You could only become better from sparring like this... Toney vs Mclellan (Kronk 1990)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rds2-iNML00

Had to share this to take us back to the realness! Was blessed to see Gerald train at my old gym Gainsford on the couple of occasions he graced these shores. Toney is just a supreme boxer, all the smarts and know how in the world. These sparring sessions are what made Kronk a production factory for great offensive boxers... However they also diminished a few as people said the sparring was often better than any main fight you could see. Gerald's speed and brutality vs Toney's smarts and skills ! Amazing

G Man landing about 2% of shots I reckon

James Toney just the smartest boxer of his generation ... Fight against McCallum is one for any true purist. Every time I watch those two masters go at it I learn something new!

Yeah Toney 93 94 was just fantastic to watch even now.

Terrible attitude but a real natural. My fav fight of his was against Barkley. As pure a masterclass as it gets.

ONETWOFOREVER wrote:Yeah Toney 93 94 was just fantastic to watch even now.

Terrible attitude but a real natural. My fav fight of his was against Barkley. As pure a masterclass as it gets.

That fight was faked....the American Government did it. James Toney was actually cleaner from Stoke Newington called Arnold Grimshaw and it was all done with CGI (which as you know the Government had twenty years before everybody else)

Hey zoomy. Good to see you here, when its not on the eve of a floyd fight!

Mclellan used to claim he battered toney, and toney said he had video evidence to the contrary, when I first saw this a while back I assumed it was what he meant. Of course like most sparring sessions, without context it tells you little.

Was certainly some talent in the kronk battering the hell out of each other in the 80's and 90's. Hearns and mccallum had a few wars apparently... Think a video of them sparring came out at a similar time to this one.

Chris will be along soon to comment but he's watching this in his private video room with a box of Kleenex.

The mrs iscwatching big brother with the mother in law...I have more time to post than I expected.

quick question, I didn't catch many of tonys fights but I know his defence was great. I dont think he was ever stopped, was that down to his defence or chin?

if it was combination of both it makes you wonder why so many solid chinned fighters neglect defence (it just seems silly) for example froch.

If your getting tagged your opponent I scoring....so what if you have a solid chin - make them miss and give yourself the best chance of winning - should it go the distance.

All cleaned up now, ready to type.

Definitely a combination of both when it comes to Toney's defence / chin, 3fingers. Toney only had 24 amateur fights (no titles wearing a vest or anything like that) so he learned on the job somewhat with regards to defence. When he was a young pup you can see that guys like Sosa and Nunn were able to land on him with decent regularity - he used to rely on his outstanding chin and go in all guns blazing at times. But he gradually learned the art of defence with Bill Miller (who had him religiously watching tapes of guys such as Joe Walcott) and he also says to this day that the fights with McCallum made him a much more complete fighter and made him really re-think his tactics.

He was actually the underdog going in to that first McCallum fight, but the draw was a little harsh on Toney (got an absolute gift soon after against Tiberi though, so can't have any real complaints) and once he was up at 168 he'd developed in to a very good defensive fighter with top class ring smarts....But then the whooping Roy put on him set him back a good few years. Nevertheless, after the turn of the century the Jirov and Sam Peter (first one) fights showed how cute he could be defensively.

Last few years though it's been nowt to do with defensive skills and all to do with having a ridiculous chin in terms of him never being stopped, as any interview of his in the last few years demonstrates!

We know those who have a great chin because they don't have the ability to make their opponent miss whereas we don't know how good Mayweather or Whitakers chins were/are because they are rarely tagged.

As Toney got older he got tagged more by heavyweights we found out quite how good his chin was, I can't envisage any middleweight ever stopping him.

Seen footage of Hearns v Gerald in an exhibition, would love to see him v Mccallun if anyone's got a link

There you go johnboy...

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WS0Boow5mzo#

Here's an interview of manny talking about mccallum after he was inducted in the hall of fame:

Curteousy of David Iamele

DI: "You've managed or trained over 20 world champions, some of them are already enshrined here at the Hall of Fame, and you were inducted in 1996. They may have to build a special Emanuel Steward wing just for you and your fighters! How does it make you feel to see one of your guys get inducted here, like Mike McCallum will be this year?"

Emanuel Steward: "It makes me feel extremely good because in Mike McCallum's case in particular here's a fighter that never got any recognition at all. He was always going from one person to another (trainers, managers, promoters)-didn't stay long with anyone-and to now see him get this recognition means a lot to him-maybe more so than anyone who's being inducted this year. He was a great champion-many people only remember him knocking out Donald Curry. I don't remember ever seeing him on the cover of a major boxing magazine. Ever. That's very unusual. He fought so many guys in their hometowns or even their home countries. He never had a home base like say Tommy Hearns did with Detroit. He just fought anybody, anywhere, under whatever conditions and prevailed all the way 'till he was really never beaten. His age really only caught up with him. But to see him enshrined means a great deal to him because he never got the recognition or the super fight with Leonard, Duran, Hagler-none of those guys-which I think he'd have been 50-50 to beat any of them!"

