Roy Jones couldve been the GOAT at 185...no?

PalmStrike

PalmStrike

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Great fighting stance for adding kicks to his punches and super athletic.

He would've been awesome at 185...probably be broke financially today but he would've been awesome.


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LordMayorMuffSniff said:
He would have been a 170lb'er in his prime. Not 185.
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His prime? Middleweight?

Sure but he was a beast at light heavyweight, which went up to 180 and he would need to put on some muscle for grappling.

He defended the LHW belt 14 times before Tarver.
 
No.

Unless he simultaneously trained grappling for two decades but then if he was doing that he probably would not have been as good of a boxer as he turned out to be. Which means you probably would have never made this thread
 
Typrune Goatley said:
No.

Unless he simultaneously trained grappling for two decades but then if he was doing that he probably would not have been as good of a boxer as he turned out to be. Which means you probably would have never made this thread
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If he took up MMA after his middleweight run and focused on grappling or at least take down defense, he wouldn't lose his hand skills all of a sudden.

Mirko sucked on the ground in Pride but had good takedown defense.
 
You can never tell. How good does his cardio hold up while grappling? How well does he mix together grappling and striking, striking with small gloves, kick defense...although obviously as an elite fighter in a different discipline the possibility is there you can just never tell in MMA. Lots of super elite wrestlers and other elites in other disciplines fail in MMA, while others succeed.
 
PalmStrike said:
If he took up MMA after his middleweight run and focused on grappling or at least take down defense, he wouldn't lose his hand skills all of a sudden.

Mirko sucked on the ground in Pride but had good takedown defense.
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Mirko is once in a lifetime, maybe once ever.


He had the power and explosion and he had punches AND kicks. Everything he came into MMA with from the beginning was far more than Roy would have had at his starting point.

Lets also add to the fact Cro Cop trained with Fabricio fucking Werdum to learn grappling.

I don't know how his takedown defense got so good. Does anyone know who helped Mirko on his sprawl? I remember seeing videos before his MMA debut of him sprawling and then roundhouse kicking the shit out of a heavybag and then sprawling back down real quick. But he had to have worked with some high level wrestlers to develop that TDD.


Sorry for going off topic but I just think Mirko brought a lot more to the table than Roy. Roy would have been eaten alive by all the grapplers at 170 and 185 at any point in MMA history.

I think he could win a few fights and it would have been very entertaining but I just dont think he would have beaten any top 20 fighters unless he had at least 10 years of grappling.
 
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Typrune Goatley said:
Mirko is once in a lifetime, maybe once ever.


He had the power and explosion and he had kicks AND punches. Everything he came into MMA with from the beginning was far more than Roy would have had at his starting point.

Lets also add to the fact Cro Cop trained with Fabricio fucking Werdum to learn grappling.

I don't know how his takedown defense got so good. Does anyone know who helped Mirko on his sprawl? I remember seeing videos before his MMA debut of him sprawling and then roundhouse kicking the shit out of a heavybag and then sprawling back down real quick. But he had to have worked with some high level wreatlers to develop that TDD.


Sorry for going off topic but I just think Mirko brought a lot more to the table than Roy. Roy would have been eaten alive by all the grapplers at 170 and 185 at any point in MMA history.

I think he could win a few fights and it would have been very entertaining but I just dont think he would have beaten any top 20 fighters unless he had at least 10 years of grappling.
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Mark Hunt had a close fight against Crocop, actually a split decision win, after 1 year into mma and was as green as you can be, probably never trained grappling since he was lost in every grappling exchange, that's pretty much disprove your point of Crocop being once in a lifetime.
Mark Hunt and Crocop were nothing special, they were just better and a little more adapted or prepared compared to the others K1 guys that tried mma but failed miserably, like Le Banner, Leko, Cikatic.

MMA was still a growing and quickly developing sport in the early 2000, it was easier to be elite being one dimensional since almost every fighter was one dimensional.
The wrestlers that those guys faced like Kerr, Coleman and Randleman couldn't throw a punch to save their lives, being one dimensional was perfectly normal back in the day.

Now, a guy as gifted as Roy Jones? The guy could have been elite, for sure.
 
He won a silver medal in Olympic Boxing, so he would have likely been a dominant champion in whatever weight class he chose. Too bad he chose to make millions of dollars and fans, as well as becoming an excellent ambassador for U.S. athletes over fighting in a parking lot or garage, which is what he would have been doing as MMA existed, but not even in it's current form. It wouldn't have been called MMA.
 
