I've really been watching alot of early James Toney lately....the Nunn, Barkley, and Jirov fights....I've really grown to appreciate his style...I've heard the first McCallum fight was a good one, any other peak James Toney fights stand out?
Though an underdog going in, I'd say his fight with Barkley was a perfect display of James, against a perfect opponent to show off his style. Sort of, no blasphemy intended, the way Fuji was built for Locche to display the mastery of his own style.
Yeah, Barkley's his most impressive showing of dominance. Perfect opponent for him to show off against. The McCallum fights were obviously much closer, but that comes with the class of opponent. There was some really fantastic stuff from both guys in their series.
Even though Holly was past best, I believe Toney's performance there in stopping a genuine ATG HW was his best performance. In fact, that was his only performance of note at HW.
Vassily Jirov - there is nothing 2 take away from that perfromance : a younger , fresher , bigger opponent who held a title @ d time . His next best performances were Merqui Sosa , Sam Peters #1 , Rahman #1 , Ruiz .
I agree with Jirov though I think beating McCallum and Nunn is more impressive than the others you mentioned.
But Toney didn't beat McCallum in their first 2 fights and McCallum was 12 years older and Nunn was drained against him and never made 160 since then . As I claimed - there was nothing 2 take away from his performance vs Jirov . It included a KD and it was quite obvious that had it lasted 13 , Toney would have won more handily and would have probably stopped him . There r 2 examples that I know of of fights that were extended 2 13 as a tie breaking method .
Being drained is no excuse, he shouldn't have taken the fight at the weight then. McCallum was a brilliant boxer hugely underated, he wasn't shot at the time.
It takes away a lot from d drained man's performance . About this i agree . McCallum was not a brilliant boxer but a rather very good 1 , and while not hugely underrated at least not on ESB classic anymore , I agree that he is still underrated . He wasn't shot @ d time , but he was past his prime by then . And despite it all , Toney didn't beat him in their 1st 2 fights . But then Toney was probably drained at least @ their 2nd fight .
The prince charles and tim littles fights are good. 1st mccallum fight is one of the best skillful fights ive seen.
As mentioned by bez, I think the Williams fight was Toney at his finest. James was at the peak of his powers and it seemed it was a pick'em with Whitaker as to who was the finest fighter on the planet.
