james toney

don't know if anyone is aware of this but he fought at middle weight at 73kgs and managed to win at heavyweight weighing 117kgs.

That is a swing of 40kgs (6 1/2 stone).

very impressive not sure many other fighters could gain that much weight and be successful like he was.

An absolutely outstanding talent, one of the purest I've ever seen, Victor. So talented, in fact, that I think he could certainly have been talked up as much as a Marvin Hagler, Carlos Monzon or a Michael Spinks had he been blessed with a focus and discipline to match his physical gifts.

As I and others have said before, while it's easy to make him a joke figure for the way he continually turns up to fight Heavyweigts with so many rolls of flab around his midriff, it's also a testament to his talent and skills that he can take these big fellas and big hitters on while basically being no more than an obese natural Super-Middleweight and still never be stopped or emphatically beaten. He lead Samuel Peter a merry dance before falling victim to a poor decision in their first fight, and outboxed the likes of Ruiz and Rahman, albeit the positive drugs test casts a nasty stench over that first one.

One of my favourite fighters to watch when he was in full flow. He had the lot. Love the way he was able to fight in the pocket, roll with shots, counter and pivot so smoothly. When he was in his early to mid twenties, fighting seven or eight times a year, he had the makings of a true, true great. I wrote an article earlier this year saying that he is, to my mind, the biggest waste of talent in the past quarter of a century and I still think that, which is really saying something considering that he had the sort of career most fighters can only dream of.

A phenomenal talent who didn't quite reach the heights he should have done, in part due to some bad luck, but more due to a lack of dedication and discipline.

88Chris05 wrote:An absolutely outstanding talent, one of the purest I've ever seen, Victor. So talented, in fact, that I think he could certainly have been talked up as much as a Marvin Hagler, Carlos Monzon or a Michael Spinks had he been blessed with a focus and discipline to match his physical gifts.

As I and others have said before, while it's easy to make him a joke figure for the way he continually turns up to fight Heavyweigts with so many rolls of flab around his midriff, it's also a testament to his talent and skills that he can take these big fellas and big hitters on while basically being no more than an obese natural Super-Middleweight and still never be stopped or emphatically beaten. He lead Samuel Peter a merry dance before falling victim to a poor decision in their first fight, and outboxed the likes of Ruiz and Rahman, albeit the positive drugs test casts a nasty stench over that first one.

One of my favourite fighters to watch when he was in full flow. He had the lot. Love the way he was able to fight in the pocket, roll with shots, counter and pivot so smoothly. When he was in his early to mid twenties, fighting seven or eight times a year, he had the makings of a true, true great. I wrote an article earlier this year saying that he is, to my mind, the biggest waste of talent in the past quarter of a century and I still think that, which is really saying something considering that he had the sort of career most fighters can only dream of.

A phenomenal talent who didn't quite reach the heights he should have done, in part due to some bad luck, but more due to a lack of dedication and discipline.

Very well put. He had a great start to his middle weight career he was 44-0 before he lost to a great roy jones jnr. He then moved up weight divisions and his form was not as great but still managed to beat holyfield and john ruiz ( decalred a nc after due to drugs being found in his blood).

However he has 74 wins 7 losses and is still fighting. great record i must say.

He gained 40kg of fat... Hardly impressive. Agree he does have some very good wins on his ledger though.

Don't know if anyone is aware of this, but vitali is wlad's brother. Only teasing victor, I do miss waingro.

I guess any eulogy as gushing as Chris' needs an alternative perspective. Toney is certainly a strange guy, a trash talking bad boy scared of his mum. Donald McRae clearly warmed to him in dark trade. Hard to pin Down his true worth as a fighter for me though.

Chris will paint a different picture but he was well behind on points before the nunn ko, he was shut out literally by jones, couldn't assert his authority on a past his prime Mccallum, first time round certainly. No shame in any of this, but not to my eyes the form of an all time great talent. And that's before, we start looking at some of he dross performances like the Tiberi robbery. These are all 'prime ' performances. His confidence went after the jones fight so perhaps we can forgive him losing to another defensive master in griffin.

More impressive to me was his success as a fat boy at higher weights.. The jirov win, and the ability to mix it with the heavyweights of the day. They may have been largely dross but they were still naturally much bigger men.

Hard to categorise, but not in my view this wonder talent Chris and others see

Great post milkyboy, even if I naturally disagree in a couple of areas!

