CALL Roy Jones Jnr great, but don’t ever try telling him he was gifted.
One of the best fighters of all time, Jones hates the “gifted” tag; something he views as a back-handed compliment, or a lazy way of interpreting the amount of work he put into his career.
Jones spent hour after hour, week after week and month after month practising his craft, to give him the tools required for his International Boxing Hall of Fame career.
Every moment he spent shadow-boxing, firing shots on different traj-ectories, trying different combinations, moving left, right, back and forward, moving his upper body one way and then the next, the reps would have mounted into the millions to make him look “gifted”.
In truth, Jones believes he’s a product of nurture rather than nature. He earned the right to appear as good as he did.
Gifted and talented are two words often associated with the man Jones credits as being the best he faced, James Toney.
Jones defeated Toney widely on points back in 1994, dropping Toney in the third round and outboxing another legend.
“People can say what they want to say and say I made it look easy because of the game plan I had, but there was nothing easy about that,” Jones explained. “And though it looked easy, that was one of the best dudes I ever got in the ring with, and I’d say that to anybody. He was a throwback fighter from the old school. That was a time when we
