Toney has finally met his match in Lebedev

By Boxing News - 10/29/2011 - Comments

Image: Toney has finally met his match in LebedevBy Dan Ambrose: After taking it easy for the past four years mainly facing B level opposition and not looking very good, 43-year-old James Toney (73-6-3, 44 KO’s) is stepping up to the ‘A’ class against Russian cruiserweight contender Denis Lebedev (22-1, 17 KO’s) next week on November 4th in a fight for the interim WBA World cruiserweight title at the Khodynka Ice Palace in Moscow, Russia.

This is truly a step too far for Toney and at the wrong time of his career. It’s the wrong weight class, wrong point in his career, and wrong opponent.

Toney has pretty much everything stacked against him in this fight, including being the visiting fighter. Yet Toney, as always is the case, sees himself winning by a knockout. He won’t be knocking Lebedev out, of course.

The only real suspense in this fight is how badly Lebedev will beat the aging Toney; It’s practically a given that Lebedev will win.

After all, he’s a world class fighter and is probably the best fighter in the cruiserweight division. He’s facing an old guy in Toney who hasn’t fought at the cruiserweight level in eight years. It’s never easy to burn 50 pounds of fat and move down a weight class and still be competitive. But to do this at Toney’s age is a sure fire way of getting beaten and beaten badly.

Toney will likely try and conserve precious energy by staying on the ropes where he can lean fight at a slow pace. He won’t be able to throw a lot of shots, so he’ll likely try and make the most of the punches he does throw by loading up on them.

However, Lebedev will be throwing much harder and with greater frequency. Lebedev knows what he has in front of him in the 43-year-old Toney and knows what he has to do to beat him. All Lebedev needs to do is stay busy he’s got the fight in the bag.



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