25 years ago today: James Nathaniel "Lights Out" Toney vs. Terence Lee "Top Dog" McGroom, Sr.

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Not among Toney's proudest efforts, but it certainly was McGroom's.

The man who talked (and munched) his way onto PPV from middleweight through heavyweight ran extremely hot & cold in the late nineties and early aughts. Really from RJJ through Jirov - a period of 8 years! - it was a crap shoot just how good & focused a version of the incredibly slick & crafty but mercurial and often lazy boxer you were going to see in the ring.

In the other corner, you have the hometown kid hoping to make the most of his Rocky-esque opportunity. Overcoming a tough upbringing in Cabrini Green to become a fairly strong amateur (going 63-11 overall; a 3x national and 5x Chicagoan Golden Gloves champion), he'd shown early promise in the pros with draws against fellow unbeaten prospect Darroll Wilson and Anthony Hembrick before wading into the deep end and suffering a knockout loss to Kirk Johnson at heavyweight. A rebound run of 5-0 culminating in a WBO NABO cruiserweight title victory netted him the date with the former 2-division champion - by far his biggest step up in class yet.

And, who'd have thunk - it wasn't a blowout.

This bout sometimes gets bandied about in discussions of Toney's underwhelming performances and/or controversial decisions. Here, the official judges' cards of 96-94x 2 and 95-95 are in this instance perfectly fair & reflective of reality - but that's quite a high compliment paid to a valiant McGroom, who after his bloody late rally would proclaim to Chicago Tribune staff that “I said before the fight that I wasn't going to leave anything in the ring, and I was going to give everything I had. And I did - did all I could except win the fight.”

Toney would waffle between cruiser and heavy - looking better on some nights than others - for another three years until cinching gold in his 3rd weight class as spoils of his war with Vassiliy Jirov. To him, McGroom was but a quickly forgotten stepping-stone - albeit one he nearly took lightly enough to face-plant into the stream.



As for McGroom, he went on to net just one more professional win before finishing his career by facing an impressive gauntlet of eight consecutive undefeated opponents (Jirov, Dominick Guinn, Malik Scott, Steve Cunningham, Johny Jensen x2, Timur Ibragimov, and Cengiz Koç), going 0-7-1 but only stopped thrice in that run - once by Jirov, blitzed in an IBF world cruiserweight title challenge, and twice up at heavyweight by Guinn & Scott. In the grand scheme of things, hardly a very significant name in the sport, nor even an egregious snub from the Illinois hall of fame - but a tough guy who fought a lot of world class operators. And he never gave any of them more hell than perhaps the pound for pound finest of the bunch.