DI: "Boxing insiders always loved Mike "The Body Snatcher" McCallum, but many fight fans don't know much about him. Do you have any interesting stories involving Mike?"

ES: "I signed Mike and moved him into the number-one spot, and we were supposed to fight Roberto Duran. Then Duran's people told me (they weren't) going to fight Mike McCallum. I said, 'What do you mean, we have a contract, he's the number-one contender!' Duran just had a good fight with Hagler and lost a close decision, and they wanted to make a rematch. With McCallum, they would only make $500,000, but with a rematch with Hagler, they would make $5 million. So, I made a deal that Duran would fight Tommy Hearns, but Duran would have to give up his WBA title. I allowed Duran to fight Tommy and make more money than Tommy, but the bout would only be for Tommy's title. I made him give up the belt so Mike could fight for that vacant title. So, Mike was gonna fight Sean Mannion for the title on the under card of Duran/Hearns. I was using Tommy to get him his title shot because they were not gonna let him have it. It was advertised as being a double-header with Hearns/Duran for the WBC title and McCallum/Mannion for the WBA title, and I told him that under these conditions if Duran won, he would have to give McCallum a shot.

Anyway, we all agreed. Mike was getting $250,000 and keeping all of it-as his manager I wasn't taking anything-and then suddenly he gets a phone call from Shelly Finkel telling him that I was screwing him and so on. I explained to him that I thought I was doing the safest thing for him that would guarantee him a title shot. We had an argument, and he ends up pulling out of the card. That's why when you saw the Hearns/Duran fight it was only for Tommy's title even though they were both champions. It should have been a title unification, but that's what we sacrificed to get Mike his shot. He didn't want to fight on the card, so later on the fight takes place, and he ends up fighting for about $30,000. He won the title, but shortly after that we severed our relationship because I got to realize that he always talked to everyone. He was always looking for advice, and when you do that you stay confused.

People don't know that even though Tommy was the star at the Kronk, Mike was the one I was the closest with-he was my close buddy. I mean almost every night I went out to eat, wherever I went, Mike was with me. We got to be that close-not Tommy-Mike and I were much closer. I've watched his career as it went on, and I was right there in the front row when he knocked out Donald Curry with a beautiful, picture-perfect left hook.

The main thing that I remember about Mike is he's the most naturally gifted fighter that ever walked into my gym. He did everything effortlessly. I mean he was just so smooth, so automatic. You would show him a little trick, and . well here's a good example. One day he was boxing with Tommy, and I said to him, 'I'm gonna show you a little trick. Tommy jabs with his left hand down, so I want you to parry it and step over real smooth, and shoot a little one, two and hit him on the chin.' He hit him three consecutive times, and finally Tommy stopped and said, 'How come I can't stop him from hitting me?' And everyone laughed! He did it so smooth-and I've shown that to a lot of fighters-but no one was ever able to do it, and he could hit anybody to the body! The workouts between Mike and Tommy were just unbelievable. They were better than most fights. They were just phenomenal!

I felt that when Lennox was fighting Tyson, all the people were putting the emphasis on Ronnie Shields as the new trainer, but I thought the biggest threat was Mike McCallum in Tyson's camp. I was more afraid of the tricks he could teach Mike Tyson than anyone else! In fact, when we were in training, Lennox even said to me, 'What do you think McCallum's teaching him?' You know, because he knew I had so much respect for him. I said, 'Well, naturally he's gonna show him how to work the angles so he can get in and work the body.' So we spent a lot of time working to neutralize that. There was no other technique that we were concerned about other than making sure that Tyson didn't become a body snatcher himself that night, and it worked out perfect. But, Mike is a very good trainer now, and I got a bunch of kids ready to turn pro, and I'm getting ready to manage and promote more, and I'd love to have Mike train some kids for me.

To have Lennox beat Tyson in such a total mismatch-he followed orders perfectly. Everything he did was right, so this was, to me, the highlight of my career as a trainer. I was totally, personally satisfied with that particular performance."

Hammersmith harrier wrote:We know those who have a great chin because they don't have the ability to make their opponent miss whereas we don't know how good Mayweather or Whitakers chins were/are because they are rarely tagged.

This isn't exactly true is it?

Ali had a great chin, as did Ray Robinson and Marvin Hagler. Ray Leonard is also known for having a good chin. Are you saying we only know this because they didn't have the abilty to make their opponents miss?

In a word yes, that isn't a slight on any of them but Ali as he got older and Robinson throughout his career were not renowned as great defensive fighters. They weren't poor by any means but how else would we know they have great chins if they weren't landed on?

