In 2008, a fight between boxing legend Roy Jones Jr, then 39, and UFC star Anderson Silva, then 33, was proposed, or at least the idea of a fight between the two — in a boxing ring — was proposed.
Silva was riding high as one of the top fighters in the mixed martial arts world, seen by many as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world at that time, while Jones was already years past his best days. But in boxing, Jones figured to still have the edge. He’d just beaten a blown-up, coming-out-of-retirement Felix “Tito” Trinidad in a 170-pound fight on Jan. 19 of that year, while Silva was coming off of a second round submission win over Dan Henderson at UFC 82.
It didn’t happen. Instead, Jones would wind up fighting and badly losing to Joe Calzaghe in Nov. 2008, and continued to fight in boxing — to mostly poor or just plain ignored results — until a 2018 retirement bout. Silva would keep on winning in UFC until losing back-to-back fights to Chris Weidman in 2013, and while he has most recently fought in Oct. 2020, he’s 1-5 with a no-contest since then.
The fight has been brought up seemingly once a year for the last 13 years, and it’s a pretty new year, so here we are again.
Silva’s 45 now. Jones is 52. And yet Jones still wants the fight:
View this post on Instagram
