By Jason Kim: At 43, James Toney (73-6-3, 44 KO’s), a former three division world champion, has left his best years of his boxing career far behind him. It’s probably been close to six years since Toney was last fighting at a high level. He now just looks faded, fat and out of place at heavyweight.

Toney will be moving down in weight for the first time in years on November 4th to take on the best fighter in the cruiserweight division Denis Lebedev (22-1, 17 KO’s) at the Khodynka Ice Palace, in Moscow, Russia.

This has got mismatch written all over it. If you mix in Toney’s advanced age, the fact that he’s horrible in his last six fights dating back to 2007, and then factor in all the weight that he’s taking off to get down to the 200 pound upper limit for the cruiserweight division, it looks bad for Toney.

Some people are saying that Toney has taken off the weight slowly and he won’t be weight drained for this fight. Good, if that’s true, but he’ll still be incredibly old and no faster than he was recently. He’s just old, and it doesn’t matter if he takes off a lot of weight, he’s still battling the effects of age.

Facing a killer puncher like Lebedev can’t be good for Toney. Lebedev is the best fighter in the division, period.Forget Marco Huck or Steve Cunningham, because Lebedev already showed that he’s a better fighter than Huck in their fight last December. Huck won, but he really didn’t in the minds of a lot of boxing fans.

I had Lebedev winning 9 rounds to 3. It was a dominating performance by Lebedev, but it took place in Huck’s adopted country of Germany, meaning Lebedev needed to knock Huck out or knock him down repeatedly to make sure he got the win. In Lebedev’s last fight, he destroyed Roy Jones Jr. in a 10th round knockout after taking it easy on him for the first nine rounds.

Lebedev can’t afford to take it easy on Toney, because he’ll be in his face trying to pot shot him all night long. Toney can’t fight hard like he used to without tiring, so the way for Lebedev to make sure he gets the win is to outwork Toney, and take him into the deep end to drown him.