James Toney: Wilder is a Failure

Toney is absolutely right for me, who defeated Wilder? The strongest fighter he faced (Fury) put him in his place and ended his career at the highest level.

 

How can anyone hate James Toney.

Would have loved to see him destroy the overrated Calslappy.

 

He was 1 punch K.Oing 260+ pound men. It was impressive.

 

"The guys he fought I would’ve knocked out in two, three rounds too." - James Toney

Checks record. Toney either lost to or went the distance with all the common opponents Wilder knocked out.

 

At least Wilder wasn’t a drug cheat

 

Success is achieving what you can with what you've got and Wilder did that.

He was a one trick pony and with that one trick he was able to win a world title - which he held for ages - and a bucket load of money to go with it.

 

I think there's a solid chance he roided for the 3rd Fury fight tbh.

 

Wilder is far from a failure, if anything he's been a massive overachiever given his limited skill set.

 

He had a greater career than 99.99% of fighters

 

underachiever given what he was born with. He’s like a giant sized Tommy Hearns. He could have made cruiser pretty easily (making 200 is well within just standard dehydration for him). Wilder’s power at cruiser? He could have started off by sparking the entire division, then moving up to HW and had more success than he did.

had he learned to box.

sorry. I like the guy, and he’s my fellow countryman… but to be 6’7”, real lean and athletic, with good hand speed and an ungodly right hand.. come on man. He could have been a lot more.

kudos to his managers though. As far as life goes, mission accomplished for them. Young retirement, with tens of millions in the bank. Can’t say they did him wrong by that measure.

 

On the one hand, Toney like Wilder also failed to become the next American to conquer the heavyweight division (and first truly great one since Lewis ushered in an era of both British & Ukrainian and super heavyweight hegemony)

On the other hand Toney, unlike Wilder, has the perfectly reasonable and in fact iron clad excuse of being a middleweight.

 

Wilder has never tested positive for anything or has had suspicion for anything yet you’re over here assuming ****.

Let me guess, you didn’t have that same energy when Beterbiev test came back atypical. I wonder why

 

Then again, every fighter's potential has it's limits...

Things such as:
- Physical limitations
- Psychological limitations
- Management limitations
- Era

Etc.

In terms of becoming the GOAT and proving it, a fighter like Wilder faced limitations in all four categories, regardless of which narrative you believe and how good you think he really was:
- Physically - most of his opponents outweighed him, especially his better opponents. Also whilst his height and reach were naturally good, his lower body strength wasn't.
- Psychologically - he was never the best learner, and the choice of Scott as trainer suggests a desire for a yes-man after the much more knowledgeable Breland.
- Management - whether his own decisions or his handlers, he was kept on a very conservative path and kept away from more dangerous challenges until he'd lost for the first time... Whether through caution or incompetence the biggest fights available to him at various points didn't get made (going back to Pov; Whyte at various points; Joshua; etc).
And as you say, how might things have been if he'd fought at cruiser first? It's not necessarily even the case that he'd have done better.
- Era finally would've made it bloody difficult for anyone to stake a claim as a true goat level fighter at heavy whilst he was active.


The question really is whether Wilder over or under achieved...
And I personally think the answer is both - for a fighter with his personal and physical limitations to become a champion and stay there as long as he did looks like overachievement, whilst in resume terms it's underachievement as if he'd fought better opponents earlier he'd have likely become a better fighter, had better highlights on his resume but also very likely more losses too, but that resume probably would've been better as a whole (even though he probably wouldn't have got as much hype without the zero).


It's very easy to look at fighters limitations and think what they might've been (how Joshua might've been with better recovery abilities; how Fury might've been if he'd lived the life and taken every opponent properly seriously; how much deeper Usyks HW resume could've been if he'd moved up sooner; etc) but oftentimes those things are what made them and their careers what they were, and what made them interesting...

How much less fun would things have been if we had fighters without some kind of flaws, even at the top?