Now, I don't want to tell you that I told you so -- but I've been telling you so for the past year. Roy Jones simply isn't interested in facing live opposition anymore. The recent announcement of his selection of his WBC mandatory Clinton Woods as his next opponent should provide the ultimate proof of that.

Jones does this after telling Jim Lampley ringside after his last farce against Kevin Kelly February 2nd that he would take on all comers from Bernard Hopkins to Dariusz Michalczewski. But when he tried to slip in the name Antonio Tarver in his loud diatribe, you just knew he'd be trying to sneak one in through the backdoor.

Which is exactly what he did in choosing the lightly regarded Woods, whose two best victories come against Yawe Davis and Ole Klemetsen and has a loss versus the very ordinary David Starie. Makes me yearn to see Jones-Tarver, right about now, huh?

While Jones' place in history is up for debate, there's no question that with his penchant for leveraging his HBO contract to be able to hide behind his "mis"-mandatory defenses of his various titles to take on the weakest opposition, Jones can make no claim of being boxing's pound-for-pound titlist.

"No," concurred HBO's boxing analyst Larry Merchant, when asked if Jones could still be considered the pound-for-pound ruler. "Look, Roy Jones has built a great record over a long time and is recognized as 'the' light heavyweight champion of the world. He's held titles in different weight classes, he was the boxing writers' outstanding fighter of the '90s and he's accomplished a lot in boxing."

But according to Merchant, lately, his fights have served as a microcosm of his career philosophy.

"The question now is whether he is going to play out the rest of his professional career in the same manner he has played out many of his fights, which he dominates the first two-thirds of the fight and then he decides, 'Why take any more risks than necessary?' and is happy to go home with the decision," Merchant said. "And so the question is, is he happy to go home to retire with the record he now has? Which is a Hall-of-Fame record and career or does he feel that he wants to remind us of who he was at his best and take on some challengers that will attract a lot of people back to him."

As of right now, boxing fans are 'Roy-cotting' in droves, and the few remaining advocates of Jones (led by Max Kellerman) are finding it much more difficult to defend their man. Listening to Kellerman this past Friday night I didn't realize fighting guys like Derrick Harmon (who clearly lost to Greg Wright), Richard Hall (who got stopped by Rocky Gannon) and Eric Harding (who gave him fits with a busted bicep) were akin to taking on Bob Foster, Archie Moore and Ezzard Charles. It says here that in any other division, these guys are second-tier contenders. And fighters like Kelly and Ricky Frazier are evidence of the flawed ranking criteria and implementation of the major sanctioning bodies.

But that isn't to say that Jones had acted alone in fleecing the public. Granted, it was great business for Jones to be able to basically bring his own opponent and name his price while picking up $4-5 million per sparring session. HBO, which has had an exclusive multi-fight deal with the mercurial Jones for most of his career, has acted as an enabler throughout much of this process. They were in essence partners in crime. While Jones would conduct his bank heists several times a year, it was HBO that acted as the driver and look-out.

HBO finally took the step of openly opposing the proposed Woods debacle (which amazingly enough would have been a pay-per-view 'fight' on July 13th), but it was a step that should have been taken long ago. In fact many industry insiders were surprised that HBO resigned Jones to his latest deal about a year-and-a-half ago when it was abundantly clear that for what Jones was asking, they were the only game in town — Showtime simply was never going to be able to pay (or tolerate) Jones' demands.

Perhaps Showtime would be able to put up the money for a Joe Calzaghe fight, but nothing more. They simply don't have the money in their budget to pay the exorbitant fees that Jones gets from HBO for his non-descript foes (which there are a lot of). But the mere threat of this put HBO behind the 8-ball apparently. One source told me that if Jones-Calzaghe took place on Showtime, that the HBO management would have had a tough time explaining to their higher-ups why Jones, after all those relatively easy fights the past few years on their network, would be finally having an intriguing fight on the rival network. The mere thought of that was enough to convince them to keep Jones exclusively on their network. In essence, they bid against themselves and their past decision to allow Jones to trample on the matchmaking standards that Lou DiBella had set for them throughout the '90s.

Now with this last contract in hand, Jones seems to be in his own version of the 'four-corner offense' -- in effect, playing it safe in and out of the ring before he retires. Merchant believes that there are several reasons this may be happening.

