BOXING CLEVER: Roy Jones Jr should be remembered as a great ahead of 75th bout

At least, that’s what he is claiming.

One of the modern day greats has become nothing more than a joke in recent years.

He’s a fine pundit when he is outside the ropes, but his career inside the ring has become a sorry farce.

It should never have been this way for the American. He should have left the sport years ago with tributes flowing for a fighter who dominated at middleweight, super-middleweight and light-heavyweight.

He is a six-time, four-weight world champion who would have had Olympic gold on his CV too but for one of the worst decisions in amateur boxing history at the 1988 Seoul Games. He is a legend.

But he has become someone the sport now pities as he continues to fight on as he approaches his 49th birthday later this month.

His record of 65 wins and nine defeats doesn’t tell the story of a fighter that, at his best, was untouchable.

This is not a man that should have been losing to Danny Green and Enzo Maccarinelli, with the greatest respect to those two, or sharing a ring with unknowns like Eric Watkins and Vyron Phillips.

Nor should he be lacing them up to face a bare-knuckle veteran like Bobby Gunn, like he did for his last outing in a bout more fit for a circus tent than a boxing ring.

He was past his best even when he fought British great Joe Calzaghe in 2008.

Now, a decade later, he is preparing for his 75th fight and who knows who he will face when he steps into the ring on February 8 in Pensacola, the city in which he grew up.

The hope must be that it is against someone who will not give him a beating.

This is a fighter that should be remembered for the magical nights – like when he beat Bernard Hopkins in 1993, outboxed James Toney in 1994, flattened Montell Griffin in their 1997 rematch and became heavyweight champion by beating John Ruiz in 2003.

Or even when he put his hands behind his back against the then unbeaten Glen Kelly in a light-heavyweight title defence, slipped two punches and then knocked him out with a right hand.

Kelly was not special, but it was a moment of brilliance that others, including Tyson Fury, have sought to emulate.

Hopefully this will finally be the end for him and, as the years pass, history will remember him as the great he was rather than the faded fighter he has become.