Perhaps in around 2004 when Tarver was champ and Toney was on a hot streak, just before he went to heavyweight. Who you got?
This fight would be awesome. I genuinely think this would be as good as anything Toney was involved with. Tarver over-working to make up for feeling a bit dumb on occasion, but hitting hard and well enough to get that Toney respect, Toney in with a lot of punching opportunities but trying to keep Tarver under control as the priority so maybe over-seeking on that hard punch. But I think Tarver has the chin to survive his Nunn moment. SD. And I'll go for Tarver to spring the minor upset. Great trilogy.
It would be a very technical fight between two very different counterpunchers. James liked to catch and counter while Tarver liked to counter as an opponent was attacking and open. Both were defensively as good as it gets. At the end of the day it comes down to Tarver's jab vs James's activity rate. Can James take away Tarver's jab like BHOP did or does James let his hands go and not get caught by a counter left hand from Tarver. Fascinating fight.
I’d pick Tarver. Toney didn’t look all that great at cruiser until Jirov fought him in a phone booth. He did a lot of plodding and splitting rounds against boxers who weren’t close to Tarver’s level, but employed basic lateral movement.
Neither of these men were ever stopped and both survived more dangerous foes. I think it’s safe to say that it goes to the cards. Toney was the better career fighter and in my opinion more talented. But in 2004 his conditioning had pretty much gone to hell. It’s a hard call to make.
I’m still waiting for my free tickets to this fight. Back in the day, BoxingTalk had a competition where fans could write in and say who they think would win between Toney and Tarver and how. Each fighter was to read all responses and pick their favorite entry, and the two winners were guaranteed 2 tickets to the fight when it eventually came off. James Toney picked my entry but the fight never happened. Consolation prize more than made up for it though as Toney mailed me a signed photo and one of his official shirts, both of which I treasure to this day. Very kind of him.
I actually played it safe and wrote a long entry about how I couldn’t possibly choose between two legends such as these haha. I then went on to give my analysis for how I could see both guys winning. Toney either liked the respectfulness towards both of them or his half of the analysis haha. I had hoped that Toney would be the one to pick me as I was a huge fan of his, so it worked out nicely.
You never know which Toney was turning up. He could dismantle fighters or just look lazy and get outworked Dunno, certainly prefer Toney to Tarver to watch
This would be at cruiserweight, right? At 190, I do not think Tarver can take Toney's punch. Toney by stoppage.
To someone like me this would be a really great fight. Two of the hardest to hit clean boxers ever trying to get each other to lead so they can counter.............this would be a real chess match. I'd go with Toney as Tarver covers up and parries shots well but when he's covering he focuses solely on defense. Toney is fluid between offense and defense and I see that being the difference
