Was Jake vs. Joshua Real? AJ’s Devastating Loss & Shakur’s WARNING to Teofimo Lopez

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1:53For J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Initial Quality Study Award information, visit jdpower.com forward slash awards. Awards based on 2025 model year, newer models may be shown. What up? It's your boy, Roy Jones Jr. I'm hanging out with my man, Andre Ward. We two Hall of Famers will bring y 'all to a show called The Hall of Game. A show where we discuss boxing, sports, life, and entertainment from our view. How much better than that can you get? Me and Roy don't always agree The one thing you will get Is a Hall of Fame Worth the game And welcome back to the first episode Of the Hall of Game I want to welcome in my co-host Roy Jones Jr.

2:37Roy where you at right now? I'm in Denver, Colorado Happy New Year to everybody Thank you all for welcoming me back I'm in Colorado, can't see my cousin RJ Harvey Played with the Denver Broncos last night They had another victory wasn't pretty, but they got the victory. They're number one seed, so they got to buy the first week, so we in good shape. Man, I'm trying to get like you, Roy. I'm trying to travel and have people pay me to pull up. You know what, Andre? Don't say you try to get like me, because I will put you on that program. You understand? Don't tell me that, because you know what I mean?

3:08When you tell me something, I will go try to make it happen for you, so that's just who I am. We're going to talk about it, man. We're going to talk about it a little bit more throughout the year, but But, man, I want to start, you know, the show. Very, very heavy note is well publicized over the last week and a half or two weeks that Anthony Joshua coming off of the stoppage of Jake Paul in Miami. He went back to his parents home country of Nigeria and he was in a he was in a van near Lagos, Nigeria, December 29th. he and his very, very close friends, two of his close friends were in a SUV that struck a stationary truck.

3:47I don't want to get into the particulars of what happened. It's still under investigation. And there are multiple reports online about what the driver possibly did wrong. But, you know, he has since been charged and I'm gonna let that play out. You know, Joshua lost two of his very, very close friends. Some say were two of his best friends. And I think one of them was a trainer. and you come off a high like the Jake Paul situation. It's not an all-time great fighter, nothing like that, but it's a fight where he shut a lot of people up, let them know, hey, I am who I say I am and I got Jake Paul out the way and he made a king's ransom doing it.

4:22Just a high moment, a fun moment for him and he goes on vacation with his two loved ones and his friends and it's something like this tragically happens and it's just very, very difficult because, you know, when you deal with a situation like this, you know, you have to deal with the guilt. You have to deal with survivor's guilt. You have to deal with, you know, losing family members. He had to fly back to the UK and, you know, be with his, you know, his friend's family and talk them through what happened. So, man, I just, it's tough being on a high moment like that and then dealing with something like this.

4:56Extremely, extremely just sad situation, Roy. We are praying for Anthony Joshua. We are praying for those that lost their lives and the family members. Just very, very unspeakable things. Man, you can't make sense of any of this. And man, you are definitely in our prayers. Yep, most definitely. I want to shift just briefly to the fight between Anthony Joshua and Jake Paul. And it was a fight. Many people thought that it was staged and you know, that Anthony Joshua wasn't going to hit Jake Paul hard and that there was some agreement where Anthony Joshua could not knock Jake Paul out. I never believed that.

5:34You know, I know there's a lot of chatter around Jake Paul's fights being fixed and whatnot. And I just never get into that conversation, number one, because, you know, that's a federal offense. That's a heavy, heavy coat to put on somebody. So I don't play in that space. I never speak on those kind of things. I always felt like it was going to be real. And I always felt like it was like the moment where Jake Paul was going to step up and say, OK, y 'all been asking for a real fighter. The Javante Davis fight fell out. So now I'm going to plug in somebody like Anthony Joshua. And I believed it was going to be a real fight.

6:05I mean, 33 million people watched live on Netflix. So somebody was interested in the fight and. It's a six round knockout from Joshua. You saw that there was a difference in skill set and IQ power, every category. You could just see there was a difference. And this is why I tell people not to panic, not to go crazy about what Jake Paul is doing. Just understand it. Just understand that Jake Paul made a lane for himself. Don't get mad at it. he don't knock his hustle he's created a lane his fan base follows him he does work on boxing he does you know he has been trying to get good at the sport he'll never be an elite level fighter he just doesn't have enough time to become that but what he has done you can respect that you can also respect his ability to take the punishment that he took and not quit at the first sign of danger because there's some real fighters that have been fighting their whole life and their first shot whiz past their ear and they're already thinking about where they're gonna lay down that wasn't the case with Jake Paul and I respect that about him so we can look at it for what it is.

