Adamek-Toney mismatch will take place if 43-year-old Toney can pass medical exam

By Boxing News - 07/04/2012 - Comments

Image: Adamek-Toney mismatch will take place if 43-year-old Toney can pass medical examBy Dan Ambrose: Tomasz Adamek (46-2, 28 KO’s) has picked out 43-year-old James Toney (74-7-3, 45 KO’s) to fight in front of his loyal fans on September 8th at the Prudential Center, Newark, New Jersey. The fight will be a pay-per-view fight for Adamek back in his home country of Poland, and he’ll likely get a lot of fans willing to purchase the fight because of Toney’s well known name. He’s recognized even in Poland.

Before the fight -if you want to call it that – takes place, Toney will have to pass a medical exam this week. When you get a fighter as old as Toney, who has taken a ton of punishment during his career, it’s no sure thing that he’ll get a clearance for the fight. In listening to some of Toney’s recent interviews one can detect a definite slurring of the speech when he talks. It’s doubtful that this will get in the way of Toney receiving his medical clearance to fight Adamek, however.

This is a pretty sick mismatch when you think about it. Toney hasn’t beaten a credible contender in years, and although Adamek is starting to look old himself, he’s still got more than enough to give Toney a real pounding in this fight. I doubt Adamek will be able to give Toney a beating the way that cruiserweight contender Denis Lebedev did last November, but he’ll give him a bad enough beating to make this a one-sided fight.

The casual boxing fans seem to like the Adamek-Toney fight for some reason. Many of them still think that Toney is the same fighter that beat Vassiliy Jirov nine years ago in 2003. Believe me, that version of Toney is long gone from age and too many wars. Toney hasn’t looked the same since he fought back to back bouts against a prime Samuel Peter in 2006 and 2007. Toney took a lot of hard head shots in those fights with many of the punches landing to the back of Toney’s head due to his habit of bending over during his fights. Toney wasn’t the same fighter after the 2nd fight with Peter, and his career has been limping a long ever since.

Adamek is taking it easy to try and get another title shot. He beat Nagy Aquilera and recently Eddie Chambers, who was coming off of a 16 month layoff. I’m pretty sure Adamek regrets having taken the Chambers fight, because he turned out to have a lot more left in the tank than most boxing fans suspected. In looking at that fight a second time, I thought Adamek looked perfectly awful in trying to deal with an injured Chambers, who hurt his left arm in the 1st round. Chambers fought well enough to get the win, but the judges sided with Adamek. In looking at how much Adamek has aged since his loss to WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko last year, I think Adamek may have no other choice but to face guys like Toney in order to try and get another title shot. If they put Adamek in with guys like Tony Thompson, Denis Boytsov, Tyson Fury, David Price or even Deontay Wilder, I see him losing by knockout to all of them. He’s too small, too slow and now looking too old to compete against the best or even the fringe contenders in my estimation.



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