Perhaps the biggest beef in boxing right now is between two fighters who are retired.
This is Roy Jones Jr. and Floyd Mayweather, and this beef has been simmering ever since Jones Jr. claimed that a prime Sugar Ray Leonard would have beaten a prime Floyd Mayweather during a June 17 appearance on Andre Ward’s All The Smoke Fight podcast.
While Mayweather didn’t offer any verbal response to these comments (at least not yet), he did post several videos to his Instagram story of him watching all the times Jones Jr. got knocked out in his professional boxing career, shortly after the comments went viral.
Dec 14, 2024; Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; Floyd Mayweather looks on during the first half between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Atlanta Hawks in a semifinal of the 2024 Emirates NBA Cup at T-Mobile Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-Imagn Images / Kyle Terada-Imagn Images
Mayweather’s doing this on social media seems to have set Jones Jr. off, which is conveyed with scathing comments he made during an August 12 interview with Manouk Akopyan of Ring Magazine.
“It was low class for him to post clips of me losing,” Jones said. “If I wanted to be messing with him, I could have done the same thing he did and got a book to start reading. Then what is he going to say? He did it because I said I would bet my life that Floyd would not beat a prime Sugar Ray Leonard.”
He then went on to bash Mayweather’s career by saying, “[Mayweather] struggled with an old Oscar De La Hoya. Mayweather’s dad said he lost that fight. Then they say Floyd beat so many world champions. Most were not world champions at the time, they were ex-world champions… Canelo Alvarez was young, and he fought Manny Pacquiao after he was knocked out by Juan Manuel Marquez. He didn’t fight Terence Crawford.”
My @ringmagazine interview with Roy Jones Jr.
RJJ discusses:
—Beef with “low class” Mayweather
—Pacquiao having a better career than Floyd
—#CaneloCrawford/#NormanHaney predictions
—Itauma evolving into a top 5 heavyweight
—Usyk being unbeatable
Watch: https://t.co/XQfXNjm7L5 pic.twitter.com/VLxcr15cTb
— Manouk Akopyan (@ManoukAkopyan) August 14, 2025
It’s somewhat hilarious that the initial source of all this anger is Sugar Ray Leonard, who is known as one of the friendliest and affable personalities in all of boxing.
Leonard was asked about this beef during an August 15 interview with FightHype and offered a great response.
“I didn’t really see [Jones Jr.’s comments]. I heard about it, actually, but didn’t really see it,” Leonard said.
“It doesn’t bother me,” he added of the beef.
It’s hard to imagine that much of anything disrupts Sugar Ray Leonard’s good vibes right now, and his unbothered stance about this ongoing beef that stemmed from Roy Jones Jr.’s praise of him is proof of that.
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