Why wasn't James Toney good at Light Heavyweight ?

In four words: International House of Pancakes.

By the time he was fighting at 175, I bet he was walking around at 220-ish before training camp and still sweating off the overage because he probably didn’t eat properly even when he was training.

During his light heavyweight ‘era,’ he still came in over 175 for any fight where there wasn’t some sort of title on the line.

But it’s a good question and a good point.

 

I just remember him beating Anthony Hembrick twice.

 

he was still good. but the judges had an issue with him,I thought he won both Griffin and the Thadzi fights.

 

175 lb should have been his best division. Other than Jones, no one could beat him at that weight. But Toney was too poorly disciplined at that weight. He was overweight, had to cut too much weight to get in fighting shape, and extreme weight cutting leads to physical weakness which hurts fighters during fights.

I wish Toney was disciplined during this time. He could have rematched Roy. That would have been some fight.

 

It has something to do with weight classes. 'Thin' James Toney was exceptional at 160 and 168 before obesity issues caught up with him. Light heavyweight is only seven pounds north of 168 and Toney had problems preventing his belly from swelling like a balloon. Cruiserweight on the other hand is 25 pounds above it, and this gave Toney plenty of time to work in this division. Toney's stay at 175 was limited to two years and he overworked himself, fighting eleven fights in this brief span (he would make a short return later).

 

This content is protected

Here I come, baby! Burger king, burger king, lets go!!!!

 

I don't think it's a matter of him not being good at light-heavyweight but being disciplined during that time frame. I saw Toney fight in person twice, once as a heavyweight at his second to last fight and once in the mid 90's against a journeyman named Charles Oliver. The fight against Oliver was supposed to be at 175 but ended up being a at a catchweight of 180 something if I remember right. This was a pretty common occurrence with Toney his entire career as the guy simply had an eating disorder and about the worst diet for a fighter of his caliber that I have ever heard of.

With that said, he did lose twice at 175 to Griffin but most think he eon at least one if not both of those fights and too me, there is no shame in losing to a prime Griffin who was a top five light-heavyweight for about a decade and an extremelyt tricky fighter. Toney simply ate his way out of the decade. Even the third fight with McCallum had to be fought at 180 something because James couldn't or wouldn't cut to 175. Even after Jirov at 190 which was a tremendous win, he never fought at 190 ever again and dropped to cruiserweight just once when the limit was raised to 200 pounds. That fight was an awful effort against Denis Lebedev and yet another fight where he struggled to make weight. I remember after that fight he blamed the loss on having to lose so much weight.

 

There is a great book called the Dark Trade that chronicles this time period in his career. The reason he fought so much during this time was because it was Main Events strategy to keep him busy and in the gym training so he wouldn't balloon about in weight. As much as Toney hated to diet properly, he loved to fight and refused to do much in the gym other than spar. The man simply loved combat and hated the other things fighter's need to do to be successful.

Side note, all of the major promoters got sick of his weight issues and lack luster performances and ended up dropping him. Dan Goosson who was a very smart boxing man, took a chance on him because he could see that even though Toney wasn't a natural cruiserweight let alone heavyweight, his natural talent was still evident and he could still make some noise there especially with Freddie Roach in his corner. It ended up being a great partnership.

 

100% and I think this lack of discipline on the plate and with the roadwork and skipping is why he sparred so much, which is why he took so many punches to the back of the head, which is why he speaks the way he does now.

Such a shame - literally, some willpower and restraint away from testing Roy as the greatest of the three elites of their era.

I genuinely think that Toney could've been the greatest of himself, RJJ and Hop.

 

Never found this video funny tbh, imagine braggin about ballooning between fights

 

Welterweight Robinson film does actually exist and we have quite a bit.

 

Do we have entire matches tho? On YT when I search I only find his middleweight days and short clips of welterweight days and I'm not that fond the quality of it but to each his own.

 

Toney weighed in at 181 for his CW fight with McCallum. That was of course very low for CW and wouldn't even be a high weight in the ring for a LHW, so it is not like he was a big LHW.