"I can't pin-point exactly when it began," said Merchant, who was been a vocal critic of Jones, "but I can't say whether he was a direct victim of the whole 'De La Hoya Syndrome', where De La Hoya made so much money that it turned every fighter's head who was an outstanding fighter: 'Why aren't I making that kind of money?' Or I don't know if it came to the point where he got a long-term contract and for a lot of money and decided that he had already made his mark and left his reputation and why should he go out of his way to try and guild his lilly?

"He, himself, has talked on many occasions about Gerald McClellan and the dangers of the sport which I think is in part reflected in his style as a fighter. This is a fighter who's been at it a very long time and taken little punishment, in part because of his superior ability and quickness and in part because of the style he fights. And the other part of the equation is that he really thinks of himself as a big middleweight, who moved up to light heavyweight and why should he go higher? But at the same time, he tantalized us by talking about fighting heavyweights and cruiserweights and never came through so that there was that kind of disappointment in which he raised expectations of those kinds of fights and then did what he does in his fights. He just played the clock out -- he didn't follow through on it."

Perhaps HBO's biggest mistake is in believing anything that comes out of Jones' mouth. Jones, if anything, has proven to be as big a double-talker and hypocrite as there is in boxing. Remember, it was he that talked of fighting at heavyweight, only to say that his father talked him out of it. And all this time, we were led to believe they weren't talking. How convenient. This is also the same guy who talks of the trauma he had in broadcasting the tragic death of Jimmy Garcia against Gabe Ruelas in 1995 and how McClellan's plight has had him thinking of his future outside of boxing. Then, his own promotional company has put on shows that feature well past their prime fighters like Junior Jones and Kevin Kelley.

Then this past February 2nd date which featured both he and Bernard Hopkins on HBO was to have been a prelude to a rematch between the two. But it's evident that Sharon and Arafat will come to a common ground on the Middle East before those two proud and stubborn fighters. The negotiations with Jirov now look to be nothing more than window dressing. Some still hold out hope that maybe there will be a solution that HBO is working out or that Jones' next bout will be the one that appeases boxing fans. But as one HBO official told me, "Well, that was supposed to be after February 2nd and look what we got.'"

Jones is fond of raising his gamecocks and his fighting dogs, and it looks like HBO has bred its own Doberman which has bitten them in the butt at the very end.

This is not to say that Jones isn't a great talent and marvelous fighter. But does anybody really know how great he is? For too long his supporters have argued that there's nobody for him to fight and that he would dismiss any of other blue-chip fights summarily. It'd be nice to find out, wouldn't it? Right now, Jones is the mighty Miami Hurricanes playing in the Mountain West Conference and to boot a non-conference schedule that wouldn't include Florida, Tennessee and Florida St. He is Secretariat getting a 10-stride head start. Or Tiger Woods getting mulligans on every hole. Barry Bonds getting pitched underhanded lobs. It makes for bad theater.

"It violates one of the first principles of showbiz," surmised Merchant. "Which is, you're not supposed to bore people, you're supposed to entertain them, you're supposed to tantalize them, you're supposed to make them feel they're coming to see something that's going to move them. That's either going to move them by the brilliance of your performance or by the great competition. And when you don't see either, but just that he dominates and wins every round, then you start to lose interest. He moves along as if the fans don't count and I do think the fans count. They get bored with you, then it counts."

Consider them bored.

I WONDER

Shortly after his February blowout of Kelly, Jones made a point of stating that he would be mowing down all the big-name opposition that the boxing world wanted him to face. But, not-so-coincidentally, that was right around the time of the release of his hip-hop album. Now, you don't think he was just blowing smoke on all these nationwide media appearances to sell a few albums, do you?

Nahhhhh. He would never do that. Would he?

WOODS

So what does Merchant know about Clinton Woods?

"Well," said Merchant. "I heard he wasn't as good as Kelly."

That's not saying much. Maybe Roy can knock him out with not only his hands behind his back but his feet tied up too.

FINAL FLURRIES

Anybody see that chilling KO on Friday Night Fights that saw Jose Nieves stop Fidencio Reyes in 28 seconds? It was one of the most frightening knockouts you'll ever see... Miguel Cotto looked sharp on that same night on the Telefutura broadcast.