29 years ago today: James Nathaniel "Lights Out" Toney vs. David Stephen "TNT" Tiberi

The one the GOAT of Sherman Oaks should have lost at middleweight, according to some - and the one that should have seen the name of an overlooked but game underdog in Tiberi etched into the annals of world titlists, another in the sport's long succession of implausible Cinderella men. Let's have a gander...

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James Nathaniel Toney vs. David Stephen Tiberi, 12 rounds @ middleweight

Round 1

Tiberi moves in and doubles his jab into the ribs of Toney, who answers in kind with sharper, faster, and more powerful body hooks of his own. Tiberi marching boldly into the wheelhouse of the champion. Toney is sliding out of the pocket and doubling & tripling up on the hook even as Tiberi puts in some decent work jabbing between the thumbs and giving chase with a straight right up top and some pinball flippers above the hips. Toney spins Tiberi onto the ropes and works some uppercuts, point-blank hooks, and ratcheting rights off a shove-off. Tiberi weathers the storm well and manages to fight free of the ropes with a two-fisted attack but badly by a counter just before the bell.

10-9 Toney


Round 2

Tiberi comes out gangbusters with the left glove clocking in overtime, prodding Toney in the face with several unanswered jabs and then crowding in with nicely turned over hooks at descending or upward angles, the former chopping across the jaw and the latter digging into the armpit. Toney doing some good countering but getting worked here, Tiberi a lot busier and landing more by dint of volume and finding the mark at respectable clips with the jab (and taking lots of high percentage low swings under Toney's elbows).

10-9 Tiberi

19-19


Round 3

Tiberi continues to drive Toney backward, lowering the drawbridge left jab into his face and then hammering at the body with both hands. Toney gradually drops his guard (other than when threading in his own counter body combos, more now to cover his own) and gets strapped by a right that seems to buzz him. Tiberi surges, confidently, and Toney has to bring all his multitude of slick pocket defensive instincts to bear to slip and roll through without getting sat down before the bell.

10-9 Tiberi

29-28 Tiberi


Round 4

Tiberi has a series of spring-action hooks waiting for Toney at ring center, hips on a swivel. Toney is mounting effective rallies in miniature but sputtering within moments each time and getting jabbed into the ropes and then lumped up on the flank and upper abdomen over the belt. Tiberi pokes with a left jab before burying his upper half against the starboard side of Toney's body, bracing to push off and then stab him with a dirk of a right in the side before bowing the opposite way. Toney just sort of shoeshining at Tiberi's body to fend him off, unsuccessfully.

10-9 Tiberi

39-37 Tiberi


Round 5

Tiberi flutters the jab in Toney's face and then wraps his palms over his mandible to protect against Toney's slapping hooks delivered on the backfoot exiting the pocket. Toney's feet still sliding smoothly across the ring, his balance firm, and when he gets extension he is able to cuff Tiberi with starchier hooks that double him at least partway over. When the gas pedal is depressed and Tiberi pushes in and stays atop him, however, Toney is still looking overwhelmed and unable to find the leverage to get off cleanly as Tiberi drowns him in face jabs and body shovels.

10-9 Tiberi

49-46 Tiberi


Round 6

Tiberi has all of his momentum straight up obliterated by the glove malfunction. Toney sits on his stool, recuperating but more importantly seething with embarrassment at the previous few rounds, glaring across the ring at Tiberi while his team scrambles to set things right. The bell tolls and Toney goes about his business with a will. Quick, precise jabs on the mush as Toney fluidly moves around the ring without ever popping the heel of either foot more than half an inch off the canvas. Low slashing hooks by Toney chip into the body and have Tiberi breathing through his mouth by the ninety second mark. Tiberi keeps winging right hands down while grinding his left shoulder into Toney to pin him on the ropes, with Toney still able to squirm androll away enough to slip them until the ref intervenes. Tiberi scores a few jabs on the way in but Toney is now picking him apart with counter jabs, hooks and uppercuts, then extending both arms out, knuckles pressing into his chest to shove him out to ideal range. Robert Palmer almost imperceptibly takes a point from Tiberi for some low blows (a fact which the commentators don't even pick up on until the start of the seventh).

