Roy Jones Jr. was born on January 16, 1969 in Pensacola Florida. Unlike other black boxers Roy developed his boxing skills on a hog farm in a hamlet called Barth, outside Pensacola, when many others developed there’s in the city ghettoes. He was the oldest of five. He had three sisters and onr brother. Roy’s father Roy Sr. said that he is the one who sparked Roy Jr. interest in boxing, by play sparring with him when he was only five. Roy Sr. said, "I’d let him pounch me in the head. When I pounched him, he’d get mad and run off and cry. Then he’d come back and want to do more.
When we’d finish I let him get the best of me." Roy Sr. was also a former middleweight competitor. Roy’s dad made Roy Jr. to fight a 14 yrold when Roy himself was only 10. The boy out weighed him by 16. The training facilities weren’t to Roy Sr.’s standard so he constructed his own ring in a pasture and fmade a punching bag with scrap materials. Local kids watched as Roy’s father taught him the fundamentals of boxing. Soon they got interested and a boxing club was formed. Roy Sr. used his own money to buy boxing equipment and at one point sold the family’s tractor to finance the boxing club. This wasn’t enough though because he had to ask others that he knew for money to take the kids to boxing tournaments in neighboring states. The only form of transportation was an old rickety van, which doors were held with metal wire. By the time Roy was 19 he had a amatuer record of 106-4 and became the yungest member of the 1988 U.S. Olympic boxing team.
In public the team teased Roy but when in the private they asked him for advice. They saw how he dominated his opponents with cobonations from many different angles. Everyone thought that he would deffinetly win gold in the 156 lbs weight class. Like everyone thought he reached the final round. His opponent was the South Korean Park Si Hun. When the fight was over Park’s face was beaten while Roy’s face seemed untouched.
The crowd and the Journalist at ringside all thought that Roy had unanamously won the fight, because Roy also had two standing eight counts along with everything else. Three of the five judges scored the fight for Park though. They were the ones from Uganda, Uruguay, and Morocco. Everyone knew that Roy had been cheated. Even Parker himself was suprised, he even later admitted that Jones had bested him. To make up for the unfairness the International Boxing Association gave Roy the Val Barker Cup. The later investigation found out that two of the three judges had been had been wined and dinedby their Korean hosts. No evidence was found on the third judge though so Roy had to settle for the silver medal.
