Twenty-Twenty Hindsight: Jones-Trinidad Analysis, The Strange Fascination With Golota, Golden Boy Drama and More

I didn't get to see the Jones-Trinidad fight (need to get off second shift ASAP), but thanks to the excellent first-time round-by-round by our own Spartan117, I was able to get a feel for it. Boxing can hold its share of surprises, times when all of the experts just end up wrong, but this wasn't one of those times. Roy can fight at a higher level than Tito at this particular time - period.

But before he gets feeling too good about himself, he may want to think about exactly what that means. Tito came into the fight after nearly three years of inactivity. And in his previous fight, he barely won a round (indeed, one judge gave him zero rounds) against Winky Wright. Beating Trinidad proved Jones still has something left, but calling out Joe Calzaghe or Bernard Hopkins? That's just crazy talk.

I especially loved Roy's comment that he would "go to Wales" to fight Calzaghe. All that would do is make it even more difficult to win by decision, and there's no way I could see him knocking Joe out. Maybe it would make financial sense, but even then the safer path would be facing Hopkins - he's a bigger name to the casual fan than Joe-Cal, and less likely to do permanent damage to Jones' face. He'll still need to keep that in good shape for announcing after all.

Tito's best days are even further behind him - has it really been eight years since he knocked out Fernando Vargas? - but he is younger than Jones, so maybe we'll see him again. the HBO crew said they'd like to see him at middleweight, but against who? Kelly Pavlik and Jermain Taylor would destroy him, and even younger fighters like Arthur Abraham and Sergio Mora probably have too much for Trinidad. It may be time to say thanks for the memories, but please retire for real Tito.

And speaking of retiring, I wish someone would do just that to Andrew Golota. There's no doubt that there's a segment of boxing fandom that finds the Foul Pole fascinating, I'm just not sure why. It can't be because his fights are exciting to watch (they're not) or because he has a legitimate chance to climb back to the top of the heavyweight division (he doesn't).

Until a younger fighter who actually understands conditioning lays a beating on him, Don King is going to keep trotting him out there on pay-per-view telecasts. So younger heavyweights, here's my challenge to you: do your roadwork, spend some extra time in the gym, and please do your part to get rid of Golota.

Finally, several media outlets are reporting the return of Floyd Mayweather Sr. to Oscar De La Hoya's corner, allegedly for a warm-up fight in May and a rematch with Floyd Jr. Two problems with this:

1) Oscar supposedly had already abandoned the idea of fighting on Cinco de Mayo weekend. And who would he fight? Steve Kim of Maxboxing.com says Dmitry Salita, Paulie Malignaggi and Steve Forbes are possibilities.

2)Do we really need to go through the father-son drama for the Mayweathers? Sounds like something cooked up to sell a new season of "24/7" to me...