10-8 Toney

57-56 Tiberi


Round 7

Tiberi has his hands full, quite literally, stuffing Toney's attempts to hack him down with cuffing hooks hefted in from either side. Toney pushes up against Tiberi, head burrowed into his chest when at rest between cuffing sidewinder salvos. Tiberi tries going jab for jab with Toney at mid-range and gets the worst of it. Toney now really cranking in that uppercut in exchanges and snapping Tiberi's head back. Tiberi getting some licks in, roping out the straight right into the nose to briefly back Toney off, but is pushed repeatedly into the ropes and out-landed as Toney stands in front of him, slipping and threading the needle with every punch in the book.

10-9 Toney

66-66


Round 8

Tiberi goes in hard after having sucked in some wind on his stool. Tiberi doing a good job knifing in with his left elbow bent, arm pointing forward like a bayonet to deflect counters as he charges in and rips the body of Toney without taking many receipts. Tiberi lets Toney grapple at his arms for a moment before snatching Toney's wrists down with a quick swiping motion and then jabbing him in the mouth. Some clever stuff here from the challenger, as Toney seems to be taking one off after two very successful rounds. Tiberi keeps tapping on his skull with the jab, working combos off it and breaking Toney's countering rhythm with side to side bobbing and nonstop pressure. A bit of extracurricular action, Palmer put on ***** Street.

10-9 Tiberi

76-75 Tiberi


Round 9

Tiberi keeping up the gutsy effort, setting those termites loose in the foundations and just spanking everywhere he can touch behind Toney's lowered elbows and biceps. Toney is winging arm punches now with both hands, some of them powerfully enough thrown, but he just can't set his feet and get the snap on them to discourage Tiberi's effective swarming behind that woodpecker jab and roughhousing clinches, yanking down on Toney's arms to suppress counters and create room for more jabs to land when he can lift his glove first.

10-9 Tiberi

86-84 Tiberi


Round 10

Tiberi starts out very nicely, boring a hole into Toney's temple and damn near lobotomizing him with the jab, but Toney is able to smother and kill some time, and then spring off and rake Tiberi with counter rights high on the cheek. Toney now propelling himself outside and letting Tiberi step into his lair, where ambush uppercuts lie in wait for him.

10-9 Toney

95-94 Tiberi


Round 11

Tiberi hasn't got the ammo left in his clip to keep walking and chewing gum at the same time. He is still applying pressure, but with barely any punches on the way in. Toney, meanwhile, is playing his role and dinging Tiberi up with counters, few of them especially artful but impactful enough to make Tiberi stand rigid a moment before coming again. Toney wrestling Tiberi away or grinding his elbows into his stomach by turn, pivoting around him and throwing gutterball rights that just graze the lower jaw of Tiberi.

10-9 Toney, ugly but effective

104-104


Round 12

Tiberi comes out with his gloves pinched narrowly over his nose and throat, hunched forward, scurrying after Toney and initiating exchanges of body hooks. Toney is standing his ground, playing a little sumo, and using Tiberi's own trick against him - pushing his arms down and roaring over the top with a counter right. Tiberi, however, keeps gunning for him relentlessly, eating a solid hook and laying more tomahawks on Toney until bending him backward over the ropes. Another glove issue for Tiberi causes an interruption with just over a minute left in the fight. Thankfully a brief one. Time in, and Tiberi comes storming onward, reinvigorated, landing body shots. Toney spins off the ropes and swaps their positions but cannot land on Tiberi, who buoys himself off the top rope by dipping his back into it and rides the momentum to connect a right as Toney steps out toward the Fruit of the Loom logo. Toney throwing combos, firing furiously until the bell but looking ragged. Tiberi not landing much cleaner but stamping at least a few on the body to make his closing arguments.

10-9 Toney

114-113 Toney

 

Yeah, but for the point deduction (which is ...neither a terrible call nor a slam dunk correct one) this should've been a third career draw for Toney. Not his finest hour for sure.

