I remember after Toney beat Jirov, there were some serious talks about these two fighting at cruiserweight. Eventually, the talks fell apart and obviously this fight never happened. How do you all think this fight would have panned out?
The fight was supposed to be at a catchweight. It wasn't gonna be at 190 Toney was supposed to come down and Hopkins was supposed to go up they would have prolly had to meet half way at 175ish.
CW was a good weight for Toney, he looked in good shape for most of his fights there and wasn't too fat. I still believe that LHW was the ideal weightclass for Toney, even if he was less successfull there than at the other weights - but that was because of other factors. Nobody knows how B-Hop would have fought at CW. If that fight happened, I actually think that Toney would have outworked B-HOP, throwing many more punches. Look at the amount of punches Toney threw against Jirov - I'm not saying he'd throw so many punches against B-Hop, who has a great defense, but contrary to what many believe here Toney was not only a masterful counterpuncher but is also able to fight aggresively. B-Hop just doesn't throw many punches, if he does he usually connects because they're so precise but he'd have a hard time landing good punches on defensive artist Toney - so he'll probably be content with clinching and trying to rough Toney up, but that won't work. So I'll say Toney wins by clear UD. Still a great fight between two old-school fighters tho
"James Toney is so ugly he played Joe Frazier in a movie" - Bernard Hopkins talking about Toney role in Ali
