Jones finally agrees to step up

GEROG KIMBALL/America at Large: John Ruiz was nattily attired in a conservative suit, while promoter Don King was clad in a silver outfit that would probably pass for formal wear on the planet Klingon. Roy Jones, when he finally turned up at Tuesday's press conference, wore a jogging suit and a matching black stocking cap.

"I just hope he shows up for the fight," grumbled Ruiz after the elusive light-heavyweight champion had delayed his entrance to Rockefeller Center's Rainbow Room for nearly two hours.

The fight has been even longer in the making. Last August, just a few weeks after Ruiz had defended his World Boxing Association heavyweight title with a disqualification win over Canadian Kirk Johnson, he was a celebrity participant in a charity golf tournament at Spring Valley Country Club outside Boston. That morning he was having breakfast in the clubhouse with Finbar Furey and myself when manager Norman Stone's mobile phone rang.

Stone excused himself and stepped outside to the practice green for a moment. When he returned, his countenance was that of a conspirator who couldn't wait to share his news.

"We're gonna fight Roy Jones," he confided to the rest of the table.

The championship bout has been more or less on the drawing board since. Ruiz has been in and out of court with King in the interim, and the promoter conducted an even longer negotiation with Jones, who seemed to turn up with a new demand every week.

"If it had been just me and Ruiz the deal would have been done a long time ago," Jones said on Tuesday. "When you've got the undisputed light-heavyweight champion (himself) and the undisputed champion negotiator (King), it's bound to take some time."

If the protracted parley has been frustrating for Ruiz, it has not been without its advantages. Beyond a career-high $6 million guarantee for risking his title, the delay provided another incalculable benefit, in that it raised his profile. Despite having prevailed in a trilogy of fights against the redoubtable Evander Holyfield, only the diehard boxing fan was even vaguely aware that Ruiz was a heavyweight champion. The spectre of Jones' historic assault on his title has moved Ruiz out of Lennox Lewis' shadow and into the public eye.

Although a few heavyweight champions - Gene Tunney, Ezzard Charles - began as light-heavyweights, only one 175lb champion (Michael Spinks, v Larry Holmes 17 years ago) has successfully challenged for the title. The boxing graveyards are littered with the bones of great light-heavyweight champions who tried to make the leap, from Billy Conn and Joey Maxim to Bob Foster and Archie Moore.

And Jones, who began his professional career as a 160-pounder, would become the first former middleweight champion in over a century (Bob Fitzsimmons, in 1897) to win a heavyweight title.

"Giving up 50 pounds to a man who put Evander Holyfield down clean is asking a lot," said Jones. "I'm not taking this challenge because he's somebody I think is easy to beat. I'm taking the challenge because I see somebody willing to fight me."

Several years ago Jones had agreed to fight another heavyweight, former champion James (Buster) Douglas, but thought better of the idea and withdrew his challenge. "He didn't have a title," said Jones. "Ruiz does. None of those other guys would fight me. Lennox doesn't want to fight me - he's busy fighting them Klitschkos and Tyson, and nobody else has got a title.

"Besides," he asked rhetorically, "Why fight a six-five guy when you can fight a six-two guy?"

Jones will unquestionably be the smaller fighter, but the disparity may not be all that great by the time they enter the ring in Las Vegas on March 1st. Jones hopes to weigh around 190lb, while Ruiz plans to get down to around 225lb.

THE deal was finalised over the long Thanksgiving weekend, and announced at back-to-back news conferences in New York (Tuesday) and in Ruiz' native Boston yesterday. That the former affair was conducted on the 29th anniversary of another King press conference in the same room to announce the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle" was presumably not accidental.

Misquoting Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw, along with the presumably unrelated Martin Luther King, Don King described Jones as "Super Roy" who "draws his strength out of a mountain of blackonite", and called Ruiz "the losingest winningest boxer in the world - the Rodney Dangerfield of heavyweights."

For all his procrastination, Jones turned out to be a pretty shrewd negotiator. His guarantee for the bout is $10 million, but both his purse and Ruiz' could nearly double if King's pay-per-view projections prove accurate.

"But I'm the one who's taking the big chance here. I have everything to lose and nothing to gain," said Ruiz. "If I beat him, people will say that I should have because I was bigger and stronger. If I lose, people will say I'm nothing because I lost to a light-heavyweight."

"I realise that I'm the one who stands a chance of getting hurt," said Jones, who claimed he was "putting my life on the line." Having won titles at middleweight, super-middleweight, and light-heavyweight, his reputation as the sport's top pound-for-pound practitioner has been diminished only by the quality of his competition.

As the champion of three sanctioning bodies, he has been forced to endure an endless succession of mandatory defences against top-rated but decidedly inferior challengers. Success in a heavyweight championship bout, be believes, would seal his legacy.

The operative question, voiced by Holyfield, is whether Jones can take a heavyweight's punch.

"That's just Evander talking," said Jones. "He can take a punch, but he don't take it too well, 'cause the boy knocked him down. But," allowed Jones, "that's what everyone wants to know."

If he is to test Jones' chin, of course, Ruiz knows he will have to find him first.

"This fight," declared Ruiz, "is going to be like a pimp chasing his 'ho'."