James Toney v Bennie Briscoe

Toney wins a decision (8-4 rounds)

 

At MW this is a tougher fight for Toney than some are making it. He wasnt exactly consistent either and if he fought off the ropes like he sometimes did hed get his clock cleaned.

 

It was specified Toney of the McCallumn fight.

 

Toney would probably win this if he is prime,but I very much doubt he is taking out Bad Bennie!

 

There's no other way to bet except for Toney, but it aint easy

 

Firstly sorry for not getting back to this weeks ago. I've bolded and underlines the point i disagree with.

We will break it down via Monzon as he is the gold standard of the time period you are addressing and held the title from 1970 to 1977.

Monzon himself got his title shot without defeating "at least 4 live contenders". Did he defeat any prior to his run?

He rematched Nino quite quickly which was a good thing to do.

He then defended against Griffith who had beaten two fringe contenders in his previous 15 or so fights.

Next up was Denny Moyer who most certainly had not been dining on a swag of live contenders. What live contenders did he ever beat let alone 4 or 5?

Next was Bouttier and we certainly aren't gong to find these 3 or 4 live contenders there either.

Tom bogs was next and there's not much there except a bunch of losses in the previous two years.

Then Briscoe himself was sort on wins when he fought Carlos the second time. He'd actually split a pair of fights with a guy 18-17-5 coming into the rematch. He did have hepatitis in their initial encounter however and he and Monzon had unfinished business.

A rematch with Griffith followed and not much had happened between their initial encounter for Emile. He was of course one of the cornerstones of the division.

A Bouttier rematch was next and he had done little in between.

We then had the great Jose Napoles moving up and one of the revered great middleweight vs great welterweight clashes.

Next was Tony Mundine who beat Griffith but later lost to Briscoe coming in to his shot.

Licata was next and again he certainly didn't have these 3 or 4 wins over live contenders.

Tonna had a win over Finnegan and not much else.

Then we had 2 x Valdes.

So basically all of these guys weren't defeating 3 or 4 live contenders to get a shot as you stated. Sure guys like Griffith had numerous top wins over many years and divisions well prior.

Briscoe for whatever reason had some losses to lesser lights not just contenders.

We also need to remember that from 74 - 76 they had two titles to gun for as well so that certainly helped to get a shot. If you have a look at Valdes' 5 defenses the same theme is present.

Realistically it was an era with very little overall depth but a great champion at the top and a very good one just below. Then we had a very good middle in Griffith and the rest with Briscoe being reasonably dangerous.

It's actually similar to Duran's lightweight division of the time.

 

Blimey John, I feel like I've been ambushed ! I'd have to look back at our original discussion just to get with the programme but that's a superbly researched post either way. I hope I haven't wasted several weeks of your life on this.
Would have been just Bennie's luck to have copped for Toney anyway. Never had an easy fight.

 

Hahaha. All good mate took 15-20 minutes. Sorry for procrastinating. It wasn't an attack on Monzon or who he fought or any of them just a take on things. It's the way the division was at the time.

 

Top man. At the end of the day these things are all subjective. We see what we see.

 

If this is 15 rounds, Bennie pulls this off in a close UD.