Photo by Brandon Magnus/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Roy Jones Jr. and Mike Tyson disagree with Floyd Mayweather Jr. about too many belts being bad for the sport of boxing.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. (50-0) thinks there are too many belts in boxing and that introducing a new belt every time someone fights is detrimental to the sport.
“This is not good for the sport of boxing,” Mayweather told Showtime in a recent interview. “Now when a fighter fights, every fighter is a champion.”
Roy Jones Jr., however, who will fight Mike Tyson for the WBC Frontline Battle belt in an exhibition boxing match later this month, couldn’t disagree more.
The multiple-division boxing world champion went on a rant about how belts make boxing much more exciting for the fighters and said fighting for a new title is almost like trying a new drug for the first time.
“First of all, I don’t give a damn what nobody says,” Jones said in response to Mayweather during a pre-fight press conference on Thursday (h/t MMA Fighting’s Damon Martin). “Don’t got nothing to do with me. I do what I do, my business is my business. I don’t care what nobody else says. This ain’t got nothing to do with him. So he stays over there in his lane do what he do, let me do what I do.
Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr will be competing for the WBC Frontline Battle Belt, I’m told. Here’s a pic of said belt, created just for them.
They meet on 11/28. pic.twitter.com/CFwYAUMry9
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) October 26, 2020
“Secondly, when I was fighting, I wasn’t like them. I went and got every belt possible that I could get in my weight class at the time. Mike did the same thing. We come from the old school. We want every belt you got. I don’t care what kind of belt it is. It could be the Joe Patti Seafood belt, I want that. I don’t care. If you have a belt in my weight class, in my prime, I wanted that. So you think right now, you want to see me perform you put a belt on the line. So you think right now you want to see me perform, you put a belt on the line. I’m sorry, but it’s like drugs. I just can’t say no. You offer me a title, you got me.
“It don’t mean nothing to people like him maybe, but it meant the world to me.”
Tyson, who won the WBC, WBA, and IBF titles during his reign as ‘the baddest man on the planet’, echoed a similar sentiment.
“He said it all,” Tyson said. “It’s like drugs.”
Tyson vs. Jones Jr. will take place on Nov. 28 at the Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California.