Holyfield - Toney

Holyfield won maybe the first 2 minutes of that fight. After that it was all one way. He couldn't hit Toney with his hands, much less with his patented headbutts.

 

I never understood the thinking of Holyfield's team during this time. He lost to Byrd and had rotator cuff surgery after that fight. His immediate opponent after that surgery is James Toney? Why. 10 months between fights that required a surgery within itself that can take 10 months to come back from.

Then, after losing to Toney, he immediately fights another cutie in Larry Donald.

I always thought he should be taking on more stationary and plodding fighters at this stage of his career.

 

Beating Rahman was the worst thing that happened to Holyfield. It gave him the false belief that he could be the man at HW again.

 

He looked good against Rahman, in fairness. He needed much better matchmaking though. Byrd, Toney and Donald is awful management.

 

When I think of Toney-Holyfield, there are no positive images or thoughts that arise.

Toney was on every steroid known to man at that time. He was in the midst of such a mental haze on those things that after his next fight against Rydell Booker he walked out of the arena ranting and stripped most of his clothes off in the parking lot on camera.

And Holyfield, the Grand Wizard of PEDs, was one fight away from having his boxing license revoked and not being allowed to fight in the US anymore.

And they only fought because Roy Jones, also abusing steroids at the time, wanted to defend his newly won heavyweight strap against Holyfield, but they couldn't come to terms. Otherwise, it would've been Jones in there with the defective Holyfield.

And Toney was planning to fight Hopkins, not Evander, but Toney and Bernard couldn't come to an agreement.



MY BIG TAKEAWAY from that time is how did John Ruiz come out of that era with a stink on him and those guys didn't?

Ruiz fought an obviously roided up Evander three times, and came away with a 1-1-1 split (I thought Ruiz won the first fight, too).

Ruiz fought an obviously roided up Roy Jones, and lost his WBA belt.

Ruiz beat Hasim Rahman for the vacant belt when Jones dropped it.

And Ruiz fought an obviously roided Toney ... and Toney had to return the belt after blowing his postfight drug test. But we still have the images of Toney with a fat cigar in his mouth and Larry Merchant beaming that they were "rid" of John Ruiz.

It was so bad.



Yet people still start threads praising Roy Jones and James Toney and Evander Holyfield ... and Ruiz is the guy whose career suffered from their steroid abuse, notching at least one loss on tape to all of them (whether it stood or not).

Ruiz must not have been too bad if they all needed to cheat in order to fight him.


I am so glad that era is over. It sucked. Can you imagine a bloated Canelo ... raging on PEDs ... stomping around parking lots in his underwear after beating the likes of Rydell Booker ... winning heavyweight belts now?

And every casual fan at the time loving it?

That must be why, after Roy Jones and James Toney's careers flew wildly off the table, and they began losing right and left, I felt no sympathy for them at all. NONE.

 

Another thing about Toney and his fight with Booker was he tore his bicep muscle in half during the fight. He also tore his Achilles tendon around the same time while training to fight Mcline. Those type of soft body injuries happen a lot with steroid abusers.

Regarding Ruiz, he may have been clean but he was flat out awful to watch.

 

Holyfield was quite a bit more decrepit than Toney. James was coming off perhaps the best victory of his career in beating cruiser champ Jirov. Holy had only won two of his previous seven, including losing and drawing against Ruiz.

 

He did. It would've been very difficult for a 42 year old Holyfield to beat any of the top contenders in 03-04. A fight with Tua in 03 might've been interesting.

 

And I'm not defending roid usage but we really don't know how many ppl r on it. Plus u don't become as gifted as Holy, Toney n Roy w just roids or we'd see a slew of ppl w their abilities n accomplishments. There aren't. They are an unfair boost but won't turn u into Rainbow Mario that's a common misconception.

 

Agreed. I just think back to when Toney and Holyfield were young fighter's that were clean. Steroids hurt both more than they helped them. Holyfield in particular was way better as a 200 pound guy than he was when he was all muscular and 20 pounds plus heavier. He was an amazing combination puncher before he got all buffed.

 

I guess under the circumstances it was a good win for Toney. But Evander was pretty damn shot. He was so tight and slow by that point. Constantly injured and losing frequently.

 

The irony is before the fight most were picking commander Vander in an easy fight. Same as the DLH-Pacquiao fight. After the fight, it turns into lots of excuses why the heavy favorite lost--but none of that insight was present before the bell rang.

There were a few that thought the defense and chin of James would keep him in there. That's all. But they weren't going out on a limb predicting his counter punching and lead right hands would dominate the fight.

 

Yeah Toney won well, but if this wasnt a shot Holyfield then it was a very, very diminished version. It barely counts - the early 90s Real Deal stops this version of Toney.

 

James was a selfish person didn't like team sports, he liked being the only man deciding his fate/ outcome . On October 4 the war with Holyfield, James came in at a relatively low weight with his little fists and packing a middleweight punch. His dream as a kid was to become hw champ of the world. He said what he was going to do. Stand up in the middle of the ring and trade blows with Evander. Toney was a headache, for trainers, managers, when it came to making weight. This time he was allowed to eat and eat bundles and still show up on weight. He was convincingly the cruiserweight king and Holyfield was shopwarn and supposedly had a hurt left shoulder. He said after the fight in his book that James made him miss so much that he was embarrassed for himself. With a couple of uncalled for headbutt warnings from the Karen, jay nady, it was a great fight. James said what he was gonna do and destroyed Evander. He was as Sully as Sonny Liston in the afterfight interviews with Jim gray, telling him he didn't like him as he slammed down the microphone. Evander to his credit, said he just had "a bad night". So there you go, an over achieving atg versus the off night Evander Holyfield, war on October 4.

 

He still would have kept on fighting even if he had lost to Rahman. I thought for sure he'd retire after Donald beat him.