The 6-9 Jones, better known to Philadelphians as a dominating pass rusher for the Dallas Cowboys, took a season off from his 15-year NFL career to try his hand as a heavyweight boxer, going 6-0 with five knockouts in 1979 and early 1980. So much of a curiosity item was Jones that CBS nationally televised every one of his bouts. "Too Tall" was paid more than any first-time boxer to that time for his Nov. 3, 1979, debut in Las Cruces, N.M., against a ham-and-egger named Abraham Meneses, whom Jones defeated on a six-round majority decision.
Had he stuck with boxing, his first love, from the beginning instead of being steered away from it by his high school basketball coach, Jones believes it's possible he might be making his first trip here as an inductee instead of as a figurehead.
"Barring injuries, I'm sure I would have been a very good fighter," said Jones, 57. "I mean, why not? I had the hand speed, the power, the dedication, the toughness. I can't see any reason why I wouldn't have been successful.
"Now, does that mean I could have been a Hall of Fame fighter? That, we'll never know. But I would have won a lot of fights."
How Jones left boxing, got back into it, and exited again makes for a fascinating tale.
"I started out in Golden Gloves when I was in high school," Jones said. "At the time, my school didn't have a football team. My basketball coach saw on the front page of our local newspaper [in Jackson, Tenn.] that I had knocked a guy out in, like, 9 seconds.
"He called me into his office, showed me the front page and said, 'What is this all about?' Basically, he gave me an ultimatum: basketball or boxing. I went with basketball, which might have been the right decision at the time, but I didn't like being put in a position of having to choose."