7:05Jake Paul is not an elite guy. He's a novice. That's not a disrespectful comment. It's the truth. When you compare the time that he's put in Jake Paul to the time that Anthony Joshua was put in, there's no comparison. He'll never catch up to an Anthony Joshua. And that's what you saw on display. And then some would say, some were saying, well, why was he falling? Why was he grabbing Joshua around the hips? Because he was tired and he didn't want to get hit by the big right hands. That's why. Fatigue makes you do some funny things. Conditioning, as you know, Roy, it's stacked up over time. It's years and years and years of conditioning.

7:39You don't get it in 12, 10, or an eight-week training camp. Only thing you do in that time frame is to build on the foundation that you already have. That's why I tell fighters, don't be a fighter or an athlete and put anything in your body that shouldn't be there. Drugs, alcohol or anything of the like because it's going to cause you to have a breaking point with your conditioning you can only go to a certain point I don't care how great training camp was it's going to be a breaking point for your conditioning and even your punch resistance because those types of things erodes an athlete's body and I'm not going to get into Jake Paul's lifestyle but I will say this he didn't have enough time in Anthony Joshua did what he was supposed to do last thing I'm gonna say before you jump in Roy some some got mad that it took so long why didn't he do it sooner well Jake Paul is good enough and he's been around the ring long enough where he can survive and if you add toughness in that in that that pot and in that category he's tough so he could take the shot at least early on and he's crafty enough to survive and do what he did for those few rounds before the big shot landed that's what you get Anthony Joshua is not a guy who is he's not like a Terrence Crawford.

8:57If Jake Paul fight Terrence Crawford, I believe Terrence Crawford gets it done a lot faster. But that's not really Anthony Joshua's game. He's going to get you. It's just going to take a little bit longer for him to get you. So that's just the way to cookie crumble. I thought it was a good event. It's a fun event for what it was. And the result of the fight is what was supposed to happen. I agree 100 percent. I must say that before the fight happened I wasn't really sure of what was going on because first how you go from 135 champion Tank Davis to 255 champion and Joshua. Well I do understand what I'm saying so that threw me off right there so you have to have, you can't tell me that it's something not being said somewhere about something because that's too big of a jump the goats in boxing don't really do that too often you understand what I'm coming from you nothing like that yet and you already doing that you know that was crazy for me from the start but where I knew he was in trouble was because I was honestly worried about what what they really were gonna do when I started press conference because I was there for the press conference I didn't stay for the fight but I was there for the press conference and the Joshua said Eddie Hearn started this and he came and got me to come stop it that said a lot because if you looked at the build up all the build up it was never in sight until joshua got on stage they would not let eddie come in sight until joshua showed up so for eddie that was kind of a stab in the face so i knew at that point that eddie's not going to tell aj to go out there and do nothing crazy and don't go out there and lay down for this dude go out there and do what you got to go do understand me now i think if joshua felt any He had a threat.

10:40He could have wanted to do it quicker, but he did the smart thing. Let Jake run. Let Jake move. Let Jake do what he got to do to wear himself down. Then it'd be easy to catch him. And that's what a smart boxer would do. You understand me? So I don't think he couldn't get Jake out earlier. I think he just played the smart game. This guy does not have the experience. He doesn't have the years of buildup like you just said earlier. So let him go out there. Let him wear himself down. It'll only take him four or five rounds to let him completely exhaust all his efforts. after that happens now i just walk to a corner and do what i gotta do to him and that's exactly what aj did that's exactly what he did and even the shot that finished uh jake paul and i don't know which shot it was that broke his jaw in in in multiple places it was probably several shots that did that but the final shot you see the lack of experience if you know you got a fighter like Anthony Joshua who is hunting.

11:36He's cutting the ring and you know he's looking for a power shot. He's not there for play. Jake Paul went into the corner and he just invited Anthony Joshua in. He just allowed him to come in. He had his hands down. And it's like when a punch came, he just turned. He just turned his face and he just accepted it. It's like, bro, like I don't care how tired you are. You can't stand there and take that shot. you have i don't care if you gotta time it duck grab him again fall to the ground or duck and get out the way and reset and make him come after you it's about four or five different scenarios that you could have chose in that situation but when you don't have the experience from the crib when you haven't done it from knee high you're not going to know what to do you can push as many trucks as you want to you can swing as many sledgehammers as you want to you can carry logs You can run up mountains.

