Why wasn't James Toney good at Light Heavyweight ?

I respect your opinion and you might be right. But I’m skeptical. There were fights where he weighed 175 then six weeks later showed up at 200 then a month or two later was back to 175. That shlt isn’t healthy at all. And that adds no surprise whatsoever to some of the lackluster performances he was having which lends itself to the idea that he was having trouble maintaining his weight…. But who knows ?

 

Discipline.

I heard that he had hell making weight for Griffin.

 

Griffin was so underrated. He is was a difficult fight for anyone. I find it interesting that Toney never went near a slippery guy like Griffin again. He pretty much just fought slugger and swarmers that he could counter punch. He stayed away guys with speed for the rest of h8s career.

 

He just wasn't that good to begin with?

 

Light Heavyweight is and always has been a tough division. It’s not a division where you can get away with constantly being out of shape even if you have a lot of talent, since most of the top talent at 175 are hungry and aren’t well paid like the top heavyweights.

Toney found out the hardway that showing up in mediocre condition wasn’t going to cut it at 175.

 

False. James always had talent.

Bill Miller had great effects on him doe.

 

Toney fought in the 5 biggest weight classes and did substantially better in the 2 tweener divisions than the 3 traditional ones which were harder. Of which LHW was the most stacked. But he was "good" in all 5 of them.


Toney was the titlist for the WBU when that was the 4th best organization and also won the USBA belt. Toney was 9-3 at the weight class and defended his WBU title 3 times. Toney lost his 3 biggest fights at LHW but won a minimum of 4 rounds in all those losses and beat everyone else pretty easy. He was ranked in the Rings 5/10 twice. While none of Toneys LHW wins were ranked in the top 10 most of them were probably on the bubble at times. Like top 10-20 sorta guys.

Toney was 7-1-1 over LHW contenders at other weight classes with the loss coming to RJJ. If Toney had inched out the Griffin and Thadzi fights RJJ would have always been in Toneys way if he'd stayed at LHW. Theres also the matter of making weight. Toney failed to make weight for his last LHW fight with Thadzi and his biggest win of his LHW phase was the previous fight over McCallum which was at CW. Toneys one of the posterboys for why I think the LHW limit should have been moved to 185. 175 just wasn't a good fit for him.

 

Throughout his career he shot up in weight between fights and had to drop a lot of weight to get fit. That continued through his CW and even HW career until he seems to have said **** it and showed up for fights weighing 240+ lbs.

But his fit weight does't seem to have been much above 180 when he was campaigning at LHW, that's why I don't think cutting the extra water weight to get down to specifically 175 would have been a big deal. That would have been a fairly small cut.

 

Don’t be silly.