in high school. I always thought of all the boxers that would have transitioned well to mma, he would have been up with the best. Imagine him with 4 oz gloves and already knows how to defend a takedown.
I think that only being able to throw hands, and sometimes having to take a beating for 12rds takes a special kind of mental fortitude that mma doesn’t always demonstrate. I love mma and the constant danger from all limbs but just using hands is a unique discipline. And those hands are so far advanced compared to mma that someone with RJJ’s speed would likely catch anyone shooting in for a TD.
This is the only thing I don’t fully agree with, but I’m not going to pontificate about it right now.
I asked him if he were gonna fight MMA at Walmart in like 2012 lol
I agree. Roy was obviously a high level boxer and tactician as an amateur. What separated him most was his mental strength and focus on excellence. He maintained a very high level of conditioning throughout his career despite being levels above most fighters. You never saw him come in out of shape. It definitely helped that he was so good at counter punching, guys would effectively stop punching for fear of l being hit with counters and he could control the pace of almost every fight. He ended up in a lot of one sided boring fights as a result. His athleticism was so high that as he started to finally lose a step, his fundamentals had degraded to a point that were not the same. It seemed to my eye that he learned some unorthodox things he could do to people using his speed and once that diminished he could no longer do some of those same tricks like those outside pot shots and fading to the weak side. I also contend that he was so good that he fought the best years of his career 2 divisions too high because he was just so much better than everyone his size.
When i said anyone I would ammend that to say most mma fighters, not the top level wrestlers.
Roy never had to worry about takedowns or kicks and as a result, his feet were often wide allowing him to dart in and out, generally not great for mma defense.
Hes the obvious no1 pick for best pure athlete in any combat sport ever thats for sure.
Imagine if he’d retired after the Ruiz fight so we never had to see his long and brutal downfall. Bearing in mind he was already in his mid 30s and nearly 50 fights into his career at the time too so it would have been completely reasonable for him to have called it a day then.
Not only that but he cut all that muscle and still managed to beat Antonio Tarver in their first fight, alot of people forget that.
Tarver only got the rematch because he was the first person to give Roy a tough fight in 10 fucking years.
I agree with the OP, Roy at his peak is the best combat athlete to ever live.
Prime Roy would have cut through Tarver like a knife through butter
Good post
It had to be like fighting a cat. Or a swarm of bees.
I don’t like fucking with anything that’s that much faster than me.
In real time you can’t even see the punches they’re so damn fast.
My favorite KO ever. Art Serwano just saw the Ring right before the KO
Well RJJ put him out in the beginning and then the hugging master took over