A QUIRK of fate installed Roy Jones as Jessie Vargas’ new trainer. “God blessed me to see this dude fight about three times. Each time I watched him I would get stuck watching him by mistake. I wasn’t trying to watch him fight,” Jones said. “After the third time I saw him I said, ‘What the hell I’m going to teach Jessie to throw a hook.’ Because I want Jessie to start knocking some of these dudes out. Because he’s squeaking by every time I see him. I said, ‘Look, I love what you’re doing you’ve got to have a hell of a heart because you’ve already got your way to a world championship but I want to help you do better. I want to see some improvement.’ I wasn’t going to sugar coat it because that’s not what I do. I tell the truth to you. I said let me at least teach you how to hook, then you can go back. “
“I offered Tim Bradley the same thing. I said you’ve got no power, son. Come let me show you,” Jones added.
Vargas’ relationship with Jones developed from there. Roy has trained him for eight weeks ahead of Jessie’s WBA light-welterweight title defence against Antonio DeMarco on Sunday (November 23) on the Manny Pacquiao-Chris Algieri undercard.
“My confidence is just like his, it’s so high. It would have to take an act of god to defeat him right now. Because his confidence is so high, his skill level is so up, his mind so right… Today watching him work I said now you look like a real fighter. And it’s the truth,” Jones said. “I’m so happy and so thrilled with the way that he’s received everything I taught him. Respect is not given, it’s earned. I did a lot of things in the ring to earn respect. But a lot of people thought that I performed off my natural talent. They didn’t know what exists up here really exists because they never talked to me.”
WATCH A CLIP OF ROY JONES TALKING ABOUT JESSIE VARGAS HERE
Vargas insists Jones’ influence will be apparent in the fight. “We invest a lot of time in the gym. Even when we’re not training sometimes, just conversing with Roy gives me so much, just getting information, how he looks at the game. We don’t even necessarily have to hit the bag but we’re just talking about the game, we could be talking about other fighters, say Bernard Hopkins, say ‘Triple G’ [Gennady Golovkin] and he’s telling me things and why and what makes them so good and what their weaknesses are, just off that I’m getting more information. I’m like a computer absorbing all this information,” Jessie said.
“This fight is going to be different. It’s going to be different because the event is so much larger, the attention that they’re giving me is so much more and I’m looking forward to it. I invested so much time, I invested all my energy into this training camp and I have a great team behind me.
“Roy Jones Jnr is a very intelligent individual. He knows how to explain things in detail. Him being a fighter himself. He won’t only explain it but he’ll show you. He’ll do the exact same thing he shows you to. Him being a teacher and was student, and still is a student too, he knows how to perfectly explain everything, detail on detail, and that’s make everything easier. Not only that but the way he looks at the game. The way he looks at the game is very different. He’s two or three steps ahead of his own opponent and that’s what I’m doing now.
“You’re going to see a difference.”
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