montell griffen is a very interesting boxer to study, he has a win over roy jones that although ended with jones comming on and then disqualified, showed montell about neck and neck with the scorecards which was something unheard of. wins over derrick harmon, george jones and his dropping split decisions to both harding and hoye discribe his champion caliber. but his two wins over james toney give his legacy consideration possibly for greater recognition. i have heard before that griffen had two controversial wins over toney, but im looking at his record now, and one judge had toney only winning one round in their rematch. where the two fights where controversial? griffen presented a extremely craft style of hiding his head under your arm, popping up and throwing over hands rights, jabing from a crouch and moving almost entirely under you line of vison wing left hooks while changing angles. extremely talented and akward pure olympic boxer imo who was just past his best against ganzalez, tarver and johnson.
check out these punchstats vs jones I Total Punches --Jones Griffin Landed --------- 113 141 Thrown --------- 372 298 Pct. ------------ 30% 47%
I watched these about six months ago and was shocked. To me Toney won these fights quite clearly, hurting Griffen badly in a couple of rounds. Griffen stuck out his jab often and landed a few, but especially in the second fight it seemed Toney was in total control. I may be biased as I'm a big fan of Toney's, but I thought he was robbed in both of these fights. He did tend to coast as he often did, but he did not lose those fights. I wonder how different his career would have been if he had won those fights. He probably would have had a rematch with Jones at some point, and perhaps wouldn't have gone into his long funk. But, then again, maybe he needed it to rededicate himself for his late career run. By contrast, I thought Toney was very lucky to get that first draw with Mccallum. Now that fight is one of the best, most difficult fights to score I've ever seen, but I thought Toney was fortunate to get that draw. Though getting a draw with Mccallum was something to be proud about.
thats crazy, with just short of some speed to carry out the victory, griffen had the style to beat roy jones in his prime... nobody even came close to doing that for 14 years
The general conception is that Griffin won that first fight with Toney while he badly lost the rematch. I've seen both fights quite a few times now, and both were very close fights. Griffin gave a good showing, neither fighter dominated, but still I think Toney won both of them fights. That first could've been ruled a draw, but if someone was to win it then Toney.
I propose a slightly different perspective. Sometimes a fighter can show that he is indeed the better boxer and still legitimately lose a fight for not doing enough. Taylor - Hopkins 1 is a good example. Clearly, Hopkins showed that was the craftier boxer, but he gave away too many rounds to deserve the win. Yet his visibly superior craft made it difficult to really credit Taylor. Toney is obviously a superior fighter to Griffin and showed that during their fights, but in the first fight he just didn't do enough to earn the win. He showed that he is he better boxer, but the loss in the first fight was legit IMO. I always fet that a fighter who fights every half - minute of every round would be a problem for Toney, which is why I would pick Calzaghe and DM to beat him.
Jones did not take Griffin seriously in the first fight and Griffin was about to get knocked out when the fight was stopped. In the second fight Jones did take him seriously, result KO1.
I agree with this basically. I thought Toney narrowly won both, but they were close. The thing Griffin did was move well and make Toney come forward a lot--which he often chose not to do. I think Toney was also surprised by Griffin's hand speed and ability to judge distance. Griffin definitely outhustled Toney in spots to win rounds, but Toney landed the harder, cleaner shots and I thought did enough to win both. Griffin was indeed underrated at that time.
Griffin was beating Roy, until RJ had to land the cheap shot when Montell was down on the canvas:-( The rematch **** Griffin wasn't even in the fight, he looked like he was just there to get paid, and didn't even put an effort into it...
