By Terence Dooley
James Toney, and his camp, must this week have been under the suspicion that at some point they had broken a mirror by hurling a black cat at it whilst running underneath a row of ladders. To say that the decision going against Toney in his fight with Sam Peter was unlucky is to make a massive understatement as well as pushing the bounds of reason.
Talk of robbery needs to be rudely wrenched aside; there are felonies in boxing but no robberies. A fixed fight card would require a criminal conspiracy to commit fraud and that is not possible, it would require mass secrecy in a sport fuelled by gossip and loose lips.
What happened last Saturday was worse than a robbery. Toney got screwed out of what would have been consensually considered his finest win at heavyweight. In fact scratch that sentiment. Toney was not just screwed, he was the equivalent of a woman who made a date with a guy only for him to stand her up numerous times, call round to her house and seduce her, tell his friends about the tryst, post photos of it on the internet and then fail to call her and say thanks. Toney got screwed and the only people who respected him the next morning - judging by the forums on most boxing sites and the common consensus of the experts - are the fans who know that he controlled the fight with Sam Peter in a very expert way.
This is one of those decisions that is puzzling and should be vehemently, viciously, violently (in fact lots of strong words beginning with ‘v’) and unanimously quibbled against. In fact stop reading this then go out on the streets and riot (actually finish reading this then go out and riot whilst burning print-offs).
So, what is there to be said in favour of the decision itself?
Well, one could say that the win given to Peter is a sure sign that the judges were incompetent. Judging is a relative thing; we keep hearing that yet the two scores of 116-111 for Peter are damning smoking ordnances as to the inability of the judges in question to interpret a boxing match.
Even more depressing is the fact that there is nothing that can be done. Well the fans can vote with their mouths if they wish to. Next time the judges in question are announced in a fight the fans should give them a holla-Hovito and let them know what they thought of the scores.
It may sound harsh yet the fact is that a fighter goes into camp, prepares for a bout the best way he can, negotiates twelve hard - and the stanzas were hard in this fight - rounds only to find that the decision as to his fate will be is in the hands of Mr Magoo and Stevie Wonder (both of whom probably would have score this fight better than the judges). Fans can bitch and moan but fighters suffer under the yolk of a dire decision.
Maybe next time a big bout features one of these incompetent judges the fighters will take their destiny in their own hands and exit the ring until a capable judge is found. If either of Saturday’s judges were a doctor he would take you in for a simple hangnail operation and remove your head by mistake. Some mis-scored cards are strange yet in this case it makes one wonder if the judges were facing the ring.
How can these judges be accused of incompetence? Well for a start they seem to have started their scoring at the tail end of each round or, alternatively, merely counted the amount of punches thrown and gave the bout to Peter on this misconception of what boxing entails. What they cannot have done, first and foremost is paid attention to the jabbing of both fighters, that singular staple of an attack.
Toney jabbed his jabs right into Peter’s face and if there is a controversy it might be that Toney appeared to be wielding a meat tenderiser in his little fists as he stepped in behind his jab and busted Peter up. For his part Sam pushed his jab like a man punching underwater and completely failed to take the fight with this punch. Toney had something behind his jab and in this fight he won the jab battle left hand up.
Toney then made sure that he, the smaller man, produced the telling counters. When he caught Peter clean he consistently followed through with his shots and at times made the behemoth in front of him appear unconvinced of his own capacity to continue catching the clean connections coming his way. Peter lost effectiveness with his jab due to the fact Toney was poking his punches out probingly and in the end Sam was taking meaty swipes at Toney, throwing them in a loop that often ended with the shot hitting more glove than face. Yet these partial shots are still scored as part of the stat compiling system most people swear by.
We need to ditch punch stats as serious measures and understand that three partial shots are not the same as the sanitary shot landed by the precise puncher. Punch stats are for amateur fighters and amateur armchair annalists. Peter bowled his shots and petty-patted often with them whilst having his head driven upwards by cleaner blows. That is boxing baby, hitting and not being hit, which brings us onto.
Toney seems to be a figure of fun right now, perhaps his rotund frame offends many people. It must be solid sitting in our chairs - out of shape and popping beers - as this round figure beats and berates the hell out of his foes whilst looking woefully conditioned. It must invite talent envy, if you say “if I was fit I’d be in there boxing” then you must hate Toney because he is unfit and is still in there and boxing wonderfully. In his fights with Rahman and Peter both of his foes should have had their purses confiscated and paid to Toney as reparation for the schooling he dished out to them.
Toney is also a victim of his own talent for avoiding attacks, he can roll three and four shots at a time so, in reality, the other guy gets points for being made a fool of.
Another factor is that people are inviting the idea of instant retribution into boxing by saying that Toney turns his back from punches and deserves to kidney punched as well as rabbit punched. People are saying he deserves to be fouled.
Yes right, produce a piece of footage in which Toney turns his back to the other guy and is facing away from him. There is none. What Toney does is slip and twist away from the shots and decrease his own, ample it must be said, target area. So now we are saying a guy knowing how to slip, shoulder block and contort himself away from punches is an infringement of the rules deserving to be punished with illegal blows. Get it straight, Toney moves away from blows legally and it does not necessitate illegal retaliation. What next? Ban parries (which, sadly, are dying out)? Ban blocks? Why not just plant both guys into the ring from the knees up and get them to whale away with insane impunity?
If the other guy finds Toney has cut down the target area they need to do something about it legally. Here is a thought, when Toney closes the gap down take a step to your left (I assume an orthodox fighter in this example) and turn slightly before popping a jab onto Toney’s forehead, that is a scoring shot and shows you are negating Toney’s guard, it shows you are boxing, something Peter did not do.
Smashing your fist downwards onto Toney’s head, hitting him round the back of the head or whacking his kidneys is not boxing, it is cheating and Peter did plenty of that before he lost a point. It is rank bad boxing and dangerous to boot. Surely we should not sponsor that?
If you cannot penetrate Toney’s defence blame yourself, do not censure the other guy for being a better boxer. Everything Toney does is being overlooked by judges who are forgetting how to keep a tally, men who seem to be brainwashed into scoring the last seconds of a round and the punch output whether it be missed or wastefully wanton.
As it goes the fight is over now and Toney has lost, unfairly, so he needs to dust himself down and lose some weight before coming back into contention with a point to prove. At this moment in time Toney is in a strange position, those who hate him do so fervidly and it obscures their limited grasp of pure boxing. Those who love James recognise that he is in the same position The Jiggaman was in for so long, loved by purists and overlooked by critics who just do not get something in its classical form. Peter did his best, he seems a good guy, but he is the equivalent of MC Hammer, in fact he is not that good, call him Mac Hammer the Scottish Emcee no one has heard off let alone listened too.
In short there is no need for an investigation. The fault lines are clear, we need judges who are aficionados, men who have watched some of the defensive greats and know a shoulder block from an about-turn.
If boxing gets the judges it deserves the results will follow and the hard-core fan base will no longer sit down to a fight thinking “My guy is going to win tonight, he’ll get burglarised on the scorecards though!”
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