Brunette's card, 117-111 for Tiberi, was too generous for the crowd favorite. I understand why the drunks in AC were upset Tiberi lost, but they were dead wrong thinking he couldn't have.

 

Most seem to agree on the 1st being Toney's and the next four Tiberi's. Nobody to my recollection has ever scored the sixth aught but a 10-8 for Lights Out. Likewise a majority saw the seventh for him, with Tiberi swinging the pendulum back his way in round eight on virtually every scorecard you'll come across.

So really the controversy all comes in the final third of the fight. And they are four close rounds, to be sure. Fiddle around with those and you can wind up with anything from 116-111 Toney all the way to a 115-112 win for Tiberi. Edit down a video of any of the 9th, 10th, 11th or 12th and do a standalone poll thread, and you most likely won't have landslide results either way. I'm pretty satisfied with my scoring above, but wouldn't argue too vociferously with anybody having that last third a clean 4-0 sweep for either man.

 

Even if you score it for Tiberi, you have to admit that weight drain played a large role. It wasn't like Tiberi outclassed Toney in any particular area - just came in determined, with a solid enough (if ultimately doomed to be not enough) game plan within the limitations of his style & dearth of athleticism or power, and most importantly of all, in better physical nick on the night.

This was probably the worst Toney performance until Peter II.

 

Somewhat bizarrely, this would not prove to be Toney's swansong at 160lbs, despite the obvious red flags that is was time for him to migrate north (although none could predict just how far into the arctic tundra of roly-poly 5'10" super heavyweight status, peaking at nearly a hundred pounds above the MW limit! ). Ordinarily clunkers of this sort, where the plebs scream for judges' blood thinking you got a gift over a no-name feather-fisted journeyman, would presage an immediate departure from a division. He would, however, make the weight twice more - a relatively easy-breezy defense over Glenn Wolfe, and of course the Body Snatcher rematch which is regarded among the greatest (top five at worst) victories of his career!

 

Mod buds (probably ultimately @CST80, as nobody else indulged me - please..

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Corrigendum:

...yes, I goofed on my transcription (and re-tabulation). I was copying and pasting from my drafts (from elsewhere, in a PM to myself) on my phone as I walked to work in knee-deep snow. Rather than fiddle around with erasing all the [ quote= ] metadata on each round description, I chose to just select the write-up paragraph itself and just manually re-type in the "Round 1/2/3" and "10-9 whoever" formatting in the new thread. Obviously maths failed me between rounds 8 and 9 (going from a 76-75 Tiberi lead to 85-85, despite having Tiberi winning the ninth)...and from there it all got mucked up. When I got to round twelve, and found that I was now yielding a final score of 115-112 Toney despite clearly remembering having it narrower, at 114-113, I knew something was off but, rather than go back and carefully proofread to find & correct the misstep as I'd have done had I not been all but done but without any more time left to spare, I assumed that it was my score for R12 (being the closest of the fight IMO, and having recalled struggling with splitting them) in error and changed it from Toney to Tiberi to reflect my original score, as that was my best guess in the moment of where the arithmetic could've gotten fuzzy. Haste makes waste. Oh well. Homer nods.

Here is my full scorecard:

R1 - 10-9 Toney (10-9 Toney)
R2 - 10-9 Tiberi (19-19)
R3 - 10-9 Tiberi (29-28 Tiberi)
R4 - 10-9 Tiberi (39-37 Tiberi)
R5 - 10-9 Tiberi (49-46 Tiberi)
R6 - 10-8 Toney (57-56 Tiberi)
R7 - 10-9 Toney (66-66)
R8 - 10-9 Tiberi (76-75 Tiberi)
R9 - 10-9 Tiberi (86-84 Tiberi)
R10 - 10-9 Toney (95-94 Tiberi)
R11 - 10-9 Toney (104-104)
R12 - 10-9 Toney (114-113 Toney)

 

Yeah, why revisit and score a famously controversial fight? There's no place for such things on a boxing forum, you're right.