R.I.P., Eddie "Bossman" Jones

By Bennie The Short

A name familiar to all fight fans of a mature disposition, Eddie "Bossman" Jones, passed away on Saturday of natural causes.
Jones, a rugged, aggressive light-heavyweight from California, took on the best in his division for over a decade, and I mean the best. It is hard to depict how deep the light-heavyweight ranks were before other weights decimated the lines in recent years, but a quick glance at Eddie’s record does the job. Jones turned pro in 1965, had his nose spread in early fights against Harold Johnson, Jimmy Dupree and Henry Hank, tightened up his defence and worked his way to a shot at the WBA title held by Venezeula’s Vicente Rondon, whom he took the full 15 rounds in Caracas in 1971, before establishing himself as one of the toughest, cutest men around against the likes of Victor Galindez, Jesse Burnett, Len Hutchins, Tom Bethea, Andy Kendall, Rudiger Schmidtke and Tom Bogs, the latter two in Europe. Eddie was forced on the road because he couldn’t get a fight in California. Ex-pro Rick Farris describes him as "too good for his own good - it's as if Eddie had no home."
As his career relented in the mid-1970s, his obvious assets were preyed upon by the leading heavyweights of the day, all basking in a golden era, as Jerry Quarry, Ken Norton and George Foreman used him extensively in the gym. Eddie is perhaps best known as one of Muhammad Ali’s sparmates for the "Rumble in the Jungle" in Zaire in 1974, along with a young Larry Holmes and the much-avoided Roy Williams. When they say Ali enjoyed the greatest sparring imaginable for Foreman, they were not kidding. Jones played his part in an unforgettable win for Ali, and an unforgettable night for boxing.