Roy Jones Jr., the all-time boxing great who plans to close out his career on Feb. 8, now has an opponent. Jones announced on Friday that he will face journeyman Scott Sigmon.
Jones, who won world titles in four weight divisions, is ending his 29-year professional career in the scheduled 10-round cruiserweight fight at the Pensacola Bay Center in his hometown of Pensacola, Florida, the same city where he turned pro in 1989.
"Y'all must've forgot. I always said that my final fight would be in my hometown of Pensacola," said Jones, riffing on the title of his famed rap song, "Y'all Must've Forgot."
"I meant it then, and I mean it now. This is where it all began for me. This will be my 75th professional fight, and it will be my last one."
The bout will take place on the Island Fights 46 card that will include a mixture of boxing and MMA matches and it will be streamed live via UFC Fight Pass, the UFC and Jones announced.
"I have been friends with [UFC president] Dana White for years and am so excited for UFC Fight Pass to be streaming this event," Jones said.
The card will mark the first time UFC Fight Pass will stream a live boxing event.
"Roy Jones has had a long and distinguished career. We have wanted to work together for a long time, and I'm glad that I could bring his final fight to all the fans who have UFC Fight Pass," said White, who recently said he plans to go into boxing promotion in addition to his duties promoting UFC events.
Sigmon (30-11-1, 16 KOs), 30, of Lynchburg, Virginia, has fought most of his career as a middleweight and light heavyweight. He has lost whenever he stepped up his opposition level, including to Luis Arias, Matt Korobov, Ronald Gavril, J'Leon Love, Caleb Truax and Kelly Pavlik.
Jones (65-9, 47 KOs), who turned 49 on Jan. 16, won world titles at middleweight, super middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight and reigned as the pound-for-pound king for about a decade, from 1994 -- when he easily outpointed James Toney to win a super middleweight world title -- until 2004, when Antonio Tarver shockingly knocked him out in the second round of the second of their three fights to take his unified light heavyweight world title.
Jones was a silver medalist at the 1988 Olympics. He should have had gold, but the judges were later found to be corrupt. For many years as a professional, he was untouchable. Jones was the first former middleweight world champion to win a heavyweight world title in more than 100 years when he rolled past John Ruiz in a lopsided decision in 2003.
He is a shoo-in for the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
But since a three-fight losing streak -- the knockout to Tarver, a ninth-round knockout to Glen Johnson and a one-sided decision loss to Tarver in their 2005 rubber match -- Jones has been on a steep decline.
He did score a big win against the much smaller, unretiring Felix Trinidad in 2008, but lost when he would face top opponents thereafter, including a lopsided decision to Joe Calzaghe later in 2008 and another three-fight losing streak that spanned 2009 to 2011 -- against Danny Green (first-round knockout), Bernard Hopkins (lopsided decision in their rematch) and Denis Lebedev (brutal 10th-round knockout).
The fight will be Jones' first in a year. In his last fight, on Feb. 17, he knocked out Bobby Gunn in the eighth round in Wilmington, Delaware. The win was Jones' third in a row against low-level opposition, and he has won 11 of his past 12 fights, though the loss in that stretch was a crushing fourth-round knockout in Moscow at the hands of former cruiserweight world titleholder Enzo Maccarinelli.