In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, I sit down with Roy Jones Jr. to talk about his boxing career, how he got started in the sport, and how he became one of the greatest boxers of all time. We talk about the early days of his career, his early days as a professional boxer, and what it took to become a world-class fighter. I hope you enjoy this episode and share it with your friends, family, and the ones you care most about! Tweet me and let me know what you thought of it in the comments section below! <333 -J.R.J.&B. Timestamps: :00 - What was it like being a kid growing up in the streets of New York City? 6:00 - How he got into boxing 8:30 - How his father taught him how to box 9:00 What it takes to be a great boxer 11:00- How he became the greatest pound for pound fighter 13:00 How he developed his boxing style 16:30 How he broke into the UFC 17:00 What is his favorite part of the sport? 18:00 Why he didn t get knocked out of the ring 19:40 - What his biggest weaknesses 21:00 His biggest takeaways from his career 22:00 The importance of a good coach 23:00 Canelo Alvarez s 26:00 Training 27:00 Thoughts 28:00 Is he a good guy? 29:00 Do you know who he was a good dude ? 35:00 Who are you looking for a good person? 36:00 Are you going to be good at what he s going to win the next one? 37:00 35:10 39:00 Does he have a better chance of winning the next fight 38:00 Could he be better than you can I have a good chance of being better than I m going to get better than me next week 40:00 39:40 41:00 I m gonna get better? 45:00 Will I ever beat him in the next round 47:00 Should I get a shot at it? ) 46:00 My thoughts on the future of the next guy 49:00 Would you like to see him next week?
00:00:18.000I know this, and I was going to tell you that I am very happy to be here for you and for me because I've been a fan of yours as well, but I always love the support that you give me.
00:00:27.000You've always supported me since day one.
00:00:29.000You've been one of the best people that I could hear talk about me since day one, so I just want to say thank you, man, for all the support, for being a brother.
00:03:46.000So if you learn his characteristics, which I would watch how he would carry himself all day long, the way he carried himself when he wasn't around the other ones, the way he got rid of when the other ones came around.
00:03:56.000People say, people used to think that I was very egotistical.
00:04:01.000I've never been an egotistical person.
00:04:03.000But what I was was a highly confident person.
00:05:00.000It hurt the sport of boxing, especially amateur boxing.
00:05:03.000It hurt it because when you can take a kid 19 years old, he defeats his rival, clearly, and you rob him, it really eliminates the integrity of that sport.
00:05:41.000And I understood that the second day, I think I might have cried the whole first day.
00:05:46.000But the second day, well, I didn't cry until after I went to the back and asked the interpreter to ask him if he really thought he'd beat me.
00:05:53.000Because if he said yes, then he didn't know it, but he was going to get another one.
00:05:57.000laughter laughter But he said, no, I know I didn't win, but it wasn't my fault.
00:06:14.000You have to understand what is coming.
00:06:16.000But then I also realized that not only were the judges not necessarily, they are to be blamed, but what God did was take their negative side.
00:07:01.000Yeah, I remember when you fought James Toney and that was a big fight because James Toney was in his prime and you were in your prime.
00:07:09.000And again, you caught him with that leaping left hook, man, that crazy left hook and dropped him.
00:07:14.000When you beat James Toney like that, I think a lot of people had to go, whoa, like he can do this to an elite top of the food chain world champion.
00:07:24.000That's what makes a real superior athlete.
00:07:26.000Not that you can do it to guys who are beneath you, but you can do it to guys who are supposed to be your equal or above you.
00:08:14.000He said, yeah, we got a lot of different situations going on, but they want to do it in a different format, and they want to do it in a way that you and Michael are taking care of, and everything is good.
00:08:23.000Well, that didn't turn out to be necessarily what the case was, but me being Roy Jones Jr. and us being in COVID, I'm like, you know what?
00:08:31.000Six weeks, that's right around the corner.
00:10:03.00012 weeks, well, he'll have a better chance to deal with me, but his chance is still going to be rough, but it's going to be better than it would have been in six weeks, because six weeks, he didn't have a chance.
00:10:13.000Now, during the time where you were off, were you working out?
