Dennis Lebedev didn’t just out-point James Toney in Moscow yesterday; Lebedev whipped the 43 year old former middleweight, super middleweight and cruiserweight champion. Toney never gained any real traction in the bout, and from the 9th Round on he was in full retreat.
I predicted Toney’s age and poor physical condition would give Lebedev, a limited but powerful boxer who is trained by the great Kostya Tszyu, all the leverage he needed to pound his way to a decisive victory. To me, that analysis was based on the facts and sheer common sense. My opinion was only buttressed by the TV footage and photos coming out of Russia prior to the fight, showing Toney with a substantial belly that wasn’t hidden by his baggy clothing. Lebedev’s victory wasn’t surprising, not even in the slightest, at least not to me.
However, it must have come as a shock to Toney’s fans, who seem to be in a fantasy world regarding their man. I saw glowing predictions of a Toney victory, that Toney would bamboozle the Russian, again and again in articles and blogs run up to Lebedev vs. Toney. I can’t imagine where this blind faith that James Toney’s skills somehow outweigh the biological laws regarding aging comes from. It certainly isn’t justified by the facts.
Comparing Toney to his contemporary, Bernard Hopkins, reveals this quite clearly. Hopkins lives like a monk, trains diligently, and is the modern poster boy for the phrase “well-preserved in middle age.” Toney is no Hopkins. The two men are middle-aged and have a deep toolbox, but the similarities end there. Toney is a gym rat, but not on the warrior monk scale of Hopkins. More importantly, Toney’s likes cheeseburgers and beer, and you can’t eat that stuff and hold back Father Time.
James Toney (sometimes mockingly referred to as “Let’s Eat”) made his way up the weight classes until he found a place that could accommodate his lifestyle, and while he amazingly gained some traction as a big guy, his resume hasn’t been that impressive lately. The days when Toney shocked everyone by out-foxing big men like Vassiliy Jirov, John Ruiz and Baltimore knucklehead Hasim Rahman were a long time ago. He dropped two losses to Sam Peter (a guy who should have been easy to outbox) in 2006 and 2007, his rematch with Rahman was indecisive, and since then Toney has barely been active.
By contrast, Bernard Hopkins has suffered a few losses over the same period, but remained at the top of the sport and a major player in the pound-for-pound rankings. It was only six months ago that Hopkins defeated Jean Pascal, won the light heavyweight crown, and became the oldest man to win a major world championship in boxing history. The recent fight with Chad Dawson ended controversially, but Hopkins wasn’t whipped by a second-tier character like Lebedev.
For a brief period of time, “Light’s Out” defied the odds and became a viable heavyweight contender (albeit during a period when the division was anemic, as it remains today). However, he is not an ageless wonder, an heir to Archie Moore. That status demands not just a love of the sport, something Toney undeniably has, but also an iron discipline beyond the norm of even the sport’s top athletes. There is a reason why only B-Hop remains a top fighter at age 46, and the last man standing of his generation of middleweights by a wide margin.
James Toney says he will be back. I hope not, and the best move for Toney now might, in fact, be to get into training and share that deep reservoir of boxing prowess with other fighters.
