The man called James Toney
Three days before the fighting began, the quietest voices belonged to the four boxers. The surly Toney and his stolidly dignified opponent, Toney Thornton; and the two heayweighweights, the unheralded Michael Bentt and the golden local boy, Morrison. But then, as if a switch had been turned on in his head, Toney began to rant. He objected to the fact that that he had to concede top billing to Morrison. He was by far the superior figher. In fact, Toney bristled, there was not a boxer in the world who could beat him. He might be three divions lighter than the heavyweights but he could beat every single one of the podgy bums. Jackie put a manicured hand on his arm to calm him. The other 'Shootout' dignitaries twitched im their plush seats, waiting for the next Lights Out detonation.
The man called James Toney
The supermiddleweights part 1
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'I hate the British! Always the same! Y'all know **** about boxing! You're losers! Bums too! Eubank, Benn, the lot o' you!! I'm tellin' all o' you who live in Britain, if you know what's good for you, dont come near me no more!
I'm mad as hell now!'
-James Toney
Detonations
Toneys's rage was notorious. After a fight against Mike McCallum, Tony furiously pursued his rivals's fifty-one-year-old lawyer. The portly and bespecacled Milton Chawsky had suggested that McCallum should have been given the verdict over Toney in an enthralling contest. Sending tables spinning through the air and screaming, 'You blind bastard!', Toney went after Chawsky, only being prevented from doing more serious damage by a gang of secrity men.'I'm gonna get you, fat boy!' snarled Toney, before turning his tirade onto a more suitable target in tjhe media audience-Julian Jackson, the hardest puncher in boxing. 'I wont make you wait, mother****er!' young James whispered. He made Tyson's repartee sound like a simpering voiceover of cookie recipes. Nose-to- with Toney the more sensible Jaackson backed down.
Toney and his 6ft 7in bodyguard Andre Williams, had been involved in another brawl at an City media gathering Williams had tried to stare down Iran Barkley, the shaven-skulled and self-styled 'automatic psychopath'. Quite why Toney needed a bodyguard when he was so intent on proving himself the toughest man in the business may have puzzled Barkleys's burley trainer, Eddie Muhammad, for he interrupted the question and answer session in eccentric fashion. He threw himself at Williams and sent him crashing to the floor. Toney decided not to assist his giant bodyguard but challenged instead two other colourful oddballs - the promoter Butch Lewis, famous for wearing expensive tuxedos and gold neck chokers without a shirt underneath, and his fighter Bernard 'The Executioner' Hopkins who was accompanied by a couple of axe-weilding jokers dressed in black hangmen's hoods. A different security unit had to seperate the scufflers - once again suggesting that a James Toney press conference was just like WWF wrestling. The crucial difference being that, with Toney, the violence was real.
Inside the ring, however, any resemblence to cartoon destruction was buried beneath his sublime skills. Toney was already being spoken of, and by experts other than him, as the best fighter in the world, as the greatest-pound-for-pound champion in contemporary boxing. There was an intelligence to his fighting which belied the crude 'Lights Out'persona.
Yet, like Tyson, Toney needed nurturing. But where Mighty Mike had Bill Cayton and Don King, Toney had Sherry and Jackie. While the heavyweight's 'bad intentions' spun out of control, Kallen realised that her fighter could channel his fury into boxing. She and Sherry built up Toney's self-esteem, convincing him that his most destructive urges could be changed into a winning force.
Michael Nunn
Toney's breakthrough into the championship ranks had occured in May 1991, in Davenport, Iowa, small town on the banks of the Mississipi where the old riverside gambling boats offered the mid-west's sole response to Vegas. It was then that James and Sherry had shown the world - and proved to Toney Snr that they had made it despite everything he had done to them.
Davenport was also home to Michael Nunn, considered then to be boxing's most dexterous fighter. But Jackie thought that James might beat him.The rest of boxing had laughed at her while she manoeuvered her fighter into that supposedly hopeless championship contest. The unbeaten Nunn had held the IBF middleweight title for nearly three years. His seventh defence, against Toney, a 20-1 underdog, was meant to be his homecoming dance, a flowing reward after all those years of toiling on the road.
For the fist five rounds Nunn picked off Toney at will. He thudded in hooks to the body and jabs to the head. Toney seemed outclassed- only landing a pitiful 12 per cent of his punches. But I was entertained by his audacity.
Bill Miller, his venerable trainer was concerned. 'You've got to press him, son, otherwise we're goin' nowhere tonight...'
'It's all right,' Toney said,'I can hear him. He's breathing like a freight-train..'
A few rounds later Miller chided:'You're losing it, son, you're losing it!'
'Don't worry about it,' Toney retorted calmly, 'he's not goin' the distance'
As they moved into the eight round, Nunn was ahead on the first judge's card by three points, by five on the next, and seven on the last. Toney needed a knockout. He began by snapping right hands into the champions's face.
'Very much so!' Toney agreed, his slanted eyes glinting.
I admitted his decorum amid such adversity
Toney came out like a freight-train of his own at the start of the eleventh. He threw five big punches at the back-pedalling Nunn. Another right uppercut rocked Nunn and he never even saw the huge left hook which swung in from the blindside. It exploded on his chin. If there is truly such a thing as a beautiful punch then that emerged from the perfect mould. It was breathtaking.
Stretched out on the canvas, Nunn battled even to lift his head for the first five seconds. But, somehow, he hauled himself up just before the count of ten. Toney went after him like a starving Doberman chasing a bleeding rabbit. Another four right hands crashed into Nunn. He slumped forward against the ropes and then onto his knees. A white towel sailed through the air just as the referee intervened.
After pitching over with exhausted rapture, Toney made himself a platform on the ropes. He stood out at the 10,000 people who had refused to believe him:'I told yo so! I told you so! James Toney at twenty-two, had become the world's youngest middleweight champion for the more than fifty years.
Iran Barkley
The pattern prevailed as he added the IBF super-middleweight title less than two years later, in Febuary 1993, in a consummate display against Iran 'The Blade' Barkley at Ceasers Palace in Las Vegas.
His pre-fight exchanges with Barkley had numbered amongst the most profane in boxing history- and yet at the bell he demonstrated a talent as cool as it was precise. Toney did not run as I thought he might have done against the heavier champion. He could have used his twenty-four-year-old legs to full effect against a bruiser who was eight years older than him. But he chose to stand in the centre of the ring where he locked his radar onto Iran. He boxed as if he was playing chess against a computer, showing too much imagination to be beaten by a mechanical opponent. His punching was pointedly accurate. He picked off Barkley with a calculationg speed. Slipping beneath Barkley's punches, it was as if all his fury had been distilled into one long blue burn. Toney glowed as steadily in the ring as he flared recklessly on the outside. His resentment towards Barkley, his father and the universe in general was moulded into defiant professionalism. He never lifted his eyes or his fists from the forge of Barkley's huge bald head.
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