Cheers milky. Interesting read too.

After spending your camp dealing with the Hearns jab or Mccallum's body snatching the fights they were training for must have seemed like holidays.

With regards to the debate about great chin or great defence, I tend to think that even if you've got a good defence, if your chin is made of brittle stuff it'll come to light sooner or later. Nobody can slip, parry, duck, dodge or step around every single shot all the time, even the likes of Floyd and Pernell. The Corley, Mosley and Cotto fights are enough to convince me that Mayweather can stand up to decent digs, and Whitaker took bombs (on a broken jaw) from Trinidad without ever looking like he might fold.

Shame how the relationship soured between McCallum and Steward if what Steward's saying is true about how close they'd previously been. McCallum always claimed (as did McClellan, oddly enough) that they had to look elsewhere as Steward was just too involved and focussed on Hearns all the time, to the point where other guys in the gym felt neglected.

Steward said in the past that he was enraged by McCallum's "and STILL the champ, Emmanuel!" piece of gloating after he'd taken out Milton McCrory, who obviously still had Steward in his corner, and that as a result he vowed to make sure to never allow McCallum the fight he desperately wanted against Hearns - not to protect Tommy, but just to get one over on Mike.....So safe to say that both of them were a little petulant at times and I'm pretty sure they'll have harboured some regrets over that.

Hopefully they made some kind of peace before Steward passed.

I've always considered Stewart the villain in all of the McCallum stuff and i'll admit i'd consider him by far and away the greatest trainer in my lifetime.

Some great stuff here! milky thanks for the link and interview. Good to see ya fella!
If I might add to the McCallum Kronk quandary that has been touched upon here... It's quite simple but very interesting an aside. And as much as I live and respect Manny Steward RIP, it goes to the heart of his weakness or deficiency as a trainer. Before I start, I am not saying he is not a great and legendary trainer, he is; but for me he is a rank below the very best.
As much as Manny says that he had a great relationship and regard for McCallum (which I believe he did), Mike could never flourish as a Kronk boxer simply because Manny could never take full control and train a boxer like Mike. Mike was coming from a different place technically and stylistically to Manny. A style and technique, defensively, that Manny did not really get or could coach! Fighters like Mike and Toney had all the vagaries of the Philly style defence, the Philly shell and the roll, down to a tee. Added to this they were great at neutralising opponents on the inside both with an offensive and a defensive game; knowing how to blind side, turn and pivot on the inside and clinch hold and roll. This was not the DNA of the Kronk style when it came to defence. Steward believed that his fighters should fight "tall", and should use distance , range and the jab as offensive weapons to create a defensive shield; if range was broken then the boxer clinches and holds and re establishes range.
This Kronk style often led people to conclude that Kronk boxers had no B plan, I leave you to make that judgement. So apart from the political machinations and the focus on Tommy, I believe boxers like Mike felt that in an all round boxing sense they were beyond Manny and Kronk and could survive elsewhere . Toney was certainly very critical of the Kronk boys that he sparred and claimed that he always gave them a boxing lesson.

Interesting analysis zoomy. Happy to believe that that was part of it but I'll throw a few things into the mix...
McClellan had a classic 'kronk style' and he left too. In his case it was more of a frustration that manny knew tommy was his cash cow and didn't give enough time to other fighters. In mcclellan's case, manny has admitted as much.

mccallum is on record as saying he left the kronk because he was no 1 contender for both hearns and duran and  agreed to take the duran fight, as hearns was his stable mate... But steward then signed for hearns to fight duran instead and mccallum felt betrayed. Manny's explanation for it, in the interview above sounds credible enough but obviously he wasn't able to convince mccallum that!

As for toney, I've seen him credit bill miller... An old school trainer at the kronk for teaching him.. I'm no expert on this by any means but I believe miller was something of a kronk legend and responsible for much of the day to day stuff. If he did indeed teach toney the defensive skills that are so admired its interesting that they are at odds with what we associate with the kronk style. Maybe, toney was the only one curious to learn from the 'old masters'? Maybe someone has a better explanation?

Correct ... The great Bill Miller was a key coach at Kronk. Miller certainly had the knowledge but in the main he had to tailor his coaching to the Kronk creed and that was prototype laid down by Manny...
What I believe we had with Mike and James were two boxers had the mindset and inclination to want to learn all the defensive techniques. They have both been described as adept self learners, so they pored over the styles and footage of old masters. They were also not the archetypal Kronk boys , I.e taken from the streets or amateurs by Kronk and brought through. Both guys travelled and trained in a few gyms; certainly Toney learnt a lot from the Mid west gym culture.

Having said all that, and as I allude to, you are right in that the politics of neglect felt by many a Kronk fighter made them leave... I.e Kronk was always Tommy's gym for as long as Tommy was the champ... Tommy was the cash cow!