Toney should capture Prizefighter tonight

By Boxing News - 11/14/2013 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: 45-year-old James Toney (75-8-3, 45 KO’s) will be taking part in the Prizefighter tourney tonight against a handful of little known heavyweights from around the globe at the Hall, Bethnal Green, in London, United Kingdom. As shot as Toney has looked in the last few years, I think he’s got a real chance to win this thing tonight.

Toney’s toughest opposition will be coming from Brian Minto and Michael Sprott, and those guys are definitely beatable opposition for Toney as long as he lets his hands go. With the fights being 3 rounders, he’s going to have to forget about taking his time with these guys and just throw nonstop punches if he wants to win the tourney.

None of these guys are as good as Toney, but the only question is if Toney still has enough left in the tank to win a series of fast-paced three round fights. It’s going to be tough because Toney is in his mid-40s now and he’s got a lot of mileage on him. But he’s got that brilliant computer-like boxing brain going for him to make up for what he’s lost in terms of his physical skills.

These are the heavyweights in the Prizefighter tourney that Toney has to compete against:

Ben Ileyemi
Moses Matovu
Brian Minto
Tom Little
Michael Sprott
Damian Wills
Matt Legg
Larry Olubamiwo

Also on the card will be Britain’s heavyweight hopeful Anthony Joshua (2-0, 2 KO’s), the 2012 Olympic super heavyweight gold medalist from the London games, facing Hrvoje Kisicek (5-6, 1 KO’s) in a 6 rounder. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn is matching him against incredibly weak opposition with little power to trouble Joshua. That’s okay for now but it could be giving a lot of boxing fans a ton of false hopes about Joshua, because he was far from impressive in winning the Olympic gold in controversial fashion at the London games.

Each heavyweight that he fought was more than competitive with him. In fact, I had Joshua losing all four fights in the Olympics, but somehow he was given the gold medal. The Italian fighter Roberto Cammarelle that Joshua fought in the finals for the gold medal appeared to be the much better fighter, yet Joshua won the gold.

The point is Joshua’s level was pretty much shown in the Olympics against those four super heavyweights, who clearly aren’t as good as some of the top heavyweight contenders in the division, and when Joshua is finally stepped up several levels to good heavyweights, we could see him fail miserably.

Joshua has too much muscle on his upper body, he’s not a huge puncher, and he’s slow and he easy to hit. He’s going to have big problems when he faces heavyweights with any kind of power. That’s why I think Hearn needs to get it over with now by matching Joshua against quality heavyweights so that he can sink or swim. At least by doing that Hearn won’t be getting everyone’s hopes built up for nothing for when Joshua is exposed in the future, if that happens.



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