Who wins this match-up? We know Toney was a natural middleweight, but when he moved up to hw, he had moderate success, beating the likes of Holyfield, Ruiz, Oquendo & having close fights with Rahman & Peter's - with some believing he should have won both. This time he'll be facing a hard-hitting, come-forward slugger in Chris Arreola. How does Toney fare, we know he liked this style as he was most effective against it, but fighting a much bigger, stronger guy with a relentless work-rate could be taxing on Toney - who could & has been out worked many times. My pick is with 'The Nightmare' winning a competitive, rather close, but clear decision, as while Toney had all the skills, he doesn't have enough fire-power or work-rate to keep Arreola from coming forward & outworking him.
I like Toney to outbox Chris to a decision. James showed that he could take a heavyweight punch and is ten times the overall fighter than Arreola. This one case where the smaller and older guy CAN win
James used to beat up Arreola in the gym. Arreola always declined to fight Toney in a real fight, James called him out a few times. Toney UD
Easy call for Toney, too slick to lose the decision, too tough for Arreola to KO. If Arreola does try to push the pace, he ends up getting countered too much and can't sustain that pace into the latter half of the fight, so even if he does win early rounds on the basis of workrate, he loses the later ones when he drops off.
Arreola does well against certain kinds of fighters but Toney isn't that kind of fighter. I think Toney should be favoured here. I suppose Arreola might have a chance of outworking him.
This is true! I recall Freddie Roach's brother telling this story back in the day. This was around the time when Toney was with Dan Goosen and just about to challenge Jirov. He was beating the **** out of Lamon Brewster as well at wild card. Roach convinced Goosen that Toney could make a run at heavyweight and he was right.
The question is how good is Arreola compared to Samuel Peter? Both are similar overweight come forward sluggers. If Arreola is worse than Peter I don't see how he can win this.
Agreed and I don't see how anyone can rate arreola higher than peter. Toney UD not a blowout bc toney def paced himself at hw and Chris throws a lot of punches but toney would do just enough to get the nod.
