Personally I feel Qawi must effective offense against Toney would be his jab and combinations to the body then coming up to the head. I think Toney would land the cleaner punches regardless of the outcome its just a matter of how much he allows Qawi to outwork him.
great match, i pick my boy toney by ud, too smart, too much good defence, great move of head and iron chin, he wins, he is greater than qawi
Two of the toughest guys to have boxed professionally since they started filming the sport. Qawi via close decision with calls for these two to go at it again as soon as possible.
Qawi outpoints Toney in a brutal affair where both fighters fight up close with Qawi doing a bit more work inside. Toney thrived on fighters that come to him but Qawi used educated pressure, slick defense, and sneaky counters that would give Toney hell.
Though he was shorter than Toney, Qawi was the natural Lt. Heavy. Toney was just a lazy middleweight with superlative skills that hid his lack of dedication in the gym in every aspect of boxing training with the exception of sparring Which he loved doing. Toney didn't like the road work, calisthenics, and the meal control aspects of the sport , and it was obvious as he ballooned all the way up to heavyweight. Qawi, would simply out work Toney at Lt.heavy. He would be in much better physical condition, and would slowly grind Toney down. In a 15 rd fight, he may have been able to wear Toney down and stop him late.
Toney lost two close controversial decisions to Griffin who was small in height for a Light Heavyweight only 5'7 which is only 1 inch taller than Qawi. Whilst Griffin and Qawi are very different fighters I do feel like Qawi's great defense and workrate would be a bit too much for Toney overall. Griffin was short and outhuslted Toney plus he was hard to hit so I do see some similarities with Qawi in that regard. Overall Qawi by decision for me but the infighting would be amazing to watch.
I think Qawi beats Toney at light heavyweight and would probably do it clearly. The better matchup here is cruiserweight but I’d still favour Qawi again. I think both fights would be really interesting clashes of styles though and I’d love to have seen them.
I'm in your boat. Qawi is high workrate, skilled, durable and quite powerful. He'd enjoy fighting someone around his own height and such.
Qawi is starting to get very overrated. In his biggest fight at lightheavy he got outboxed by a pretty wide margin by Spinks.
Flash just to add a little to this James Toney was never a real middleweight the way Dwight Qawi was a real Light heavyweight. "I played football as defensive back and quarterback in high school," said Toney who grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "I weighed 205 pounds to be exact," I don’t think “Lights Out” is 205lbs during the same day weigh in era but I can’t see 160lbs being possible either. He’s likely a small 175 pounder whilst Dwight Qawi is a big one.
Why do you say Dwight Qawi is being overrated? Isn’t Micheal Spinks usually in the top 10 sometimes top 5 175 pounders? Not a loss to be ashamed of this sort of fight in the old days would’ve had a sequel or two It was a pretty tense one and seeing them learn in a series would’ve been great. Spinks also said Qawi had the best defence of all his opponents and I agree.
Spinks boxed the most disciplined fight of his career and despite controlling the first 7 rounds Qawi got back into the fight and made it competitive in the end. Spinks is a top 10 Light Heavyweight of all time and is H2H one of the best of all time at that weightclass. Toney lost to Montel Griffin x2 and Drake Thadzi at Light Heavyweight it's not like he would fair any better against a prime Michael Spinks. I don't know why you dislike Qawi so much everytime I've seen a thread about him you're calling him overrated or discrediting him. Qawi was a fantastic talent and H2H for a good 2 or 3 year period rates highly at Light Heavyweight.