12:31Man, you can have some crazy videos that go viral about your training session. But if you ain't got that IQ to know what to do in a pressure situation when you're fatigued, that's the result you're going to get. I mean, it's the balance of life. Because he don't have none of that. What balance he did have was he's making almost$100 million to take that shot. Who wouldn't take that shot for$100 million? Who on earth wouldn't be willing to take that shot and know they're going to live for$100 million? So it's like, you just got to balance it out. You know, he's like, no, I'm not. No, I didn't train growing up.

13:06I didn't grow up in boxing. I'm not really a legitimate contender, but a hundred million dollars. He going to break my jaw in three places. It may cost me 20 to get it fixed. What's that?

13:21I respect the grit though. And so I've seen some people get mad about that. They want to give Jake Paul a pass, but they don't say that about other fighters. Listen, I don't know about all that. All I will know is this. He did not have to fight Anthony Joshua. And I think when we assess in just in life, like you said, the balance of life, the problem that we have a lot of times with just how we assess life or sports is all or nothing. Either I like you or I hate you. Either I'm with you or I'm against you. We can look at what Jake Paul is doing, call out the good, say, man, he's doing this. He bringing numbers.

13:59You can't knock out what he's built. You can't knock out how he's done it. Now, he may annoy you sometimes. He may get on your nerves. He's going to say some outlandish stuff, but that's how he built his empire, saying things that's going to get your attention. But when you look at 33 million people tuning in, somebody's interested in what this young man got to say. and for all the people saying that he's not a fighter y 'all tuned in to see him get beat and that's a market and he created that market but we got to learn to balance that thing out because hey yes not an elite fighter even though he's saying he's the face of boxing you should know better than that well he's ruining boxing no he's not because i am the general manager at sac state my good friend brandon gonzalez former sparring partner he runs the sac state program for the boxing.

14:46I talked to him the other day. He said, Dre, do you realize that I talked to some young kids and I asked them who their favorite fighter is and they tell me, Jake Paul, you can't knock that. That's a market in a generation that he's cornered and he's gotten their attention. It is what it is. So happy that both those men went out there and made a king's ransom for a few minutes of work and i know you got to add in a training camp too but just on the night a few minutes of work um it was an event it wasn't the greatest fight ever lived if not the fight of the century or fight of the decade or nothing like that i just enjoyed it for what it was it was fun to be there i'm happy them brothers made a lot of money man and respect to jake paul for taking the shots brother because he better than me if you break my jaw in two places i will not be posting anything online.

15:40In fact, y 'all won't see me for a while and you may never know that my jaw was broke. Matter of fact, you won't know that my jaw was broke. I had a bruised rib and I just told Carl Fratch about that in 2025. I just felt like it was enough time to pass where I could give him the fact that, you know what, you did bruise my rib. But if you break my jaw in two places, you will not be hearing from me. I'm taking that to the grave with me. Once again, that balance. I want to get into our non-boxing take for this show. I want to talk about the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers game. It was a great, great game that came down to the finish from a missed field goal from Tyler Loop.

16:21Tyler, keep your head up, bro. You a rookie, and you're going to build off this moment, and you're going to be better for this moment if you stay in the game and stay locked in and keep working than you were before you got here. You're going to build off this moment, man. You're not going to be known just for this moment. But before I do that, I want to pivot real quick to shout out a brother of mine, Josh Johnson, 18 year veteran in the NFL. Last night, man, he's played for almost every team in the NFL and he's a consummate professional. And every time he gets an opportunity as a backup, he shines.

16:56The Washington Commanders played the Philadelphia Eagles and Josh went 14 for 22, 131 yards, one TD, one interception. He also rushed for 45 yards to get into the end zone. And that was Josh Johnson's first rushing touchdown since week 14, 2018. I was almost an active fighter at that time. But I want to shout my brother out, man. Keep doing what you're doing. Stay, man, just keep being you, brother. And I appreciate how you handle your business, man. And you got that dub yesterday, man. Ain't nothing they can say about that. But I want to get back to this Baltimore Ravens game last night. And it's Pittsburgh still.

