Roy Jones Junior vs Lou Del Valle: was this the blueprint for Tarver?
I just watched Roy Jones Junior vs Lou Del Valle (again). Now, Roy dominated this fight, but there are two things I noticed:
-
Roy was actually caught by Lou's left and he kind of slipped too, going down. This looked soooo similar to how Tarver caught Roy. Did Tarver study that fight?
-
After the fight, Roy said that he found south paws harder to fight against - something along those lines.
It could be that Roy always had a somewhat harder time against south paws. I thought Tarver was mostly taking advantage of Roy not being in optimal shape losing weight (which is Roy's fault of course, not Tarvet), but in the fight against Lou del Valle where Roy was caught, he did not seem to see the left punch coming. And this I found to be somewhat similar to Tarver. Could Tarver have studied Roy's prior fights, including this one here? Was Roy not taking south paws seriously? After he won against Tarver, he should have perhaps tried for a different strategy.
Posted Oct 15, 2025, 9:55 PM UTC