LHW Toney vs Kovalev, Beterbiev, Stevenson

It’s shitty. He put himself in position to be “robbed” against Griffin. I love Toney, but am calling it like it is.

Every other fighter mentioned in the thread title bulldozes Griffin and obviously beats Thadzi.

 

But he was robbed. Those should be wins. It was clear.

Beterbiev and Stevenson have never beat anyone as good as Griffin. Your focus is way to narrow imo toney was clearly capable of beating any of these guys . You really think beterbiev or kovalev one dimensional as hell give toney problems? He eats these guys alive when motivated

 

Chad Dawson isn’t better than Griffin? FOH.

And Kovalev’s loss to Ward is much more telling of how good he was than Toney’s trio of L’s.

 

No I don't believe Chad Dawson was better than Montell Griffin. Convince me I'm wrong

 

I thought he beat Thadzi as well in a close one.

 

I thought he beat Tiberi, too. I also had him the winner against Jones Jr.

 

LOL

 

He nicked it against Lebedev too.

 

Compelling argument. What exactly did Chad Dawson do besides beat a handful of shot fighters with big names?

 

Who are these “shot” fighters you speak of?

 

Toney. Too good.

 

Being well past his prime Toney took a lot of clean puches from 240 lbs heavyweight Hasin Rahman and wasn't hurt or stunned even slightly by those punches. The same Rahman knocked out huge ATG heavyweight Lennox Lewis with a single punch to he head. So I don't think Betebiev would be able to do the thing that the guys like Rahman and Peter couldn't do. Hell, Vassiliy Jirov was probably a more skilled (and bigger) version of Beterbiev and Toney gave him a beating. Prime Lebedev couldn't hurt ancient, one-legged version of Toney. Can't see at all how Beterbiev would be able to hurt Toney, who had one of the greatest chins of all time. I also think Beterbiev is tailor-made for Toney stylistically. Toney always struggled more against slick/quick fighters

 

More than winning on a DQ and having two 'robberies' as his best three wins. He also never lost to Rico Hoye.

 

I just think an elite LHW Toney is something that never existed, so odd never pick him against an elite opponent.

Sure on his day he could beat most anyone but at LHW he never seemed to have that day.

 

This is an excellent post.

I agree entirely with everything you’ve written.

It was so frustrating being a fan of his.

If he’d have been in a different mindset and he’d had have fought to his full capabilities, he could have been an excellent LHW.

He was only around 27 when he first fought Griffin.

Maybe the fighters that have been put forward here would have fired him up.

We don’t know.

We have to take into account that in real life he did struggle at the weight. But then on the other hand, we know that he wasn’t mentally and physically at 100%, and that Jirov at CW was a huge threat and on the level of the guys that have been put forward. IMHO, Jirov was a better fighter than Stevenson was. So even though he struggled with Thadzi etc, I’d have had a motivated version of him beating Stevenson.

It’s always hard trying to find a balance between looking what he actually did and then looking at what he was capable of doing.