By Chris Williams: Right about now, heavyweight James Toney (71-6-3, 43 KOs) should considerate himself very fortunate that he didn’t lose to Fres Oquendo (29-5, 18 KOs) on Saturday night at the Morongo Casino Resort & Spa, in Cabazon, California, because from what I saw of the fight, Toney lost every round except for the 8th and 9th. Indeed, he looked nothing short of terrible in getting a gift 12-round split decision victory over Oquendo to win both the vacant International Boxing Association heavyweight and WBO NABO heavyweight titles.
Toney, 40, looked flabby, slow and badly out of shape, pretty much as usual unfortunately. But it wasn’t his bad shape that was the problem; It was his low punch output and his inability to pull the trigger with his punches, which in effect left the 35-year-old Oquendo free to hit him with a lot of jabs and right hands in the fight.
Though only five inches taller than Toney, at 6’2″, Oquendo seemed like a giant, using his longer reach to tag Toney from the outside with jabs and long rights. Even when Toney would try to land his shorter punches, he was often unable to reach the taller Oquendo with them and would end up hitting nothing but air. Toney was hurt on several occasions in the fight from right hands from Oquendo.
However, Oquendo, too, was hurt a couple of times in the fight by big right hands, but Toney failed to capitalize in these situations. In the 8th round, after previously being warned on a couple of occasions for throwing rabbit punches, Oquendo was deducted a point by referee Lou Moret for throwing another rabbit punch.
Up until this time, Toney had come close to winning none of the rounds as far as I could tell, and this had the effect of making the 8th even, because Oquendo had done almost all the punching in the round. This seemed to rally Toney’s spirit briefly, as he fought hard in the 9th round, landing a lot of jabs.
Mind you, it wasn’t hardly impressive work on Toney’s part, given that he was only throwing jabs, but it was huge increase of what he had been doing in the eight prior rounds in which he looked plain awful. Unfortunately for Toney, that was about it for him, as Oquendo retook control over the fight, and easily controlled rounds 10 through 12.
To make things worse for Toney, he was staggered by right hands in both the 11th and 12th round, looking hurt and old. Not a particularly big puncher, Oquendo looked like the second coming of Wladimir Klitschko in the way he was pasting Toney with clean right hands, knocking him around the ring and hurting him on occasion. Known for his good chin, Toney looked very susceptible to Oquendo’s right hand, which looked pretty average to me.
This begs the question: Is Toney a shot fighter? In truth, he hasn’t looked good since defeating Dominick Guinn three years ago in October 2005. He’s fought six times since that fight, facing Hasim Rahman and Samuel Peter twice, Danny Batchelder and now Oquendo. Peter beat him twice, and Toney probably should have lost to Rahman in the first fight, which turned to be a draw.
It may just be that that the 40 year-old Toney is starting to show his age, having had too many wars in the past. The fights with Peter couldn’t have helped him any, for Toney took a lot of hard shots in both fights and emerged a much different fighter than he was previously. After the first fight, Toney looked slow, his reflexes diminished noticeably and his work rate down. Whatever the case, those two fights didn’t appear to help Toney in keeping his skills intact.
It’s unclear whether the judges’ did Toney any favor in giving him the victory over Oquendo, because with Toney’s #8 ranking in the WBC and number #10 ranking in the IBF, it effectively means that he’ll be getting a title shot in the not too distant future, either against Wladimir or Vitali Klitschko, if they’re still champions by then. A fight against either would be a nothing short of a slaughter, with Toney getting taken apart and easily stopped.
Based on his performance on Saturday night, Toney would be better served if he decided to hang up his gloves and avoid moving further up the latter against better opponents. He’s quite lucky that his original opponent, Toney Thompson, has to cancel the fight due to illness, because a fight against him would have been so one-sided that there would be no way that Toney could have gotten the nod by the judges. That’s not to say that Thompson is all that great, but rather it’s a statement about how diminished Toney is now looking.
The final judges’ scores were 115-112, 114-113 and 110-116.
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