James Toney vs. Wladimir Klitschko: Does James Have A Chance Against Wladimir?

By Thomas Hanson: After last night’s bout between James Toney (71-6, 44 KOs) and Hasim Rahman (45-7-2, 36 KOs), which ended up with Toney winning on a controversial 3rd round TKO after Rahman was cut over his left eye, Toney called IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko a “bum and your sister Vitali.” It seems as if Toney would like nothing better than to take on Wladimir in a title fight. In a recent interview, Toney said that he’d like to fight Wladimir for the title. If Wladimir were to be interested in such a bout, this would set up an intriguing David vs. Goliath type of a match up with the 6′7″ Wladimir facing the smallish 5′9″ Toney, who would be giving up 10 inches in height and 9 inches in reach to Wladimir.

While most people would immediately rule this out as being a fight where Toney would be simply too small to effectively fight Wladimir, I beg to disagree. As light night’s fight proved, Toney has the ability get in close to fighters with a super long reach, close enough to land his shorter, almost as powerful right hand shots.

Rahman, who has a reach of 82, an inch longer than Wladimir, wasn’t able to keep the shorter-armed Toney on the outside very effectively last night. The reason that was so was because Toney often made Rahman miss by using a shoulder roles, bobbing and weaving and moving his head, which caused many of Rahman’s big shots to miss badly.

Wladimir has been so without a big named opponent in his career, fighting mostly little known opponents that the general boxing public neither knows or cares about. Of all his opponents thus far, perhaps Ray Mercer comes the closest to being a big name star, yet even he isn’t well known to most people. With James Toney, you have a legitimate star, which can bring in boxing fans and make for a competitive fight with Wladimir. I think he would open a lot of eyes, in particular Wladimir, who find himself in a dogfight when he discovers that Toney isn’t going to show fear or fade like Wladimir’s last two opponents Sultan Ibragimov and Tony Thompson.

This would be a fight perhaps something along the lines of Ross Puritty vs. Wladimir, where both fighters are trading huge bombs for 10-rounds until one of them goes down. Against Puritty, Wladimir couldn’t hold up under the pressure and was eventually taken out at the start of the 11th round. Toney obviously would be looking at tapes of that fight, knowing that if he can pressure Wladimir in the same way, he would have a good chance of stopping him in a similar fashion.

Toney keeps his opponents honest, by continually pressuring them, not allowing them any rest breaks for which they can ease off and get their depleted energy reserves back. Without a rest break, Wladimir would probably sink like the Titanic, going down slowly while taking shots from the broad side.