Petition Pushes Junior Jones, Iran Barkley for Hall of Fame Ballot

A Change.org petition is asking the International Boxing Hall of Fame to place former world champions Junior Jones and Iran Barkley on its election ballot. The petition pairs the two New York fighters as candidates for the Hall’s voting panel to consider.

The Hall’s election is a closed process. According to the Hall’s ballot release for the 2026 election, votes are cast by members of the Boxing Writers Association of America and boxing historians, with voters from Japan, England, Canada, Argentina, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Mexico and the United States taking part. Ballots for that cycle were distributed on October 1, 2025.

“The annual ballot mailing is a special time for the sport of boxing,” Executive Director Edward Brophy said in the release.

Both fighters clear the timing requirement for the Men’s Modern category, which the Hall defines as a last bout no earlier than 1989. Barkley’s final professional fight came in 1999, Jones’s in 2002. Neither was among the three fighters the Hall listed as first-time additions to the men’s modern ballot for the 2026 election: Gennadiy Golovkin, Vernon Forrest and Steve Collins.

That election produced a Class of 2026 headed by Golovkin, Antonio Tarver and Nigel Benn in the men’s modern category. Benn stopped Barkley in the first round in Las Vegas in August 1990.

Barkley, 66, finished 43-19-1 with 27 knockouts and won titles in three weight classes. He took the WBC middleweight title from Thomas Hearns in June 1988 in Las Vegas, stopping Hearns in the third round in what is still cited among the sport’s largest upsets. He added the IBF super middleweight title in January 1992 with a two-round win over Darrin Van Horn at the Paramount Theatre in New York, then beat Hearns again two months later, taking the WBA light heavyweight title by split decision.

The defeats on his record are nearly as instructive. He lost a split decision to Roberto Duran in Atlantic City in February 1989, dropped a decision to Michael Nunn six months after that, was stopped by Benn in 1990, retired after nine rounds against James Toney at Caesars Palace in February 1993 and again after nine against Henry Maske in Germany in October 1994. Hearns, Duran and Toney are all enshrined in Canastota. Nunn entered with the Class of 2025. Benn was inducted in June.

Asked to name the hardest puncher he faced, Barkley told Boxing News: “Without a doubt Tommy Hearns.”

Barkley grew up in the Patterson Houses in the South Bronx and was steered toward boxing by his sister Yvonne, a professional fighter herself in the late 1970s. A 2010 feature by Ronan Keenan, republished by The Sweet Science, put his career earnings at roughly $5 million and traced their loss to failed investments, tax problems and two divorces. The piece described him living in the same projects where he was raised.

In March 2025 Barkley suffered a stroke and was hospitalized at New York Presbyterian. Promoter Lou DiBella, who spoke with him during the recovery, told BoxingScene: “In the New York boxing community, Iran is very well loved.”

Jones, 55, retired at 50-6 with 28 knockouts. A two-time New York Golden Gloves winner out of Brooklyn and one of the more accomplished New York City fighters of his generation, he won his first 32 professional bouts and took the WBA bantamweight title from Jorge Eliecer Julio in 1993.

His candidacy rests largely on Marco Antonio Barrera. In November 1996, Jones won the WBO junior featherweight title when Barrera’s corner entered the ring in the fifth round, producing a disqualification. Jones won the April 1997 rematch on points. Barrera went on to win titles in three divisions and was inducted into the Hall of Fame with the Class of 2017. Jones had also outpointed Orlando Canizales, another future inductee, before that first Barrera fight.

Jones lost to Erik Morales in 1998, picked up a minor featherweight belt in 1999 and had his last fight in 2002. He went to work in an administrative role at a financial services firm in New Jersey. “I don’t miss boxing and I’ve no real regrets,” he told The Sweet Science.

Both men remain active around the sport in New York. They appeared together in “Marcel’s Promise,” a short film about Panama Al Brown that screened in June, with Jones playing Brown and Barkley cast as Kid Norfolk.

Jones was inducted into the Atlantic City Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2025, alongside Julian Jackson, Steve Collins and Charles Brewer. Both Jones and Barkley are listed among the confirmed guests for that hall’s 2026 induction weekend at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City in late September.

This is not the first organized push on Barkley’s behalf. A separate petition seeking his election, addressed to Brophy and the Boxing Writers Association of America, has been posted since 2021.

The Hall’s published election materials describe candidate voting as the work of BWAA members and its international panel of historians. They make no reference to public nominations.