00:11:32.000Well, physical attributes, it does require extreme attributes, but when you come and watch one of my classes, like I got an apprentice over in Sweden, I got an apprentice over in South Africa, I got a few apprentices that I've been teaching.
00:11:45.000I got one out in Washington State, and when I teach them, they understand that, yeah, people blame it on athleticism, but it's not all athleticism.
00:11:53.000There's a lot more knowledge to it than people ever would begin to understand.
00:12:02.000If you take me back, I can go visually or verbally walk you through every knockout that I got or every setup to the knockout before it happened.
00:16:45.000So I feel pretty good at 210. So I think I'm going to stay around this area.
00:16:48.000That's not much different than him because when he was in his prime, he was about 215. I mean, he was a light heavyweight, you know, a lighter rather heavyweight.
00:17:28.000What Bob Fitzsimmons did, but I was going to add a little bit to it because I was also super middleweight champion, which was a division that wasn't around when Bob Fitzsimmons did this in 1896. Well, what Bob Fitzsimmons did was he won the middleweight title, the light heavyweight title,
00:17:44.000the heavyweight title, and then he recaptured the light heavyweight title.
00:17:49.000That's a big segment of the whole thing, recapturing the light heavyweight title.
00:17:54.000So if I go up and do what I did I think?
00:18:17.000I would have fought Mike Tyson because of what I told you earlier.
00:18:20.000He was the youngest heavyweight champ of all times.
00:18:23.000To me, he was one of the most explosive, entertaining guys you want to see because you never know what he's going to do.
00:18:29.000And it's the same reason I'm going in with him right now because he's explosive, entertaining, and you never know what he's going to do.
00:18:37.000I mean, both of you were in that Nas song.
00:18:45.000I mean, very similar in that regard that you both were so dominant over your divisions when you were in your prime that those fights were like executions.
00:20:16.000I just wanted to do what Bob Fitzsimmons did and prove I could do it or see if I could do it because Sugar Ray Robinson tried to go win the light heavyweight title.
00:22:32.000It's called good, but, I mean, hey, it's boxing, you know?
00:22:36.000For me, though, that first win was one of the most impressive wins of my career because it's the first time I ever had to win a fight with strictly my heart.
00:22:44.000Because your body just wasn't performing.
00:25:11.000But there's a science to it and there's a limit that you should do it to.
00:25:15.000But you got to know the science and know the limit to how far you can go.
00:25:19.000If you don't ration that out, then it's bad for you.
00:25:22.000There's a lot of guys that are very good at it, but ultimately the damage that it does, particularly to your kidneys, it's just not worth it.
00:26:14.000I won a title from, I mean, I fought from junior middleweight to heavyweight.
00:26:18.000All the reason I didn't win a title at junior middleweight is because my daddy wouldn't let me fight for one.
00:26:22.000And I knew I was gonna outgrow the weight class.
00:26:24.000So I told him I wanted to fight Gio Franco Rossi early because if I can fight Rossi now, vacate the title because I ain't gonna be able to stay there at this weight no way.
00:26:32.000And he didn't let me do it, but I would have had titles from 54 all the way to heavyweight.
00:29:28.000I try to teach guys Every way, every aspect of boxing so that you understand some guys, because you're tall, you're going to have to fight close.
00:30:30.000Almost one champion, maybe two, but mostly one champion.
00:30:33.000You knew who the champ was at every weight class.
00:30:36.000I remember when they started out in IBF and WBO. How many champs are you going to have?
00:30:40.000Well, see, my point, though, is here's my problem there.
00:30:43.000I don't have a problem with you having more champs, but why not make every champ have to fight one another to find out who is the champ?
00:30:50.000When I was a light heavyweight, I had seven of the eight known available belts.
00:30:55.000And the only reason I didn't have the eighth one is because I wasn't going to Germany to take all my seven belts for that one belt, and they may rob me because I had gotten robbed in Seoul, Korea.
00:35:00.000But for me, for Marvin, I thought that fight, after I looked at it as an adult too, I thought the fight should have been called a draw at least, or at best.
00:35:08.000And I understood why Sugar won it, because Sugar painted a picture before the fight that I'm not even supposed to be in here.
