Roy Jones Jr.’s next chapter is about sharing his boxing skills, his final fight and passion for life

It was his speed. It was his footwork. His mesmerizing moves.

Watching Roy Jones Jr. in the boxing ring during his prime was like watching a well-crafted dance battle. In each of his bouts, Jones came out with a fight plan that would invite opponents into his world time and time again — a world where he won so much that he made history.

Jones is a six-time world champion whose career spans four weight classes (middleweight, super middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight). The elite boxer, rapper and commentator is the only boxer in history to start his professional career as a light middleweight and move up to win a heavyweight title. He won the silver medal in the light middleweight division at the 1988 Summer Olympics.

Jones has the combination of Sugar Ray Leonard’s handwork and Muhammad Ali’s passion. In a career that includes him soaring from obscurity to glittering fandom, his razzle-dazzle in the ring thrust him into the spotlight. Not that one needs to tell the Pensacola, Florida, native about the contributions he’s made to the boxing world. He knows his resume.

Jones also has a surprisingly prolific rap career, with one of his famed songs titled “Ya’ll Must’ve Forgot.”

Now he’s sharing his skills with the world. He has partnered with Star Vizn to offer a first-class experience in his boxing world.

Star Vizn is an online training platform where youths, adults, athletes, future entrepreneurs and aspiring entertainers can learn how to become better at their craft through an app. The platform allows anyone to gain exclusive, behind-the-scenes training from some of the biggest names in their industries on both iOS and Android.

The monthly subscription service is dedicated to users of all ages. Jones lends his expertise, joining other former professional athletes such as Jerry Rice, Robert Horry, Dominique Wilkins, Melissa Gorga and Cameron Mathison.

Focusing on fitness and sports training techniques, Star Vizn offers workouts ranging from as little as five minutes to a grueling 50 minutes as well as personal audio training. Jones’ 12-week training camp includes cardio, total body strength and endurance workouts through his legendary boxing and self-defense techniques and interval fitness training.

Jones applauds Star Vizn for introducing the platform, which was not widely available during his prime.

“You get to learn who I am through this app,” Jones told The Undefeated. “We didn’t have that when I was coming up. We didn’t have that in my prime. You feel me? If we would have, I’d have been watching Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan every day, along with a little bit of Barry Sanders.”

Jones, recently wrapping up his media tour in the ABC Studios in New York City, mic’d himself. He knew which camera to face. He recited rap lyrics during sound check and said he is always prepared. He didn’t need any direction.

Jones said Star Vizn gives him the opportunity to regain some of the time he lost not being part of social media. Collaborating with Star Vizn is important because to the boxer it’s a conduit to give back the things he learned during his journey.

“The things that God blessed me to be able to learn and accomplish, I can now share all my experiences with the world if you want to learn or if you want to know or if you want to be shared with,” Jones said. “It’s very beautiful for me because it’s an opportunity to give back yet to also strengthen the core of amateur boxing and professional boxing, because they saw what I did with my career, where I can show you how I did that now.

“God blessed me to be able to do so many remarkable things with my career and during my career that stays relevant because they are the best highlights on YouTube. We all get to benefit from the fact that people can go back on social media now, look at it and share it, and they share my videos all the time because nobody has more intriguing yet exciting videos of boxing than does Roy Jones Jr. You ain’t gotta go back and look at one fight; you can go back and it’s a whole collage. It’s songs, videos of true stuff that I did in fights that nobody else did. So that’s what kept me relevant. When people say they want to look at boxing, you want to see boxing, you want to see fighting with excitement to it. You’ll go watch probably two or three people: Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr.”

Jones’ music even got noticed in the 1990s era when hip-hop connoisseurs appreciated elements of music that described real-life situations. His music was often a testimony of the portrayal of his life, except he said he didn’t smoke or drink.

“Once I learned how to box and I got my steps down pat, I used to go in my mirror at nighttime and I was practicing stuff. I put my music on,” Jones said.

He said that his most memorable fight was against James Toney on Nov. 18, 1994.

