By the time January 2019 comes to a close, Roy Jones Jr will be 50.

Yet the former six time world champion, who managed to achieve his feat in four different weight classes, only retired in February 2018 after a marathon 75 fight career that yielded 66 wins.

Tonight, the 1994 The Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year joined Joe on Off The Ball to discuss his long career in and out of the ring. 

Why did he decide to stay in the fight game for so long? 

"I loved it and I still love it," was his response, adding that he "still has the urge" to box and that it was injury that contributed more to his decision to step away.

Discussing his very early start in the ring, he put his later success down to the long hours of preparation put into training with his father during childhood, also speaking of his fear of that authority figure when he was young.

"When I got old enough, I got to head away from it," he said of that situation.

He also discussed the controversy from the 1988 Olympic final which saw him lose out to a home fighter and have to settle for silver, before launching his famous pro career.

But he also discussed other controversies outside the ring, namely his love of cock-fighting (aspects of which he credits for his own boxing style), an activity that is banned here in Ireland and in all 50 states in the USA due to concerns in regards to animal cruelty.

His view of cock-fighting has not changed and he tried to justify it thus: "They're animals and they will fight to the death but so will two skunks. It's just natural. It's what they do."

He also added that if we as humans were "more humane than we'd have more control over what happens to people when we send them off to prison" as he drew an analogy of another sort.

Jones Jr also said, "We kill 20 million chickens a day to eat anyway. They didn't ask to be eaten and there's 20 million of them getting killed to be eaten. They didn't ask for that."  

And of the people who participate in cock-fighting, he feels they "aren't inhumane": "They care for those chickens like you care for your dog. If they had it their way, their chicken would never lose."

And at the very end of his impassioned defence of cock-fighting, he finished with a "thank you, goodbye" and hung up.