Andre Ward the former pound for pound champ chopped it up with James Prince on one of the big fights that got away in big time boxing.
A fight that never happened, should have happened and almost happened.
Speaking on his show ‘All The Smoke’ the two spoke about why the Mike Tyson vs Roy Jones Jr fight never happened:
“Andre Ward (Host): Man, I want to hear your side of the story on this. So, I talked to Roy about this situation. You know, Roy moved up to heavyweight, fought John Ruiz, and went up through all these different weight classes. I was at that fight, and I was wearing an all-gold suit, man. I think I had just come back from the Olympics, or I was about to go—one of the two. I think I had just come back. Roy became the heavyweight champion of the world, the WBA heavyweight champion of the world. You don’t go back down after you’ve moved up, right? And from what you and I have talked about, you said Roy remembers it differently. You said, “Man, I had Tyson right where we wanted him.” Tyson wasn’t really Tyson at that time, but still dangerous, though, right? You wanted him to fight Tyson next, get a big payday, and then figure out what to do after that—but not go fight Antonio Tarver. What’s your recollection of the potential Tyson deal that was on the table?
James Prince (Guest): Right. Now, you know, I haven’t taken any punches, so my memory might be a little different. I’ve heard some of Roy’s version—he’s my buddy, and I don’t know how it might be so different, but here’s what I remember. I recall me and Roy having a conversation about that fight first. Roy was telling me that nobody could get Tyson to the table. So I thought, “Oh, okay.” Once again, I saw it as an opportunity, right? So, I reached out to Mike, and of course, Mike accepted the invitation. I brought Mike to Houston, and I told Roy, “Yo, I got Mike to agree to come to Houston. Let’s have a conversation. Let’s go out to my ranch—just us—and we’ll talk and make this fight happen.” He was like, “Yeah, you got him?” I said, “Yeah, I got him, man. I got the tickets. He’s coming.” This was after the Ruiz fight, right?
So, Mike showed up, Roy showed up, and we all drove out to the ranch. You’ve seen the picture where I’m holding both of their hands up—that’s evidence. That was that day at my ranch. We went into the office and talked about making that fight happen. We even discussed doing it maybe two times. You said Mike said we could do it twice, right, brother?
Andre Ward (Host): Yeah, brother. You know, Mike was in shape back then, man.
James Prince (Guest): So, from there, we even started doing the marketing. I remember the Source Magazine Hip Hop Awards, where I arranged for Mike and Roy to announce that they were fighting at the Source Hip Hop Awards. That’s another picture that can be verified. From there, me and Roy decided to bring in the Maloof brothers, the owners of The Palms at the time—and I think the Sacramento Kings—because our goal was to get a guaranteed $25 million for each of us. We knew it would do well, crazy numbers on pay-per-view.
Andre Ward (Host): Oh, yeah.
James Prince (Guest): That’s what I remember us having in mind. I recall me and Roy taking a meeting with the Maloof brothers—one or two of them—and the $25 million was the dealbreaker because they didn’t want to guarantee the $25 million. They mentioned $17 million, and to me, I was like, “Yo, we can get the rest off the pay-per-view. That’s not going to mean as much if we don’t get that guarantee.” Because this was going to be a huge pay-per-view fight. But somewhere in the midst of that, I remember Roy telling me, “Man, I’m going to go ahead and take this Tarver fight. I took his best punch, so I’m going to see if he can take mine,” or something like that. My thing was, “Man, this is a bird in the hand. This is big money here, Roy. Why take that risk?” But you have to respect the decision a man decides to make, and that’s how it went, from my recollection. We know what happened—Tarver caught him with one, and I saw all that potential fly out the window.
Andre Ward (Host): Yeah, I think the John Ruiz fight was a $10 million guarantee. I don’t know about the upside, but I know the Tarver fight was around $5 million, if I’m not mistaken—something like that. Do you remember?
James Prince (Guest): I don’t remember exactly. I thought it was like $4 million, but it could have been. And then what happened, happened.
Andre Ward (Host): When you started to see this fallout—Tarver 1 happened, Roy eked it out, they went back again, and then Tarver shocked the world by stopping Roy Jones. Then you see Glen Johnson. I was in Memphis at that time. I told Roy this story, man—one of the worst days of my life. It felt like somebody died.
James Prince (Guest): Oh, yeah.
Andre Ward (Host): Seeing this, what were you thinking? After that heavyweight fight with Ruiz, something was lost—maybe in his speed, in his legs, or something. Something didn’t come back the same as it was before the heavyweight fight. I think putting on that weight really did something. I don’t know how to explain it from a scientific point of view, but he was never the same fighter after that. Roy, to me, his speed was the key to who he was and his success. Roy always had a lot of bad habits from a defensive perspective as a fighter, but he was so fast that nobody could really catch him with certain things because of his speed. When that speed left, he was able to be caught with a lot of things he wouldn’t have been caught with before. That’s the way I feel about it. Were you advising him when the knockouts started accumulating? Were you still there?
James Prince (Guest): I’m always there with Roy, you know what I mean? I’m always there, always giving my honest opinion on what I feel if he asks me about different things or whatnot. But Roy’s strong-minded, just like all of us, and I just had to be there as a brother for him every time, you know? I’m rooting for him.”
Interesting analysis and honesty from Prince and good questions from Ward.
What a fight it would have been.
Obviously Tyson would have had a lot of size and mass and power on Jones and Jones would have had to stick and move in the fight to have a chance.