17:34This was a win or go home type of situation. And the Steelers won a great game. Twenty six, twenty four. The missed field goal sealed it for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Man, this was a back and forth game. And you would think that it was over. And then somebody would score with a big bomb over the top. And Lamar Jackson is somebody who two time MVP, somebody who is one of the most hated. I think probably the three top hated guys in the league is Lamar Jackson, Shador Sanders, and Jalen Hurts. No matter what they do, I always hear chatter. No matter what they do, I always hear somebody say, but this and but that, if he would have did this.

18:19So I turned on the game last night, and I heard the commentators talking about how Lamar Jackson hadn't done much this year, and a lot of it had to do with injury. Roy, I know you got a lot to say about this matchup and about Lamar Jackson. So you got the floor. Man, it's hard to say. You know, you don't want to down talk nobody too bad because they are good enough to make it to the NFL, all of them. So they can't be that bad. You know what I'm saying? But they do make mistakes at times. And I told a friend of mine, and I hate to relate everything back to boxing, but I feel like God is nature.

18:51So all of it is connected. You understand me? and in boxing, if you can't get over the hump sometimes, you're not going to get there. Well, the first game of the season, me and a friend of mine named Freddie, Freddie Fletcher, I said, Bama, it's his nickname. If Lamar don't beat Josh Allen tonight, he will not make the playoffs. He said, why you say tonight and why you mean how you say one game on the tournament? What game was that? What game was that? The first game of the season, they played against the Buffalo Bills. He has never beaten Josh Allen. Really? So if you go there, you never beat.

19:24It's like when I was fighting an amateur, I'm taking way better. Tim Littles and Frank Lyle was always fighting on one and two in my weight class, right? They fought about six times. Tim never beat Frank. So Tim never could break the ice. You know what I'm saying? And it just wasn't going to happen. So it's like when a guy just can't get over that hump sometimes, you know what I mean? He probably never going to succeed as far as you probably want him to or he never going to get where he wants to go. You know what I'm saying? Well, Lamar to get where he wants to go in Baltimore, he has to beat Josh Allen.

19:56The first game of the season, guess who he messed up against? Josh Allen. That's going to tell me the whole season. If he beats Josh Allen, then I think they may have a chance to go win the Super Bowl this year. If he don't beat Josh Allen, I didn't think they were going to make the playoffs. Now, I can get my friend on here and he'll tell you that I told him because me and him was arguing. He was like, how can you say that the season ain't even started yet? I said, trust what I tell you. Now, lo and behold, it came down to last night. If the kicker had made that field goal, he would have made the playoffs because Pittsburgh just missed a field goal at the point, the position before that.

20:31So the Pittsburgh kicker missed one first to make it a two-point game, which meant Baltimore now has a chance because they can win the game with a field goal. Lamar got in the position, and the guy, he did miss it, but he is a rookie, and there was a lot of pressure. because this is win or go home. And to put a rookie on that kind of pressure on the late night game when all of us football fans are watching. I came out here to see my cousin R.J. Harvey play, me, R.J. Harvey, and his father all sitting there watching the Pittsburgh Raiders game because we know it's win or go home. You understand me?

21:06Shout out to R.J. Great job. Y 'all make it to the playoffs. I'm glad to see that. So let's keep going, Broncos. But anyway, so everybody's eyes were on that game because there ain't no other games going on. In the daytime, you can flip through, watch different games, or you watch the red zone and you keep the scores from there. At nighttime, that Sunday night game, only one game on. Everybody's eyes are on that one game. That's a lot of pressure for any rookie. Anybody really, but definitely a rookie to withstand. So after the guy from Pittsburgh missed the kick, I told my cousin, I said, if he get him in position, it's going to be good.

21:41I said, but this guy still has to also make the kick because whatever caused him to miss his kick, whether it's wind, whether it's weather, whether it's pressure, same thing going to be on this guy, and this guy's the rookie. So he still had to also make this kick, and he didn't make it. So, you know, at least it's a learning thing, a learning curve for him. He'll know and he'll look for this opportunity again now. Hopefully, if he's a winner, it'll make him want to get back in the position to prove that, no, that's not me. That happened as a rookie. That'll never happen to me again. So it'll make him a better player.

