By Ryan Burton

BoxingScene.com spoke with promoter Dan Goossen, who gave his take on the failed negotiations to make a fight between WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko and seven-foot Nikolai Valuev - and the possibility of James Toney fighting Klitschko. According to a BoxingScene article written by Andrey Krukinov, Valuev turned down 2.5 million dollars for the fight. Goossen who promotes James Toney was very frank in saying:

"The fight with James Toney makes a lot of sense. The Germans want it. I spoke to RTL who televises Klitschko's fights and they were interested as well. I really felt confident that if the Valuev negotiations broke down that James would get the fight. They had that type of interest for him. It seemed as more time went by they were less inclined to jump in the ring with James. It certainly didn't come down to money and I don't believe it came down to his weight (Toney weighed in at 217.5 lbs. For his last fight) because he has been at the lowest weight he has been at in many many years."

At first glance in looking back at Toney's last couple fights, a win over the journeyman Matthew Greer, a no contest versus Hasim Rahman and a controversial win over Fres Oquendo you wouldn't think Vitali Klitschko would be worried at all about James Toney but as Goosen pointed out - "despite what a lot of people think James Toney is a risk to a lot of people including Vitali Klitschko. I thoroughly believe that they think James is too big of a risk. Ryan if you look back at Toney's record since 97, yes since 1997 he has only loss twice and one of those losses, the first one to Sam Peter many people think James won."

Goosen went on to say that the fight would be huge in Germany and they could fill an arena with 100,000 people. He said they could fill the Staples Center in Los Angeles if they wanted to bring the fight to the U.S.  "Don King Promotions has the record for biggest live attendance when Julio Cesar Chavez fought one of our fighters Greg Haugen in Mexico. This fight could be as big."

If Klitschko doesn't come to an agreement with Valuez and doesn't want to wait for David Haye, then this is the biggest fight he could make at this point in time.

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