I think one or two myths surrounding the Nunn fight have grown over the years, which differ a little bit from reality. The scorecards of the fight had Nunn far ahead and only needing to see out the final round and a half before Toney caught him to retain his title, but I can only imagine that such a set of scores came about by way of home town cooking, because if Nunn was ahead by the eleventh it couldn't have been by more than a single point, or two at the absolute most. What rounds after the sixth can anyone say that Nunn won? The knockout didn't come totally out of the blue at all, as some would have us believe. Toney was all over Nunn in the latter stages, and even if Nunn had survived the eleventh I think that a 10-8 round there and a strong final round from Toney would have made him fine value for a draw at least or, perhaps, even a narrow win.

Nunn pitched something like a shutout for the first six rounds for sure, but let's cut Toney some slack. Nunn was looking like a Middleweight legend in the making by 1991, like a Muhammad Ali of the 160 lb weight class. Toney was a twenty-two year old novice who was still pretty wet behind the ears at world level at the time, and had been a complete non-entity until he upset the odds to outscore Sosa, then seen as the main emerging Middleweight contender, a few months beforehand. All of that considered, there's no shame in being outboxed by Nunn for prolonged periods, in my eyes. It's not as Toney had a long amateur career to prepare him for such a sudden step up, either - he boxed only twenty-four times in the unpaid ranks, winning no titles.

He struggled a bit as champion, of course, but still had enough to get past the excellent Reggie Johnson and McCallum. Not a dominant performance per se against McCallum first time out, for sure, but who ever really dominated 'The Bodysnatcher'? Even Jones had to work hard for a points win against a forty year old McCallum up at 175 lb! Again, there seems to be an idea growing that Toney got lucky against McCallum with that draw when they first boxed, but that's not the case and certainly isn't how it was seen at the time. Indeed, most observers felt that it was Toney who'd been unfairly denied the win by the judges, a feeling which was cemented by Ring Magazine selecting him as their 'Fighter of the year' for 1991 just weeks after that bout with McCallum.

As great a Toney fan as I am, I fully agree with you that he got a gift against Tiberi, but he more than payed for that in subsequent years! Toney I and Peter I, in particular, stand out as extemely unjust decisions which went against Toney, for example. Besides, there is evidence to suggest that 160 lb had just become too much of a struggle by then for Toney, hence why he looked so much better as a Super-Middleweight; his performances against Barkley, Littles and Williams were absolutely brilliant and showed the type of virtuosity that only the most talented of fighters can produce. He was more active, hardly taking a clean shot thanks to his excellent defensive skils in the pocket and showed that he could close the show in style, too.

Jones shut him out, of course, but then again Toney was up against the fighter who arguably had more God-given talent than any other in history who had the best night of an amazing career. I remember Emmanuel Steward saying that he' never seen Toney decisvely beaten throughout his whole career. When someone reminded Steward of what Roy had done to him, Steward's reaction said it all, in a lot of ways: "Yes, but back then Roy was just...Well, Roy was just Roy."

Like you and many others, I find it a hell of a lot harder to forgive the way Toney allowed his career to fall apart after that defeat - he drifted away from boxing badly for all intents and purposes and, by the time he finally slapped himself back in to life with that fine win over Jirov in 2002, it was too late to make a charge on true all-time greatness in the proper sense of the term, the kind of all-time greatness I feel he was well capable of.

But nevertheless, I believe the Toney of around 1991 to 1994 to have been a great, great fighter for a while who was capable of testing any fighter who ever lived between Middleweight and Light-Heavyweight when he was on form. Every right to ridicule, in some ways, his career after that point, but even his harshest critics would have to concede that you can't box a twenty year career going from Middleweight to heavyweight without ever getting rocked to your boots without having an exceptional boxing brain and talent to burn.

I think Toney is like marmite, you either love him or hate him. For me if you appreciate boxing for what the sport is meant to be about then you have to love his skills. Some fighters prefer to use their legs to stay out of punching range, but as already stated James would be right in front of you punishing his opponent with every opportunity (Barkley, Williams, Jirov and Holyfield are his best perormances IMO of this). Yes there was one or two questionable decisions/performances but he was deifnitely a technically gifted fighter who learnt his trade rather than being blessed with exceptionally reflexes (like a Jones Jr), which allowed him to move through the heavier weights and exceed everyone's (except maybes James' own) expectations.

Ha ha Chris. You're relentless on the old salad dodger aren't you? At some point I'll have to watch a few old prime toney fights, as the ones I saw were at the time... And see if my perspective alters. Call that a moral victory mate!

Ha! I think Toney deserves a lot worse than "salad dodger" mate, regardless of highly I rate his skills!

Mikey makes a good point above, that Toney basically is one of those fighters who'll always split opinion more or less down the middle. I can see why plenty of people take exception to my view - after all, it's always fairer to deal in the pure facts, rather than the what might have beens. But I genuinely do think he was one of the most exceptional talents of the modern era.

Bob doesn't post on here anymore, but he was an even biger Toney fan than me, believe it or not!