Roy Jones Jr has given his take on the heavyweight division as it stands, and wants to see ‘action-packed’ fights.
For fans and pundits, the fight to make is between the two champions – Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk.
Usyk’s WBA, IBF, and WBO belts up against Fury’s WBC would crown the division’s first sole champion since Lennox Lewis, and secure one man in the position of this generation’s greatest.
The bout fell apart in the negotiations stage, though, with both fighters now looking elsewhere at titles defences.
However, Roy Jones Jr – once famously a heavyweight world champion himself after starting his career at super welterweight – told Boxing Social that he isn’t mad about how it’s played out.
“I’m really not mad about the heavyweight division, because the only fight that’s not happening is Usyk and Fury. But the whole thing about that is, that’s a boxing match. That’s two boxers who probably nobody really gonna engage.
They’re both gonna circle around the ring and then it may turn out not to be the fight that we wanna see.
I said this last year. I said I don’t think the world necessarily want to see that fight right now because the heavyweight division has been giving us too many good fights. Let’s keep it like that.”
Whilst many fans will disagree with the hall-of-famer, believing that crowning an undisputed champion in the division trumps any excitement in the ring, Jones Jr went deeper into his reasoning.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to see the fight, it’s that he believes there are better match-ups to be made first.
“We’ve got two boxers as champions in the heavyweight division now. Let’s keep the two boxers are champions, let them fight everyone else first. When there ain’t nobody else to fight, then they fight each other cause they ain’t got nothing else to do.
But right now, Usyk and Wilder is a good fight … Joshua and Fury is a great fight right now. Those are action-packed fights right there. Usyk and Fury, that’s not gonna be an action-packed fight. That’s two boxers. Two technical guys.”
Should both Fury and Usyk hold onto their belts, there’s talk of negotiations restarting for a showdown in the Middle East towards the end of the year.
In the meantime, it looks like the Ukrainian will face Daniel Dubois whilst the Brit has a choice between Andy Ruiz Jr and Joe Joyce.