By Terence Dooley
The two men may have been separated by time, weight divisions and fighting level yet it would be fair to say that Eddie has proven to be the most difficult opponent of James’ career. Toney found himself standing across the ring from Eddie on no fewer than four occasions. Eddie took Montell Griffin to two wins over Toney as well as guiding Mike McCallum through two fights that many, not this writer, felt should have seen Toney lose his ‘0’ prematurely. In fact it could be argued that Eddie laid out the programme for beating Toney. This is the story, as I see it, of James Toney, the trash talker supreme, versus Eddie Futch, the gentlemanly trainer of Champions.
Toney and Futch share a few concrete connections as well as physic links; concretely they both were steeped in Detroit boxing history and shared a love of the old-time boxers such as Charles and Walcott, for Toney these were men to aspire to stylistically, for Eddie they were his era, his guys. Another, metaphysical, link is the fact that Eddie is said to have trained James Toney Senior; maybe this rubbed off on Little Toney himself somewhat by ensuring that he had the boxing DNA of a king rolling through his veins.
People always talk about how hard to hit Toney is yet early in his career he did take a number of counter shots when opening-up with his own work. Under canny Detroit trainer Bill Miller this was not entirely eradicated, a completely elusive fighter is a fantasy, but a subtle change did take place.
Toney can be hit, he always could be hit, what he does so well is negate the follow through with his rolling and shoulder blocking style. This is the key to the Toney defence; he does not get hit with many consecutive blows. Miller got Toney parrying with his body and rolling from side to side to ensure that he did not take three or four punches at a time. It was a strategy that led to his big wins over Michael Nunn and Reggie Johnson. Then McCallum entered the scene like a Trojan horse sent to expose Toney’s weaknesses; inside the horse was the boxing brain of Eddie Futch.
Toney’s problem is that his style sacrifices a certain amount of movement to the altar of using ones body as a shield to block blows. Toney turns and sways to avoid your blows and can roll his right and left hook home whilst you are attacking.
Determined to avoid this Futch instructed Mike McCallum to use movement and a constant left jab, that chief means of taking your opponents balance, in the first fight with Toney and it very nearly worked.
The jab of McCallum was very effective throughout his twenty-four rounds with Toney. It earned him a draw in the first fight but could not stave off a, wafer-thin, loss in the second encounter.
However, Toney had been also taught by Bill Miller how to negate the jab by drilling him to slip and slide when the jab is thrown then use it as the platform for your attack. By rolling the jab, or indeed the straight southpaw shots used against him by Nunn and Johnson, Toney makes the most of the space on either side of his foe. Jab and move backwards against Toney and he will slip, move, then counter with the left hook, he did this effectively against Michael Nunn.
Mike pushed that jab out almost constantly and would win rounds with this shot yet there would be rounds in which Toney got in the bigger, showier shots to counter that jab.
Back up straight, body turned crooked if Toney saw a gap open over the jab and a chance came he took it. James would then get in the pocket and take your punch from you before turning your steam around and using it to burn you. In this mode Toney is hard to beat, he pokes out shots like a doctor giving out jabs, blazing like an arsonist who flames with his punches regardless.
However he did look unbalanced quite often versus McCallum. In fact Eddie had figured out Toney so well by fight two his charge, McCallum, managed to almost completely negate Toney. Unfortunately Mike also failed to seize the fight himself.
Fight two opened with Toney coming out unusually quick, he was very precise in his movements and feinted McCallum into throwing the jab which he would then counter with two and three shots. By the fourth Toney was timing the right over the jab of McCallum.
Things had changed since fight one though, almost imperceptible steps to his, own, right by McCallum left Toney floundering at times, Mike would take the step and as Toney covered-up he would be completely shut down offensively. Toney’s right hand was not as effective in this fight as Mike continued to ensure that he negated it with movement. Unfortunately it is taxing for a, orthodox, fighter to continually take that step to his right as he is stepping from his front leg, he is not pushing with his back leg and consequently it gives you less glide of movement plus quickly drains the thigh and calf muscles.
Through rounds seven to nine the fight swung, lazily, Toney’s way as Mike ran out of steam and became that little bit more ordinary in his movements. Both men were still spending long periods waiting for a development but at least Toney was probing and had some steam on his shots. In the championship straight both men cancelled one another out; Toney hit heavier, McCallum hit more often. Once again it was a choice between philosophies and the decision favoured Toney. McCallum’s shots were precise and thrown often enough to be fairly uniform, you could even say his samey rhythm became boring and Toney’s explosions stole the eye in much the way a young, edgy movie star may steal the scenes from the earnest older character actor. McCallum had boxed a lullaby whilst James was all staccato hip-hop beats.
Thrown-in is the subjectivity of scoring. Some people would throw up a fistful of punch stats to prove their guy won the fight but this is nonsense. Fights may be watched on a computer in this age but they are still scored by the pencil and pen. Toney won deservedly over McCallum in their second fight purely because boxing is not amateur point-picking, if it was boxing would be ruined. Mike was probing and procrastinating with his shots yet when they did trade it was James who forced his foe to disengage.
The abiding memory of both Toney-McCallum fights is not the touching-up punches of Mike but the explosions of James’ heavy artillery. McCallum would never turn the story of the fights into an epic. In working his jab to open Toney up Mike did not imbalance Toney, he merely helped create the clearings for Toney to work. However Eddie Futch must have been watching those twenty-four rounds with great interest and wondering how much more effective his tactics would be with a younger, more fleet-footed fighter who could affect that step to the right for twelve rounds.
