'Y'all Must've Forgot': Roy Jones Ready to Unload His Frustration on Mike Tyson

Half a minute.

That's how long it takes for the recent promotional video distributed by Triller to get to the heart of the matter, at least according to people like me, that the greatest fighter of a generation is on his way back to the boxing ring for a comeback bout against former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson on November 28 in California.

Roy Jones Jr., 51, from Pensacola, Florida, was the Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Manny Pacquiao of his era.

Heck, I told Roy when speaking to him for Bleacher Report that it was probably more correct to say that he was the Mayweather and Pacquiao of his era combined. 

Jones was just as "Money" as Mayweather but with the unmatched power and athleticism that could knock opponents out with single blows the way Pacquiao could, something Jones was able to carry with him from the lower weight classes all the way up, just like the Filipino firecracker did in his prime. 

Isn't that why we called him "Superman"?

"Exactly," Jones said. 

And we're not wrong. 

I'm telling you that I've seen Jones do things inside a boxing ring that I had never previously considered possible. And I never saw any of those things again after him, either.

Whether it was placing his hands behind his back before delivering a knockout blow, landing four left hooks in less than a second, or any of the other Kryptonian feats I saw Jones pull off against world-class opposition in title fights, Jones was, at his peak, the best fighter I've ever seen in my life. 

How great was Jones? When it was revealed that Tyson was picking Jones as his comeback opponent, I couldn't believe it. If anything, Tyson was probably making a mistake because Jones had stayed so active over the last 10 years, whereas Tyson had just barely been hitting the mitts again.

Or, as Jones put it, "Roy is a motherf--ker is what you should have said."

At the height of his impressive powers, Jones was basically undefeated in 50 professional prizefights. He won world titles in four different weight classes and was the first former middleweight champ in 106 years to win a heavyweight title. 

Yet here we are in 2020, and the multi-talented boxer's most famous rap, "Y'all Must've Forgot," seems to have somehow come true. 

How else can one explain the Tyson vs. Jones promotion being so much about Tyson and so little about Jones?

Y'all must've forgot, Triller. 

In the song, Jones raps about a world that seemed at the time of its release in 2002 quite unfathomable, one that somehow had forgotten the greatest fighter in recent boxing history. In retrospect, it's sort of become a prophecy.

How exactly did that happen? Is it just recency bias, the phenomenon that labels the latest thing as always the greatest thing? 

If that's the case, then how in the world is every mainstream sports fan so eager to misremember Tyson as the greatest heavyweight champion in boxing history?

Tyson wasn't even the best heavyweight of his era. Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield outrank him for that honor.

Somehow today, though, none of that matters. 

Whatever the case, back in 2003, Jones was 49-1, his lone loss coming a few years prior when he was disqualified against Montell Griffin for accidentally hitting the fighter who had taken a knee.

Oh, by the way, Jones avenged that loss via first-round knockout in his very next fight. 

That was one of the few times in his career Jones carried the full weight of anger into a boxing ring. 

That heavy emotional burden created an alter ego Jones didn't like very much named "RJ," but that was basically the scariest version of the fighter anyone ever saw.

During the first press conference for his upcoming fight against Tyson, I noticed it was "RJ" sitting behind the podium, not Jones, first when he passionately defended the existence of something called the WBC "Frontline Battle" belt, next when he remembered a couple of hours later during our one-on-one interview that it was I who had asked him about it. 

So, finally, I just said it. 

"On a scale of one to the Montell Griffin rematch, how pissed are you right now, Roy?" 

"I'm pretty pissed," Jones said. "I really don't like what happened here. I don't like what has transpired, so it don't take me but a little bit to get dead serious about some things. You feel me?"

I do. 

Because what transpired is basically what the Triller promotional video covertly states by not featuring Jones in it at all until a good half-minute into things and what the company overtly states by moving the date of the fight from September 12 to November 28 without even asking Jones, and changing the rules of the bout every other week to better suit their guy, too. 

"I feel disrespected in a sense because we're not committed to any format," Jones said. "The way we're doing it...we're already doing a different format and now [they] want to change dates and everything, too? Naw, I only agreed to that format because I thought it was going to happen in six weeks. You understand me? That's the only reason I agreed to do that format." 

Still, Jones said he's grateful for the opportunity because he sees it as a chance to remind the world of something it once knew. 

"I'm very excited," Jones said. "It's one of the best things I've had that ever happened to me in my life."

Jones believes the Tyson fight came "right on time" for him, and he's anxious to unleash all of RJ's pent up frustrations on Tyson inside the boxing ring on fight night. 

Jones agreed he's being overlooked in the fight, but he said he'll be using that to his benefit. 

"I am, but I want it that way," Jones said. "I love it like that."

But a word of caution here to those who might still see Jones as just some kind of sacrificial lamb.

The last time I saw Jones this pissed off about something was all the way back in 1997 in that rematch against Griffin. 

Jones had gone nine rounds with the same fighter just five months prior. 

But RJ? 

That dude needed less than one round, and when I look back at how long it took the angry version of Jones to score his first knockdown in that round against Griffin, things seem to have come back around full circle. 

Half a minute. 

Kelsey McCarson covers combat sports for Bleacher Report and Heavy