00:41:01.000And the documentary starts out where he's a cyclist and he wanted to do this race and do the race clean and then get someone to show him how to dope and then do the race doped and see what the difference was.
00:41:15.000So he does the race clean, and then he employs this Russian cat who was responsible for Olympic doping in Russia, and he shows them how to do it.
00:41:30.000They find out that there was something at the Sochi Olympics where a lot of the athletes had...
00:41:36.000They had done something where they had built a hole in the wall and they had taken the dirty piss, snuck it through the hole in the wall and replaced it with clean piss.
00:42:19.000But it's, you know, it's a problem anyway that amateur sports, like, one of the things that drives me crazy about the Olympics is how much money it brings in, but the athletes don't get any money.
00:42:49.000I mean, I don't know how they should distribute the money, but they should distribute the money.
00:42:53.000Somehow, but I mean, come on, if you want the top athlete to come to your school, that's going to add to your school's credibility, then why he have to not be able to make money off of that too?
00:43:02.000Yeah, and if someone wins the Olympics, if they dedicate years of their life for this one goal and they win, they should make some fucking money.
00:43:08.000Nine years of mine and got robbed and they got nothing for it.
00:45:47.000What was it when he got up there and he was just talking shit about all the writers?
00:45:52.000Did he talk shit about them over the years?
00:45:53.000It's funny, but I think that for all the greats, there has to be something that's pissing you off, something that you're fighting against.
00:46:04.000There's no way you're going to have peace of mind and still have the drive to succeed and to conquer the way the all-time greats do.
00:46:12.000The all-time greats have to have a chip on their shoulder.
00:46:15.000If you don't have a chip on your shoulder, then you're not going to ever reach the heights or take the measures that it takes to become an all-time great.
00:46:26.000They robbed me at the Olympics, and I had a father that I separated from that I know in my heart didn't really want me to succeed without him.
00:46:58.000God took a guy named Charlie Campbell.
00:47:00.000And you wouldn't know Charlie Campbell because he was a boxer back in the day, an amateur boxer.
00:47:04.000But God showed me so much through Charlie Campbell that to this day, I still speak to Charlie Campbell because without Charlie Campbell I might have never gotten to be Roy Jones Jr. Charlie Campbell taught me so much about charisma that my father could never have taught me that it was unbelievable.
00:47:24.000Charlie Campbell beat all my father's fighters as amateurs that were in his weight class.
00:47:29.000Easily almost every time because he had charisma.
00:47:33.000Now they were better than him, but he had charisma and he beat him with that charisma.
00:47:59.000And to me, I was like, whoa, and he beating these guys that own my team.
00:48:05.000So they learn the same thing I'm learning, but they can't have that kind of charisma because my daddy won't allow them to beat them people.
00:48:12.000He won't allow them to perform with that kind of confidence.
00:50:14.000So me growing up watching, even these guys watching before me, I watched all of them get to their age, but my dad would never allow them to be as confident and as Charismatic as Charlie Campbell was because he didn't allow that.
00:57:46.000So I wanted something big when I came here, and now I got something.
00:57:50.000So having this Mike Tyson fight, it has its advantages, although I told you the timing and all was a disadvantage, but it does have its advantages because now We get to have a great conversation first time with me being here.
00:58:04.000I'm happy to talk to you anytime, anyplace.
00:58:06.000What is it like, though, when you see now Holyfield's thinking about coming back, he's training hard, Oscar De La Hoya, that could be a fight for you, too.
00:58:16.000If you decide to keep going with this, that's someone who's more your size as well.
00:58:20.000Yeah, he's more my size, but he look at me like I look at Mike.
00:58:35.000They're a little different than me, and they're a little different than Mike.
00:58:38.000It's like, when you look at it, the true fact is that if you ask people, and you can pull the highlights up right now and say, look at this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy.
00:58:47.000At that time, who they're going to look at again?
00:58:50.000They're going to look at Mike Tyson again, they're going to look at Roy Jones again.
00:58:53.000And they're going to look at Roy Jones again first, because Roy Jones do so much crazy stuff that You're like, hot in the world.
00:58:58.000Not only do, like you said, it's a basketball game before the fight.
00:59:01.000Method Man and Red Man bring him to the ring.
00:59:03.000He got, I mean, Radio City Music Hall.
