Bored Jones Plans Ring Substitute

Roy Jones Jr. is getting bored. He said boxing is not enough.

The unbeaten fighter plans next month to play for the Jacksonville (Fla.) Barracudas of the U.S. Basketball League in the afternoon before his bout that night with Eric Lucas of Canada.

“If I were just fighting, I would have trouble getting myself up for the fight,” Jones said of his June 15 defense of his IBF super middleweight crown at the Jacksonville Coliseum. “Now that I’m playing basketball, I have a challenge. I’m going to go out there and wear myself down playing basketball.”

Jones, a 1988 Olympic silver medalist, spoke Thursday before joining 1984 Olympic gold medalist Mark Breland in an Olympic fund-raiser at Madison Square Garden in which the fighters boxed leading members of the New York Stock Exchange.

Also on the program were former heavyweight contender Gerry Cooney and Marvis Frazier, subbing for injured father Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight champion and 1964 Olympic gold medalist.

Jones relied on some slapstick punches to carry Dick Grasso, chairman and CEO of the Stock Exchange, for three lively rounds. Jones even fell to the canvas from a first-round phantom punch.

Frazier and John Steffens of Merrill Lynch fought to a draw; Cooney beat Sid Davidoff of Davidoff & Malito and Paine Webber president Joe Grano upset Breland.

Event organizers hoped to raise nearly $2 million.