On December 2nd, all-time great Roy Jones Junior will travel to Australia to take on local tough guy and former WBC interim super-middleweight and WBA light-heavyweight champion Dan- ny Green in a fight that will contest "The Green Machine's" IBO cruiserweight bauble.
Set to square off in Sydney, 40-year-old Jones and 36-year-old Green's tussle could result in a fan-friendly and exciting fight. But is Jones, an impressive-looking winner over a pretty much shot Jeff Lacy last time out, pushing his luck and taking a genuine risk by fighting Green? Jones, 54-5(40) will be having his first fight outside of America and he will also be having his first fight at cruiserweight.. Also, it could certainly be argued that Jones will be facing his most lively and dangerous opponent since he was clearly out-pointed by the now retired Joe Calzaghe back in November of last year.
Green, 27-3(24), who has never been stopped, is as tough, strong and game as they come, and he will also be enjoying a fair amount of advantage when it comes to height and reach in December. Jones will have the advantage when it comes to speed - of both feet and hands - but what if the aggressive-minded warrior from Perth jumps right on Jones and makes it a physical encounter, not giving Jones room to breathe and get into his rhythm?
These tactics will surely be Green's best chance of scoring a win, and if he can keep up a good work-rate, like Calzaghe did, he could perhaps pull off the win. No-one is saying Green is as good a fighter as the last man to have beaten Jones, but with his steely chin, his relative freshness when it comes to number of hard and ageing fights and his home country advantage, Green could do something similar to what Calzaghe did to Jones.
Maybe taking this fight is a calculated risk on Jones' part, but it's a very real risk all the same. And are the possible rewards of victory worth taking a risk for? Sure, Jones will have kept his career going with a notable win (arguably his first since beating Antonio Tarver way back in 2003) and he will also have picked up yet another "world" title; albeit a small and largely unrecognised one - the IBO 200-pound strap. But what if Jones loses? How would it affect his ego if he were to suffer a loss in what is his first fight outside of the U.S and his first at a new weight? And what if, heaven forbid, Jones got KO'd for what would be a third time?
Jones has said before that he will go out of boxing on his own terms; surely that means he feels he will go out as a winner. But as good as he looked against an all but defenceless Lacy last month, picking up a win over Green is no gimme for R.J. Jones has been accused of playing it safe a number of times in his long career. No way will he be doing that on December 2nd.
0 comments:
Post a Comment