01:01:22.000Because when you're the smaller guy and you find a guy that you know is over here today and over there tomorrow, then you just got to prepare yourself for whatever because you don't know what he may come in there and do.
01:03:53.000I mean, I think the WBC came in and said they want to put up some kind of title or something, so they want to cut it back to two-minute rounds.
01:03:59.000They said something about that Arce and Chavez Sr. fight, how fatigued they were after the fight, and they feel like that's a safety measure.
01:04:07.000But what they don't realize is that if you keep Mike fresh, the longer you keep Mike fresh, the more dangerous that is for me.
01:07:14.000They just don't ever have to tap into it, or they never have been pushed to that measure, which is why I say society tries to make us guiltings, because any man like you, you got kids.
01:07:28.000Somebody did something to your kid and you saw it, RJ coming out.
01:09:07.000If he would have left me alone, it wouldn't have came out.
01:09:09.000If he was just left alone, let's go to the second fight, I would have probably beat him, but I wouldn't have beat him like that because I'm not that dude.
01:10:31.000Because a guy who was your peer, who was a man that many people thought was going to be a rival to you, and you guys were eventually going to have a big super fight.
01:10:42.000It affected me pretty bad because being that I knew Gerald and we were friends, he won a 3-2 split decision over me and the amateurs.
01:10:49.000So he was one up and I was definitely looking to get that one back, which I got a little bit back when I sparred with him at Sugar Ray Leonard's gym, but I still wanted an organized get back.
01:10:59.000So I definitely was looking to fight him down the road, but When that fight happened, when I saw that fight was happening, I was the only person that said that he wouldn't win that fight.
01:12:24.000He had some shoulder injuries and sidelined him.
01:12:27.000The bad part about it is, and this is what we're saying we're missing right now, if it was in today's society, Nigel never would have recovered from that first round knockout because today with no crowd, He had nothing to urge him back on.
01:12:38.000But with that crowd and he at home, if he has breath in him, he better get up and get his ass back in that ring.
01:13:07.000Yeah, and that's what most people thought was going to happen.
01:13:11.000Yeah, that's to me one of the great tragedies of boxing because it's very rare that an elite top of the food chain world champion in his prime is cut down like that.
01:13:21.000It's really only been a couple instances.
01:13:23.000Well, it puts people on notice again as to why fighters ask to get paid properly every time they go in a ring, especially against another elite fighter.
01:15:48.000And you want to talk about a man who's been dedicated to a craft and a sport.
01:15:53.000I mean, your whole life has been dedicated to this craft and sport, and because of that, you are universally recognized as one of the all-time best.
01:16:01.000Yep, and I ain't caring tomorrow what it is, who it is.
01:16:05.000When y'all say let's go, it's time for me to go.
01:16:09.000Yeah, there's a legacy that you've left that no matter what happens, no one can ever take that away from you.
01:19:59.000So if you get lucky enough to come get high enough in the area, he'll take you.
01:20:04.000He's an interesting cat because what he's learned from particularly the Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight, if you watch the way he moves now, his head movement is so much better than it ever was before.
01:20:15.000His defensive skills are so much better than they've ever been before.
01:20:19.000Yeah, but to me, that's not the thing that he needed to learn, because you have to look at the past to teach you about the future.
01:20:27.000So if you look at history, Julio Cesar Chavez Sr., and God bless the dead Roger Mayweather, but Julio beat Roger because he started chasing Roger at the weight end.
01:20:39.000He didn't wait and try to outbox Roger because he's never going to outbox Roger.
01:21:21.000I think he was a little overwhelmed, you know, because that was a big fight for him, his first real super fight, and he's in there with Floyd, who's a defensive wizard.
01:21:29.000Yeah, but you've been pro since you was 15. Yeah.
01:21:32.000So you probably got a little bit more experience than Floyd had at the time as far as professional boxing goes.
01:21:37.000So if you really think about it, you don't outbox the boxers.
01:21:43.000Didn't Floyd make him suck a lot of weight, too?
01:21:46.000I think he made him get down at like 52 or something like that.
01:21:48.000Yeah, but he came in the ring at like, I think he was 16 pounds heavier than Floyd.