Huge RJJ fan here, but I would say no.

The best quality of a champion is how he handles adversity. RJJ was probably the best specimen of all time in boxing, but he crumbled as soon as he got KO'd by Tarver. He was legitimately scared to exchange after that KO. I can't blame him obviously seeing as I am not a pro boxer, but to see him get humiliated by Johnson, Calzaghe, Tarver again, Green, Hopkins, etc. was sad. In MMA he surely would have been KO'd via a punch or kick somehow.

Basically I don't think he mentally had what it took. However, maybe he never gets caught and becomes the GOAT...who knows? Same with with Pacquiao, athletic freak but his style changed greatly after Marquez KO'd him. He never fought the same.
 
Not unless he'd secretly trained grappling simultaneously, and was epic at that too.
 
RJJ wold be the all time middleweight GOAT ........ of not for the fact the all time p4p goat was also a middle weight SRR. The guy had speed and Power only matched by SRR. IN MMA he would have learned tdd and been un beatable it he learned to kick.
 
First off, dumb thread ts. Way too many variable.

george14 said:
Huge RJJ fan here, but I would say no.

The best quality of a champion is how he handles adversity. RJJ was probably the best specimen of all time in boxing, but he crumbled as soon as he got KO'd by Tarver. He was legitimately scared to exchange after that KO. I can't blame him obviously seeing as I am not a pro boxer, but to see him get humiliated by Johnson, Calzaghe, Tarver again, Green, Hopkins, etc. was sad. In MMA he surely would have been KO'd via a punch or kick somehow.

Basically I don't think he mentally had what it took. However, maybe he never gets caught and becomes the GOAT...who knows? Same with with Pacquiao, athletic freak but his style changed greatly after Marquez KO'd him. He never fought the same.
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How you gonna judge a fighter's capability to handle adversity when all the adversity in their career came after he should have been stopped fighting. He wasn't the same fighter after coming back down from HW.
You outta yo mind, RJJ's mentality was fine.
 
george14 said:
Huge RJJ fan here, but I would say no.

The best quality of a champion is how he handles adversity. RJJ was probably the best specimen of all time in boxing, but he crumbled as soon as he got KO'd by Tarver. He was legitimately scared to exchange after that KO. I can't blame him obviously seeing as I am not a pro boxer, but to see him get humiliated by Johnson, Calzaghe, Tarver again, Green, Hopkins, etc. was sad. In MMA he surely would have been KO'd via a punch or kick somehow.

Basically I don't think he mentally had what it took. However, maybe he never gets caught and becomes the GOAT...who knows? Same with with Pacquiao, athletic freak but his style changed greatly after Marquez KO'd him. He never fought the same.
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He was 49-1, basically undefeated as his 1 loss was a DQ.

He had just beaten Tarver before getting knocked out in the rematch.

Isnt this simply a case of age and ring miles after 50 pro fights?

The wheels had to come off eventually.

49-0 before the Tarver loss...16-6 after
 
People in here acting like learning takedown defence is hard lol. Crocop, Hunt, Overeem, etc learnt TDD in literally a couple of months.

When you're an ELITE striker, TDD is basically ALL you need to learn when you first transition, BJJ, grappling, etc can come later down the track.

Combined with the fact that RJJ's boxing stance is the absolute perfect MMA stance, as proved recently by Whittaker. Whittaker fights with RJJ's exact boxing stance. Because having your lead hand down by your waist means you will instantly have underhooks in whenever your opponent goes for a takedown.

What we know is the elite strikers that can successfully transition to MMA %100 NEED 1 punch KO power or great footwork. Which is why I believe the 2 most recent boxers that could dominate in MMA with basic TDD training are RJJ and Pacquiao. As both have elite KO power (in 10oz+ gloves remember), great footwork, and absolutely ELITE speed.

RJJ with TDD would basically be Whittaker on steroids.
 
george14 said:
but he crumbled as soon as he got KO'd by Tarver. He was legitimately scared to exchange after that KO.
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To be fair to Roy, the Tarver KO happened 15 years into his career when he was 35 - that's the age when most guys go to shit.

Muhammad Ali, Ray Leonard, Ray Robinson, Pernell Whitaker, etc, were all dogshit at that age.

They stole his gold medal in Seoul Korea, lets look back at his whole career YALL MUSSA FORGOT

 
Just appreciate his phenomenal boxing skills and be happy with that; best athlete I've ever seen in the ring.
 
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