RJJ Vs Toney Rematch -Light heavy?

Roy wouldn't be there for Toney like Jirov was.

 

Really, you've not mentioned it before?

Toney was unbeaten and the #1 p4p fighter was on the line. It was the biggest fight of his career. Toney's record at 175lbs is worse than his record below it. There is zero objective reasoning to support he'd do any better vs a pre-Ruiz RJJ at 175lbs, much less actually win.

 

Toney dropped off more at 175lbs than Jones did (before the Tarver fight I mean) so I doubt the fight would be much different from their actual fight.

 

Again, Toney is being built up to epic proportions to levels that he didn't achieve.

Toney is my favourite fighter out of the magnificent three, skills wise, but he is inferior to Roy, and B-Hop's work ethic and professionalism expose James for exactly who he was.

No version of James prior to post-Ruiz beats Roy at the same weight. All of James' best performances involve fighters coming to him and not having the feet to get out of James's counterpunching excellence range. Roy isn't going to plod forward and throw telegraphed, apprehensive punches for Toney to bounce his head like a bongo.

At LHW, even a super motivated James struggles to get off, cos Roy will keep him spinning and keep him having to readjust to explosive hooks and right hand leads.

I don't understand any reality where James is afforded the belief that he can be motivated to come into the fight with zero excuses when he couldn't do it the first time around, in real life when it counted and when his actual LHW tenure was fairly non-descript.

 

So Toney didn’t want the first fight and wasn’t motivated? LOL. He sure talked like he wanted it.

And why should a guy get a rematch after getting thoroughly dominated? Especially at 175, a division where he didn’t thrive.

James made the same mistakes in his career over and over — eating himself out of divisions, coming into fights underprepared and weight-drained. At some point a guy is what he is, and James was a guy who never won a fight with a buffet or a donut shop.

So the James Toney you’re talking about is a projection. There’s nothing in his makeup that says he’d do better in a rematch, especially at the division where he had his worst run.

You just don’t want to accept the result of the fight as it happened so you’re creating in your mind an ultra-prepared James Toney. He weighed in at super middle at the end of July. The fight was announced one month later — and that’s after some period of negotiation (Bob Arum couldn’t have announced it without signing it and this didn’t come together in one day), reasonable to guess at least a couple of weeks, so he had to have known he was fighting Roy within at minimum three weeks (to be generous) after weighing super middle. The fight was in mid-November, so games had 2 1/2 months to prepare and only a few weeks at most after already being at the division limit.

So there really is no excuse — he didn’t have time to get out of shape after beating Charles Williams and he had plenty of time to get in shape vs Roy. You cannot pretend James didn’t have motivation to be ready for their fight — he was making $2.5M. It was basically for the P4P crown in all of boxing.

And yet you saw the result — Roy boxed his ears off, even clowned him and knocked him down. Absolute dominance.

So James said he REALLY wanted the rematch. What did he do at light heavy to show that he REALLY wanted it? Fiddled and farted around against other light heavyweights … not the actions of a man hell-bent on getting RJJ back in thee ring. Barely showed up against Drake Freaking Thadzi, same as he did against Dave Tiberi (but James doesn’t make the same mistakes twice according to you, lol).

You’re missing the difference between Roy and James mentally — the difference in speed and fighting ability showed quite well when they were inside the ropes together — Roy was ALWAYS motivated to show his best; James waxed and waned on his motivation. Roy seized opportunities; James seized cornbread and pudding and pastries. James TALKED about what he wanted; Roy Jr went out and TOOK what he wanted.

 

For @THE BLADE 2 and anyone else in the ‘Toney would have really upped his game if there was a rematch’ camp … let’s examine that, shall we?

Here’s James Toney’s resume in rematches:

Sanderline Williams: Put the first blight on a rising Toney’s record, fighting him to a draw. They rematched pretty soon after and Toney pitched a near-shutout. Clearly performed better second time around.

Mike McCallum: First fight, draw. Second fight, majority decision for James so marginally better result but he didn’t take his game to a whole different level. Third fight was 20-pounds heavier and five years after the second against an old man who had gone from Body Snatcher to Dad Bod, and James won fairly comfortably but hardly a shutout and hardly a runaway win.

Montell Griffin: Lost a close decision first time around, lost by a wider margin in the rematch. (Let’s also take a moment to compare Roy Jr’s result in his rematch with Montell — got outfoxed and fell behind first time, DQ’d for hitting Griffin when he was down as he rallied and was on the verge of a KO; knocked the man into another dimension in one devastating round when he got a second try).