01:21:52.000So if you're 16 pounds heavier than him, that tells you that you've got to use that 16 pounds.
01:23:37.000Most people, when they grow up, they get smarter, so they have to get better.
01:23:40.000But I don't think the Florida fight made him better because he still didn't show me that he made the necessary adjustment to come back and beat Florida if he fought him again or give Florida an even better fight if he fought him again because if he's outpressing Florida, he's never going to outbox Florida.
01:24:21.000I don't think, I didn't see the real Kovalev.
01:24:23.000I mean, then you try to box Canelo and move away and let Canelo stalk you, but now the way Canelo stalked him, It's the way he should have stalked Mayweather the first time.
01:27:35.000As an organization because, you know, it's like I built my career there at HBO and then to be able to build that commentary career there was so fabulous for me.
01:27:43.000So they were really, I mean, it hurt me bad that they got out of boxing because that was like, man, that was really the kingpin of boxing.
01:27:54.000Yeah, no, they were, they were uncrowned.
01:27:56.000I mean, undoubtedly the ones who wore the crown.
01:28:53.000So to go to Russia and to see that you love that much, as bad as I hate the cold.
01:29:02.000As bad as I hate the cold, to be revered that much, it's always like I tell people, I always want to be somewhere that I'm wanted and needed if possible.
01:29:50.000Well, one of the things I was going to say is that you haven't really taken any grief publicly about being a dual citizen that I've ever seen.
01:29:56.000No, but there are several Russians that are dual citizens.
01:29:59.000So why would y'all give me grief when y'all ain't giving them grief?
01:31:03.000And my fighters, and I meant to mention that I have several fighters all over the world who have a Russian heavyweight I have a Swedish middleweight.
01:31:20.000I got Andrew, Glenn, I'll tell you about Chris Eubank, Kevin Newman, the list goes Shady, Ikram, I got a lot of good Michael Williams, Jr. I got a good stable of young fighters up and coming.
01:31:38.000Brian Pirello, I think his last name is.
01:32:48.000If you jab bad and you ain't going to block this hook, you ain't going to beat Roy.
01:32:52.000So do you think like for young fighters, well, first of all, it's got to be an amazing opportunity to train with an all-time great, period.
01:32:59.000But to get into your head and for you to explain to them how you approach situations, how you approach fights, how you approach stepping into that ring, how you approach dismantling opponents, that's got to rub off on young kids.
01:34:32.000And with that being said, he's going to help give back to people because if you just go on YouTube and Look him up, you'll see him, but he got a lot of stuff on me on that right now.
01:37:06.000I remember when I was a kid, my parents weren't boxing fans at all.
01:37:11.000But when Muhammad Ali was making that comeback fight against Leon Spinks, he lost to Spinks the first time, and then the second time they're fighting again, my parents watched it.
01:37:20.000They're like, we want to see him win the title back.
01:37:53.000And because the Russians did that, that's why I accepted it.
01:37:56.000What they gave me because they're looking at me as equal, not that I'm an athlete, not that I'm a boxer, not that I'm black, but that I'm equal and that they love what I did, they love what I stood for, and they would love to invite me to be a part of their culture as well as the United States.
01:38:19.000Between wrestling, MMA, boxing, I mean, there's so many of these up-and-coming boxers now that also are these great fighters that happen to be Russian.
01:38:29.000But everything is carrying over now because of the internet, people can now see things differently.
01:38:36.000Like I said, you can look at this and you can watch old fights over and over and learn what your favorite fighter did or what his attributes were or what you like about him, what made him great.
01:38:45.000That's why I used to look for what made people great.
01:39:28.000Yeah, I mean, there's so many greats to study and learn little bits and pieces from.
01:39:34.000I mean, that was one of the big things that Mike Tyson did, of course, you know, is just spend a giant chunk of his youth watching a video.
01:39:41.000And that's what people don't understand about Mike.
01:40:29.000What is the difference between training at 51 and training at 31?
01:40:34.000At 51, you need one or two more days to recover than you did at 31. Stuff that hurts, it hurts a little bit longer at 51 than it did at 31. Are you doing things differently?
01:40:44.000Yeah, you got to do things differently.