If you move to your right you take out the two main punches in Toney’s armoury; you are on his left hand so he cannot curl a hook into your chin plus you have moved out of the sights of his right hand. This, coupled with his tucked-up stance, means that if he does try to throw the shots he becomes unbalanced. Because his footwork is economical as opposed to inspired Toney also requires a moment to set his feet and get himself in a position to punch. By this time, if you have the legs, you can take a step back and begin the process again. The first McCallum fight was exciting due to the fact that Mike would often; naturally, step away to his left and onto the shots of Toney. Fight two was less dramatic because McCallum, and you would presume, Eddie Futch had figured out how to kept Toney constantly off-set.
Again, because of the way he drops his left and turns his shoulder Toney can block the straight shots most fighters use to set-up their attacks. If you step to your own right you can curl left hooks into Toney as he is ducking and turned, by doing this you take away Toney’s platform for attacks. With Toney unsighted you can then merely take a step back and slam home a quick right hand. Toney opens-up right through his middle when this happens, ordinarily his supple upper body and those educated arms and shoulders present two ramparts yet if you have the speed there is a straight corridor of opportunity between those two citadels.
Eddie needed a fighter to operate on the left of Toney in order to make his strategy work, in his mind he must have been sure it would work. The theory was exploded from the mind and across the canvas by Roy Jones when he whitewashed Toney in the most one-sided title fight possible. Jones was a master at moving to his own right and this advantage over Toney was exacerbated by the fact Roy Jones did not have a jab for Toney to counter, mercurial in the extreme Jones preferred to throw his left hook in place of a jab. He would step to the right, land a crisp left hook on Toney then step back and land the rights and further lefts.
What Toney needed next was a fight with a guy who would stand right in front of him and move onto that left hook, instead a match was made with the unheralded Montell Griffin at light-heavyweight. Griffin had an unusual style and hasty, jittery hand speed, he also had Eddie Futch in his corner plus the athleticism to, like Roy Jones, operate on the left hand side of Toney. Fight one saw Toney practically saunter to his second consecutive loss as he lost steam in the final three rounds of the fight. Personally I saw the fight as a draw, 114-114, yet it was clear from the get-go that this fight would be a difficult one for Toney to negotiate. Griffin did nothing risky, he merely shut Toney down using intelligent footwork and by throwing lefts and rights with perfect timing. Toney had his successes, who can forget his big right hand in the third? Yet even at this moment Toney showed signs of concern, his follow-up was wild and uneducated, maybe he saw his only chance to put Griffin away and move on. When Toney was good he looked very good, even though it was only those brief dreamy moments of perfection of thought we get before we drift off to sleep.
As one would expect Griffin suffered from his constant restlessness and when the pace did dip Toney showed flashes of his old self by comfortably mastering Griffin along the ropes. Griffin was playing himself by being lulled into a lullaby by the experienced Toney, when he got to the corner after round seven Eddie cajoled him into carrying out the master plan and the reward was a sweep of four of the five remaining rounds to take a majority decision on the cards.
Toney is a chaser who needs to space to run into, he needs that yard of distance because yard is space and momentum. When Toney did rumble forwards it was into jabs and into the no-balance land of centre ring, Griffin continued to score here and although he moved a great deal he was moving around Toney as opposed to giving him that hare to chase. Toney should have stepped-back rather than saunter forwards only by now it was too late for him to adapt, he stepped forward but was stepping half-correctly.
In the first Griffin fight Toney started slowly and never shook of his lethargy, the man in the other corner was, in stark contrast, a little dynamo of action and abuse, this was perfect to beat Toney, it kept James spinning like a discombobulated dervish.
A rematch was made a year later and this time Toney had lost Bill Miller and was guided by Eddie Mustafa Hamed, still the new-look team could not outwit the evergreen boxing brain of Futch.
It was the same script in this fight and the same outcome. Conversely I feel that Toney brought himself into this fight more and kept himself motoring through the movement of Griffin as well as popping effectively with the jab in order to keep his left hand busy.
However the leading foot of Griffin was still constantly on the outside of James’ stance, Toney’s left hook was mostly conspicuous by its absence in both fights with Griffin and especially this one. By this point in their rivalry Griffin was confident enough to step right across Toney and power in left hooks, jabs and right hands. By doing this Griffin kept Toney fighting to kept his balance, ironically greater fitness allowed Toney to move more freely this time around and he did have success in this rematch, success without dominance it must be stressed. As the middle rounds rolled by Griffin was moving backwards allowing Toney to move forward on the tram rail that seems to guide him around the ring. One judge scored it 119-109 to Griffin, which is a sin; I had it 115-113 for Toney.
What the fights against Futch and his fighters show is that a good strategy of precise movement can make James Toney look pedestrian and one-dimensional. Toney is a blue-collar fighter; he is straight and steady despite the shouting and the bling.
As a postscript of sorts a pupil of Eddie’s, Thel Torrance, took Hasim Rahman into a fight with Toney in which he had given Hasim the advice to beat Toney. Rahman did not follow this advice to the letter but he did spend a good deal of time stepping across Toney to shut him down. Even from beyond the grave Futch was giving a message loud and clear to Toney. “Give me the right fighter and I can beat you consistently, I can expose your flaws.” It leaves a tantalising question though, despite the indiscipline how good could Toney have been with Eddie Futch in his corner?
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