Could Bivol compete at heavyweight if he became obese like James Toney ?

No. Bivol has a nice tight guard but his defense is basic compared to Toney. Bivol's defense is heavily based on footwork and a tight guard.

Against guys 6'3 with long arms, you can't use a simple high guard and feet to get away from them. The guys hit too hard and are way too long armed.

Toney's ability to defend up close and his shoulder roll were miles ahead of what Bivol can do. Plus Toney was a clotton for punishment. Toney has a shockingly good chin. I doubt Bivol could take Peter's punches even if he put on another 30 lbs.

 

He was getting hurt by blocked and partially landing punches from a 40 year old Beterbiev. He would get obliterated by the top HWs.

 

Another stupid thread by Markus

Just goes to show you know nothing about James Toney (and boxing) when we has younger.

 

I haven't seen the 2nd fight, which I know Peter dominated, but Toney took quite a bit of punishment from Peter in the first from what I saw.

 

You can say that again. I always laugh but give him full respect for being up for fighting Randy Couture in the UFC with absolutely no MMA training.

 

What is with these dumb ass threads in the main?

 

Bivol doesn't have the brains Toney had, so it would be hard to do it.
Part of the reason Toney could compete at HW is that he literally had no brains. So getting CTE was not an issue since he started with nothing in the first place.

 

That works out more for guys with power like Beterbiev. Bivol would do best at HW weighing under the Cruiserweight limit because then hes got speed.

"Competing at HW" mean two different things. Would he have a chance of beating some of the best fighters? And could he avoid losses? A lot of smaller fighters are capable of 1 but to succeed at boxing today you need to do 2.

Toney was able to circumvent this issue by fighting for minor belts(IBO, WBU, WBF,IBA). Because he was already famous from his time at MW the boxing press had to pay attention to him.

Toney also had help from drugs.

 

I think he wasted a year of Beterbievs time on purpose. If Beterbiev loses a rebound fight hes out of the way if he wins by the time they fight he'll be like 42.

He really did Beterbiev dirty tbh. Its hard to say a fighter ducked someone they fought twice but that was unethical.

 

Good thing for him John Ruiz wasn't a real top HW. With a proper ref Bivol even with a spare tire on his belly could still outbox and decision one of the biggest frauds in boxing history.