Roy Jones Jr Names The Man Who Could Take Over Terence Crawford As Pound-For-Pound Number One

Roy Jones Jr was named the Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year in 1994 and few fans would disagree.

The only man to kick off his pro campaign at super-welterweight and go on to win a heavyweight title, Jones is in the history books as a dominating force in the ring. So, who does he think the best of the current crop is?

Speaking in an interview with All The Smoke Fight, Jones paid Naoya Inoue his dues but said his ranking in the pound-for-pound list suffered because of a lack of opposition.

“There’s another tornado brewing over there by the name of Inoue. That is a bad dude, you hear me? Say what you want, I know he way over there in Japan, but that is a bad dude. We don’t give him credit cause we don’t see him that much.

That dude right there? I think that dude really is pound-for-pound number one, he just don’t have the competition at that weight class to get it right now and the United States don’t know him cause we don’t have big fighters in his weight class over here. The one that we did have [Stephen Fulton] look what he did to him.”

Inoue is 27-0 with 24 knockouts – an incredible achievement for the lower weight classes – and regularly captivates Japanese audiences with his thrilling style. He has held titles in four divisions.

Jones believes Terence Crawford remains as number one simply due to his dominant victory over Errol Spence Jr, but believes skill-for-skill ‘The Japanese Monster’ should probably take it.

“He’s really number one but because he doesn’t have the opposition to prove it I gotta leave Bud there. And the reason I leave Bud there is because he was there for so long with the same problem Inoue had – he had no opponents to be able to prove it.

Nobody he could’ve fought beside Pacquiao who wouldn’t fight him at the time. He couldn’t get a person to get in the ring with until Errol.”

Crawford became four-belt champion at 147 with that win over Spence, the first male fighter to achieve all the belts in two different weight classes. Inoue followed shortly after before Oleksandr Usyk joined the club.

Inoue is next out against TJ Doheny on September 3 in Japan to defend his undisputed super-bantamweight title.‘Bud’ is up first, making his super-welterweight debut against WBA Champion Israil Madrimov on August 3 in an attempt to become a four-division world champion.