by Daniel Ciminera: News this evening, in a move which may not be much of a shock to some people, 41 year old James “Lights Out” Toney (72/6/3), has signed a “multi-fight” contract with the UFC.

Toney, who won world titles at 5 different weights in the boxing ring and has been revered as a technically brilliant, future hall of fame boxer for many years, has been looking for a couple of years to get into mixed martial arts and had previously had talks with “Strikeforce”, a competitor of UFC. However, Toney went to UFC president Dana White insisting that the fights being offered to him were beneath him, telling White, “I have a lot of pride and I’d never do anything to embarrass myself. I’m a fighter. I want to fight. Don’t ever underestimate me.”

Strong words, some may say, from a man who was twice caught using steroids while boxing and in recent years has let his, once Tyson-esque, physique go to ruin, showing up at fights with more belly than braun. Especially when you consider that the last big star from another combat sport to join the UFC, Brock Lesnar was matched extremely harshly against experienced grappler Frank Mir who only took a minute and a half to remove the giant wrestler from their contest by submission.

Dana White concedes that he has “no idea” who Toney will make his debut against but, maintains that it will be “no freak-show”, and that while there are a lot of differences between boxing and mixed martial arts, Toney will “surprise people by how much MMA he knows”.

Toney, who aside from two losses to “Nigerian Nightmare” Samuel Peter in ’06 and ’07, has not lost a fight since 1997, even forcing Evander Holyfield to throw in the towel against him back in 2003. His last fight was in September last year, which he won by TKO in round 2. If Toney’s start at UFC goes well, he has a clause in his contract which allows him to fight in the boxing ring as well, meaning that if his profile was to be raised, he could well be involved with marquee bouts with the Klitschko brothers or other top ranked heavyweight boxers in the not too distant future.