22:11But, yeah, man, it was an epic game, though. I must say, and shout out to Mike Tomlin, too. That's 19, I think, winning seasons or seasons without having a losing record. And he in the playoffs again. So Mike Tomlin did a hell of a job with what he has. You know, he has an older quarterback. He got a few pieces missing himself. But he's still doing a hell of a job. The kicker saved him last night, but great job. And they in the playoffs. Yeah. Shout out to Tyler Loop again, man. 44-yard missed field goal. That's the first miss that he's had all season less than 50 yards. and to your point if you got that dog in you which I believe you do I don't know the young man but to get to that level you got to have something different about you man I hope he takes that moment man it really just takes off sometimes you take two steps back to get a running start and you never want to feel that moment again and it does something to you and it turns you into ultimately who you're going to be so I hope that's the case for Tyler Loop and also I'm not a Baltimore Ravens fan because I'm from the West Coast, but they really need to stop hating on my boy Lamar Jackson.

23:13I'm going to just say that. Some people say it's because he's a black quarterback. Some people say it's because it's the way he plays the game. However it is, whatever it is, number one, I'm glad he got his money and his mother broke the mold and negotiated his deal for him. That's a blessing. We're going to keep all the money in the family. But man, let Lamar Jackson do what he's doing. He had a tough year this year. Injuries, the offensive of line, all those types of things. But when Lamar plays well, it's always a but. And then when Lamar doesn't play well, I told you. So, shout out Lamar Jackson.

23:48I got a lot of respect for him. Shout out Jalen Hurts. Jordan Guy, I got a lot of respect for him. I've been following Jalen Hurts since he was in college. And shout out Shadour Sanders as well. Y 'all keep doing what you're doing. I want to say one more thing about Lamar. Not many quarterbacks in the NFL could have made the plays that he made last night with his feet and with his arm to put them in position to be able to win that game. That's why he's Lamar Jackson. That's why he's special. That's why he's always going to be special. And he's just different than any other quarterback we've seen in the NFL.

24:22That's right. Shakur Stevenson and Teofimo Lopez are fighting on the ring six card January 31st at the Mecca of Boxing Madison Square Garden live on The Zone. But before we get into this breakdown Roy Teofimo and Shakur had a press conference to announce the fight I don't understand the press conference Shakur Stevenson looked confused about the press conference Teofimo Lopez is known for saying outlandish things but I've noticed over the last couple years he's making less and less sense when he speaks like the types of things that he's saying at the press conference are just unnecessary the things that he's saying and the way he's saying I don't know if it's nervous energy.

25:05I don't know if he's just trying to get a rise out of out of these cameras and people online so they can talk about him. I really don't know what it is, but I don't understand why guys do things like that. What does that have to do with the fight? What does that have to do with boxing? The only thing you might do, the only thing you might accomplish out of that is making Shakur Stevenson mad. And he tried to make you pay for that. Come fight night on January 31st. I don't get that kind of stuff. See, we'll look at stuff like that and we'll laugh at it in a sport of boxing. and we won't say that that's affecting boxing or hurting boxing.

25:33We'll just say that's just the way fighters are. But we'll get mad at a Jake Paul and we'll say that he's ruining boxing because you don't like Jake Paul or the things that he says or the fact that he's making money in a space that he didn't grow up in. To me, these are the kind of things. Press conferences like that, when you got Teofimo Lopez saying some of the things that he said, that's the kind of stuff that give boxing and fighters a black eye. That's why when we walk in a room and people know that you fought for a living or you currently fight for a living, they expect a certain type of thing.

26:07They look at you a certain type of way and you almost got to you almost got to prove that you not that to be able to get some respect when you're speaking to people because they don't expect us to be people who are sensible. People that can articulate their words, people that can be sensible about how they go about their everyday life. So I personally listen, everybody goes about this fight thing, this competition thing different. I'm not saying nobody has to be like me. Got to be like you or anybody else. Be yourself. But that kind of stuff to me, I don't really see a place for it in a sport of boxing.

26:39It don't make sense. It got everybody scratching their head. And your opponent who came there to talk to you about this fight, he wants to hear what you got to say about what you're going to do to him and vice versa. But you got an opponent in Shakur Stevenson who's confused now. He literally was looking around like The look that Shakur Stevenson had on his face was I did not come here for this And I think he even said I really don't know what to say about it That don't make for a good press conference to me Yeah I know But see this is what I try to tell you about I know y 'all still Y 'all don't hear me a lot of times when I say it There's old school And there's new school Old school had something that had been said, they would not have allowed us to be able to come face to face.