Toney a fighter for all ages. Swimming with bigger boys more regularily than Steele would put Toney in a favoured position, on the otherhand, would Steele care who you fought or didn't, probably not. great as he was though, was Steele the 'best' in that mid/late 1930's period, probably not, was Toney the best MW/S-MW in his years there, very possibly. so I'll say Toney. but I wouldn't exclude Steele or others from the 30s & 40s either. wouldn't it be great if we could actually match fighters from different era's.
Man, I like Steele a lot in the videos I've seen of him. He has cat-like reflexes, two handed power and brings a lot of speed to the table. This will trouble Toney, because I think Steele is faster than the large majority of guys he has fought. On the other side of the equation, Toney is bigger, tougher, and brings a special kind of defence that I'm not sure Steele saw before. Rehydration rules favour Toney. If we are talking "160" then we'd probably have to consider a 168 version of Steele to even the field. Otherwise Toney might win on length alone.
In the 1930s - 1940s etc James would start at LHW and move to HW pretty quickly… (185-200lbs) people don’t understand how much effort it took to keep JT at 160-168lbs.
Apply the harder conditions firstly.. lighter gloves/more damage, 15 rounds, no PEDs & more frequent fighting over top tier opposition.. yes Toney fought frequently early in his career but over mostly lower grade opposition, til he stepped up & then it began tailing off.. to fight as often as Steele did whilst maintaining the same consistency (despite calibre of opponent) takes some doing .. & Toney was on the gear & notoriously lazy/undisciplined too.. i think hed struggle in an era like Steeles .. Steele is probably the most underrated top tier middleweight ever IMO.. he was a machine.. he only had five losses in 142 fights and was only knocked out at the end of his career.. that is incredible especially under those conditions.. he beat men like Overlin, Risko, Lesnevich, Jones, Apostoli, Dundee, Garcia, Lawless, Krieger.. As talented as Toney was i think Steele was overall the better MW.
Can Steele win? Absolutely If Steele can sustain his brutal pace and keep up his body shots , and manage to land consistently enough to negate Toneys counter s, then he's in with a chance of getting a decision. Would be a brilliant fight between these two guys.
It's funny that even with weightclass bouts, "The modern fighter wins because of his size advantage" is still often the correct answer.
True, but even stating it like that "the modern fighter"... still falls short of the full understanding of that statement, and is often the reason why many people just don't percieve the need to evalute 'these' fighters in context with what they are, which more accurately is "a completely different Weight Division fighter. and that is the only factor when comparing era's & fighters, because the truth is, more often than not, they are in fact a Different Division and not just a 'modern fighter or bigger' man. because that is always what usually makes up the difference, so with you on that, that 'they', the bigger man, usually wins.
