By Jason Kim: Aging heavyweights James Toney (70-6-3, 43 KOs) and Hasim Rahman (45-6-3, 36 KOs) battle it out on Wednesday night in a scheduled 12-round bout for the vacant WBO NABO heavyweight title at the Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula. Both fighters are nearing the end of their boxing careers, with Toney, 39, at the edge having lost two out of his last four fights with one of them being a draw to Rahman and the other a split decision victory over Danny Batchelder in his last fight.

It’s been over a year since Toney last fought, and during that time he’s slipped from the top 15. He looked weak and weight drained in his last fight with Batchelder in May 2007. After the bout, Toney tested positive for a banned substance and was subsequently suspended for a year, although it was later reduced to six months. The time off probably won’t have helped Toney, who was having problems dealing with the better heavyweights like Peter and Rahman. In both cases, Toney seemed too small to compete with either of them and his lack of size prevented him from being able to take the fight to them. Of course, him being out of shape didn’t help either. Toney looked to be 25-40 lbs overweight in both fights and the fat appeared to slow him down considerably over the course of the bouts.

Toney did well for a fighter as overweight as he was, giving Peter a lot of problems in the first fight, and also giving Rahman trouble with his expert counter punching ability. Though the Rahman fight was ultimately scored a draw, it looked as if Rahman had actually won the fight by at least two rounds from what I saw of it. My views were mirrored by many other boxing fans and experts, who felt that Rahman was given a bad deal in that fight. That’s not to say that Rahman looked all that good, because he looked very average, but he did appear to do enough to beat Toney on that night.

Toney, a former world champion in three weight classes hasn’t looked good in a fight since beating John Ruiz by a 12-round unanimous decision to briefly capture the WBA heavyweight title in April 2005. The fight was quickly ruled a no-contest after Toney once again tested positive for a banned substance. After that fight, Toney’s conditioning seemed to diminish considerably, as he came into his first fight with the slugger Samuel Peter looking visibly heavier around the midsection in September 2006. The weight seemed to bother Toney in the later rounds of the fight with Peter, when Toney seemed to tire out slightly, enough for Peter to defeat him by a narrow decision.

Nothing improved in their second bout, fought in January 2007, with Toney looking overweight and slow as he tried to battle with the younger, harder punching Peter. This time, Peter defeated Toney by a lopsided 12-round unanimous decision and there was nothing close about the fight whatsoever. At this point, many boxing fans were suggesting that Toney hang up the gloves, for he didn’t have the youth, conditioning or the size to compete with the younger and bigger heavyweights in the division like Peter and Wladimir Klitschko. Instead of listening, however, Toney worked on his conditioning, but appeared to have taken off weight much too rapidly for his fight with Batchelder in May 2007, and perhaps because of that, Toney fought slowly, looking weak and out of shape and taking a lot of shots.

Toney has said to have trained hard for this Wednesday’s fight with Rahman, although the same has been said of him in the past and he’s still looked bad. At this point, it’s not whether Toney can still fight period at heavyweight given his advanced age, now almost 40. His reflexes have appeared to have slowed down and he’s taking more head shots that he ever has in his career. In the past, Toney was often able to get out of the way of punches, being able to slip them in a variety of ways using shoulder rolls, dipping at the waist and moving his head. Now, however, his ability to slip the punches has lessened to the point where he’s getting hit flush a lot of the time. For a fighter that’s only 5’9″ in his stalking feet, that’s not a good thing to happen, especially now that he’s nearing middle age.

As for Rahman, he still a little left in the tank due to his right hand power, which is enough to beat many of the top heavyweights if he can land it. However, his stamina is poor like Toney, and he doesn’t seem to be able to fight in top form on every occasion. He’ll look good in one fight, and then in his next bout he’ll struggle and lose, like in the case of his 12th round TKO to Oleg Maskaev in August 2006. Since that fight, Rahman has fought four journeyman level fighters, beating all of them without too much trouble, but not always looking that good, either.

At this point neither fighter can afford to lose, especially Toney. If he loses, then it marginalizes him to the point where he’ll be thought of as nothing more than an opponent for most fighters. In other words, a journeyman with an incredible record. He can fight on, but his paydays with be likely much smaller than they’d been in the past.

A loss for Rahman, pushes him down from his high #4 ranking in the IBF, and probably removes any chance of him fighting for a title in 2008 and 2009. With his power and boxing ability, however, he can always rebound from it and come back again, but it will take him awhile, though. I doubt see any of the heavyweight champions taking a charitable interest in him and giving him a shot at a title should he lose to Toney.