01:40:45.000You have to take days off a little bit more frequently than you would have wanted to back when you were 31. When I was 31, I didn't need no days off.
01:40:53.000At 51, after about two or three days, you got to say, okay, let me hold up a minute because if you don't, that need to say, okay, you might want to go, but I ain't going today.
01:41:29.000I did a couple of little things I tried.
01:41:31.000One thing that made me stop, I was doing a thing called ProTech, I think, and they said I got to stop because it got something in it that didn't work.
01:42:10.000I got a couple people that can help you out with your knees, though, because there's another lady down where I live, Dr. Deborah.
01:42:16.000She can really help your knees out too.
01:42:18.000She's also, she's the one who gave me the shot with the protec, but she has another product that she uses that I think hers may pass the test, so I don't know.
01:42:27.000I'm not going to take it this time though, because I tried this and they said the doctor told me that I can't do it again, so I got to stop.
01:42:33.000Now, what kind of testing are they doing for this fight?
01:42:35.000They said they're doing regular fight testing, so just like they would do in a normal fight, we're going to get tested as though we are regular athletes, as though we're fighting a regular sanctioned fight.
01:42:45.000Vada has already been to my house once.
01:43:44.000And some of those are low-impact rounds even because you don't want to overdo it because you do too much, tear the tendons in your arm again, mess your hands up again.
01:43:53.000You don't want to mess nothing up when a fight does not happen.
01:43:56.000Now, do you have a person who's making your schedule, or do you do everything yourself?
01:46:05.000Well, when you see a guy who's like super strong and super fit and dominates people with that, it tempts people into thinking that's the way.
01:48:52.000Just like I told Tyson Fury that if he just took five years of his life and dedicated it back to boxing, he'd beat the majority of the heavyweights after the day because the ones that are on top, mentally he can beat them.
01:49:04.000He's mentally better than most of them, but he's got to dedicate himself to the sport.
01:50:01.000When he knocked out Ortiz with that right hand to the forehead and just flatlined him, he was like, he's sitting there like, what in the fuck just happened?
01:50:09.000He's just crazy power, but Tyson Fury's boxing skill, his boxing skill, and the fact that he started training with Sugar Hill, Kronk fighter before that, Kronk trainer, and had that super aggressive in-your-face style,
01:50:25.000and just really used those boxing skills and got super aggressive in the rematch, and had Deontay on the back heel.
01:50:31.000That was the main thing, and when you're not as powerful as Deontay, you have to think of other ways to do it.
01:50:38.000And the fact that when they fight Tyson Fury, same thing happened with Klitschko.
01:50:42.000They're not punching down or straight ahead.
01:50:46.000That takes a lot of power away from those good right hand punchers.
01:50:49.000So unless you have a good Joe Frazier type, George Foreman type hook or Ken Norton type hook, then you're going to be in trouble if you got to punch up here.
01:50:57.000The hook is still deadly up here, but the right hand going up here takes a little bit off of it.
01:51:11.000When you know what a crusher Deontay is, and the fact that he went right hand and then left hook on the way down, and then went like this, because he's like, it's over.
01:51:19.000And that's what really shocked him the most.
01:51:20.000That put him in a state of shock for Fury to come off of that floor and come back the way he did.
01:51:26.000And come back and win the rest of the round.
01:51:28.000He'd never had nobody do that to him before in his life, I guarantee you.
01:52:35.000If he came to you, if he's listening to this, because I've heard that Floyd is interested in training him, but if he came to you, what advice would you give to him?
01:52:44.000Well, we go back to learning how to use our jab and developing our left hand.
01:52:50.000Because once we develop the left hand, the right hand already left.
01:54:57.000It's interesting because you as a multiple division world champion, but also a commentator, when you were doing it for HBO, you could point out little things.
01:55:12.000Tell me what I said they need to get better at.
01:55:15.000Tell me I made them a better fighter if they listened to the commentary and saw the mistakes that they were making.
01:55:19.000So often I can look at a guy and break him down right away.
01:55:22.000It's also got to be crazy for a fighter to be fighting.
01:55:26.000I know there's a giant amount of them that were huge Roy Jones Jr. fans, and now they're looking over, and you're talking about them while they're fighting.