Hasim Rahman: Draw the first time, second time they went three rounds before it was halted by a butt from an accidental cut so no contest and not much evidence here on which to make any conclusions — of note, James was ahead by one point on two cards and behind by one point on the other, so from what little we have to work with we see it may have been on its way to another close fight. But really there’s no way to know what would have happened.

Samuel Peter: Lost a split decision first time. Rematched immediately with more at stake (title eliminator) and Toney lost by 8 points on two cards and 11 on the other. Completely dominated.

So those are the FACTS about what James Toney was like in rematches, all of which he should have been motivated to be a better version of himself. Against a journeyman, he was. In the others, at his best he was marginally better and at worst he was less competitive the second time around.

Now if anyone wants to bring up Tarver (or Hopkins), I’m with the majority opinion that the weight gain/loss for Roy Jr around the Ruiz fight ruined him — if you want to make a mythical rematch of James vs Roy Jr after Tarver II, no argument from me that Toney would probably win.

But the idea that Toney was some kind of rematch machine who really showed out when he got a second chance after a non-win … the evidence simply doesn’t support the idea that he’d come into a rematch with Roy Jr as some completely revamped Six Million Dollar Man version of himself. Let’s just be real about it.

 

I would comfortably pick RJJ over Toney at LHW at any point up until the move to heavy.

 

If Toney's in top shape and focused I see him putting up a signifigantly closer fight than he did in 1994,Fergy. I still see Jones' speed deciding it though. Would be a very entertaining fight this time.

 

I am not sure what your point is. All what you say does not change the fact that Toney was not properly prepared for the Jones rematch. It is highly unlikely he would do that mistake twice. I agree that there is no excuse for Toney to not prepare properly for the Jones fight, Whether a fully prepared Toney would have beaten Jones at 175 is an entirely different question. Jones has a tough style for the style of James Toney,

 

Thank you. I pretty much see it the same way.

 

Again I am not sure what your point is.. Toney was not properly prepared for the jones match. So obviously there was a lot of room for improvement if he turn up in shape for the rematch.

 

Why is it highly unlikely that a guy who showed up in half-ass shape for the first fight — the biggest fight of his career no less — and for many other fights … would show up in half-ass shape for a rematch?

Guys like Toney like to build in excuses when they know they could likely lose … ‘See, I wasn’t in shape so this doesn’t count,’ to them is better than ‘That guy is way better than me.’ I think that’s what you’re not getting.

There is zero in his past that assures that we get a 175-pound version of James Toney who was markedly better than the 175-pound version we saw many times. There is zero in his past that says ‘Oooh, when James doesn’t win the first time, he shows up way better for a rematch,’ which I outlined for you fight by fight.

And there’s another factor — Roy Jr took offense at anyone or any suggestion that someone could beat him. So he would probably show up a better version of himself. He said after the first fight that he was drained from coming down from like 200 pounds, which for him was a lot. So there’s every chance we get an even better version of RJJ no matter what version of Toney shows up (see Griffin, Montell).

Your whole thesis has no factual basis that you can point to any version of Toney at 175 who is better than or closer to equal to RJJ; nor that ‘Rematch Toney’ is a different beast than ‘First-Fight Toney.’ So it’s all a construct that you think it therefore it would be so.

It’s not unlike me saying, ‘Well, I think if Mike Tyson fought Evander a third time, this time he’d stick and move and float like a butterfly and sting like a bee and jab Evander to defeat circling around him on his bicycle.’ Sure, I can believe it, but there’s nothing in Tyson’s history that suggests it could happen. Same with your version of Toney here.

Tell me something other than ‘well I just believe it’ that you see in 175-pound Toney that leads you to believe it, or in rematch Toney. Give me some foundation for your belief. Not just ‘well I think he’d be in better shape.’ Guess what: his next fight after Roy, he was in better shape … and he lost to Montell Griffin. Hey, he got a rematch and … he lost to Montell Griffin. There’s no ‘in shape 175-pound’ version of Toney that gives Roy trouble. That’s fact based on what we have seen, not what you or anyone wishes Toney would be at that weight.

 

Which is why it ain’t the answer… you punch with him, strip him of his speed.

 

The basis is that Toney would be the underdog in a Jones rematch. When he was the underdog and had something to prove, Toney turned up in shape and did rise to the challenge on past occasions: Nunn, Mc Callum I, Barkley Jirov, Holyfield. I feel the Jones rematch would be one of those occasions.

You know, Toney did train to the level of his opponents and he probably thought he could beat Griffin at 80% or whatever (and a lot of folks thought he in fact did).

 

In all those rematches Toney did better than in their first fight except for the Peter fight (but come on Toney was pretty shot by then). Again for the Jones rematch, Toney would logically have more room for improvement as he did not show up in shape in their first fight.