If Toney had remained hungry in a figurative, rather than literal, sense during his heavyweight run, how far could he have gone? Could he have beaten Ruiz again? Byrd? The Klitschkos? How well could he have done in comparison with the other former supermiddleweights like Byrd and Jones who'd invaded the division after Lewis retired? What was his ceiling?
Toney had always intended to step up to heavyweight. He was talking about it even when he was in his lower weight classes. I think that he had it in him to beat Hassim Rahman and Sam Peter, but that the Klitschko's were always going to be a step too far.
Toney was saying in the early 90s that he was going to be heavyweight champion, his rise to the weight class was deliberate. He made a miscalculation when he got there and bulked up. He should have stayed around 215, 218. I have never understood how you can watch a guy like James Toney, with his skillset, and call him lazy. Do you think that somebody is born knowing those things? That those skills just happen?
Toney basically overvalued sparring. He didn't do anything else much in terms of training, and he drank full fat coke in his corner. He ate and drank to his hearts content, and didn't do any sort of conditioning training.
At some point in his heavyweight run, it became clear that Toney's weight had become a liability, though. They even brought in Billy Blanks for publicity to convince everyone that Toney would reduce his weight. He's certainly not lazy compared to 99% of the population, but why shouldn't we consider him less committed to staying in shape than other top contenders during his later career?
He had issues trying to out run or out train his diet. It was an issue he struggled with his entire career. He really needed some sort of therapist, hypnotist, sports coach etc to assist in the worse possible way, preferably earlier in his career when they knew it was a problem but just kept him busy with a fight schedule that was aggressive for the time. He also shoved cardio work for abnormally long sessions of sparring if I'm remembering this right.
And yet he was the stronger guy at the end against Jirov, a noted hard core trainer. Julio Cesar Chavez was noted for only sparring. And the lazy bum won world titles in 4 weight classes, without training. Just eating and drinking as much as he felt like.....
I see what you mean, but roughly around that time: Rahman, the Klitschkos, Byrd, ironically Ruiz, Donald, Williamson, Maskaev, McCline, Brewster, Krasniqi, Golota, Holyfield, Barrett, and several others...even Peter/Liakhovich/Chagaev/Ibragimov, really, who all carried some extra weight. It wasn't as bad as now. That said, Toney was a smaller fighter than these guys, and needed to be smarter about his weight than a natural heavyweight/superheavyweight would. His comparison class would be guys like Jones and Byrd, who definitely stayed at a trimmer weight than Toney.
Well, he obviously wasn't a lazy bum, and he clearly trained. But Toney had a weight problem that got worse as time went on, and which didn't really exist much among even undertrained fighters during the 70s. It seems clear enough that he ate more than he burned, since the extra pounds came from somewhere. EDIT: He was also an exceptionally skilled fighter who was calm in the ring and knew how to conserve energy.
The guy basically just sparred with anybody who would spar with him, and that was his training. It is even alleged that he used to handle Riddick Bowe in sparring. It worked for a while, but he was gaining weight for a reason. He did not have a balanced training regime.