“At that time, I was trying to get to be the man and James Toney was the man,” Jones said. “He was knocking out all comers, he was beating pretty much everybody with the exception of Dave Tiberi, and he was a bully. He was a mean bully that really could fight, so it was no weaknesses in him. He had the attitude, he had the personality, he had everything. He had the skills, he had the power. He had everything. So when you look at him, you’re like, ‘Wow, how’s somebody gonna beat him?’ But I didn’t look at him that way. I looked at him like, ‘Ha, how’s he gonna last with me?’ And that’s what I did to him.”

The hardest part of Jones’ journey has been ending his time as a fighter.

“At the end of the journey, when you finally get everything that you want and you try to tap into that hunger or that drive or that motivation or that anger that you used to have … very difficult to get it because when you do everything you want to do, what’s left?”

Jones’ idol was the legendary Ali.

“Without him I would be nothing, because he set a standard and a bar for me that I had to follow suit with because he was the reason I started boxing,” Jones said. “Without him I’m nothing, because I wouldn’t know where to start without seeing him fight.”

Jones often thinks about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but he’s not too concerned about his own brain trauma although he has been taking blows since he was 10.

“It is something that you have to worry about,” Jones said. “I always have been concerned about it to a degree, but yet I knew I wasn’t wrapped too tight to start with, so it can’t mess me up much more than I already am. But I thank God that I’m still capable of handling myself, speaking to where people can understand what I say. Knowing how to slow down and be a commentator and do things in a way that or in a manner that people can comprehend exactly what I’m trying to say.”

He believes in causes such as fighting the Libyan slave trade and welcomes other athletes’ voices to shed light on social causes of interest.

“You’re gonna stand up for it when you first see it happening so that you can hope to bring enough attention to it to get it stopped before it does hit home,” he said. “Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion. I’m here because I want to do the Star Vizn thing and ready to promote Star Vizn but I’m not afraid to speak out for what I believe in, and anytime that I have an issue or they have an issue, everybody’s entitled to what they want to do. We have freedom of speech in the United States of America, so you think something’s wrong with something or you think something needs to be adjusted with something, then you have a right to go stand up for it. Everybody don’t have to do it. It’s not an obligation of yours, but you’ve got a right to do whatever the hell you want to do. So if you want to go stand up for that, you have the right to go stand up for that.”

Jones lives a healthy lifestyle. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday he wakes up at 5:15 a.m. to play basketball at 6.

“Sometimes I go back to sleep. Sometimes I go home and eat breakfast and go to work in my yard, however it goes. But about 1 or 2, I train my fighters. Then most of the time about 4, I go back to the basketball gym and dominate the kids, and I come back home at about 8 o’clock at night. I train my fighters for a second time. Then I’m in the bed. And it’s a hectic week and a hectic day, but that’s how I live.”

He still maintains a healthy diet. When training he does not eat red meat, sweets, dairy or bread.

“I got myself in shape, went out to L.A. for the filming, got my mind right, went back to my old self. I put on my boxing uniform, got my workout uniform, got my mind into workout mode. Start thinking about what I did when I fight, what I do, how I see boxing on a whole, how I see the technique of boxing, and we went to work.”

Jones is also preparing to leave the ring. He announced that his farewell fight in the cruiserweight division will take place Feb. 8 in his hometown of Pensacola. Although his opponent has not been determined, he is set to headline the Island Fights 46 card that will include a mixture of boxing and MMA matches.

The 48-year-old (turning 49 on Jan. 16) in his prime was untouchable until his 2004 bout with Antonio Tarver.

Jones has won 11 of his past 12 fights, with his most recent on Feb. 17 last year when he knocked out Bobby Gunn in the eighth round in Wilmington, Delaware. The win was Jones’ third in a row against low-level opposition.

These days he begins his morning with an early basketball game with a few youth in the Pensacola area. Yet he remains one of the most viewed boxers on YouTube, and he is well-aware of the stardom younger generations of people still let him bask in — and he intends to keep it.