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James Toney was quite an incredible fighter in his prime years. Toney's losses to Jones, Thadzi & Griffin (2x) were as a result of him draining himself. His lack of mental discipline meant we never got see him on top for a longer period of time. But make no mistake about it, his resume leading up to his bout with Jones was very solid. Mike McCallum, Reggie Johnson, Merqui Sosa, Michael Nunn, Glenn Wolfe, Dave Tiberi, Tim Little, Doug DeWitt, Iran Barkley, Charles Williams, Dell'Aquila (might have spelt it wrong, I'll have to look it up in a bit), Tony Thornton & Glen Thomas makes for a nice resume. His loss to Jones began something of a downwards spiral for Toney. Weight problems due to lack of mental discipline really got the better of him and it was only in the early part of the current century that he started to pick up again. His win over Jirov was a highly entertaining bout and I expected to see him remain a cruiserweight but once again he moved up and annihilated Evander Holyfield. I honestly thought that Toney had the chance to be a real force at the CW/HW divisions. Evander may have seen better years but he's never really been stopped like Toney did to him. I couldn't see any HW in the world stopping Evander and Toney did a damn good job of it.
Toney was a great fighter, incredibly talented but lacked the mental discipline to remain on top for a long time. Still an ATG fighter in my eyes but I have to rank Roy Jones ahead of him based on the fact that RJJ didn't spend about 7 years of his career with weight problems & failing to find the right fighting consistency.
Toney was a great fighter, incredibly talented but lacked the mental discipline to remain on top for a long time. Still an ATG fighter in my eyes but I have to rank Roy Jones ahead of him based on the fact that RJJ didn't spend about 7 years of his career with weight problems & failing to find the right fighting consistency.
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