By Dan Ambrose: The hard hitting cruiserweight contender Denis Lebedev (22-1, 17 KO’s) is going to show why it’s not a good idea for old fighters to hang around a little too long in the fight game when he takes on 43-year-old James Toney (73-6-3, 44 KO’s) next month in cruiserweight action in Lebedev’s home country of Russia at the Khodynka Ice Palace, Moscow, Russia.

A great deal of Toney’s loving boxing fans think he can find some of the old magic he used eight years ago to defeat the then highly hyped Russian Vassiliy Jirov by a 12 round unanimous decision in 2003. However, that fight was nearly 3000 yesterdays ago and Toney isn’t the same fighter now as he was then.

Toney is now old, slow and doesn’t throw nearly as many punches as he did then. He sees the target, but the punches don’t flow with the constant rhythm that they did back then. You take an old fighter like Toney and put him in with a slugger like Lebedev, and bad things happen.

For Toney to win, Lebedev will have to become nearly paralyzed to the point where he’s just standing in one spot throwing a handful of punches in every round. Under those conditions, Toney can win this fight but not with Lebedev still looking as good as he did in his win over Roy Jones Jr. recently. I must say that it looked like Lebedev carried Jones for nine rounds in that fight until then 10th, when Lebedev suddenly came to live and took Jones out with a flurry of power shots. Hopefully Lebedev doesn’t fight the same way against Toney next month.

Lebedev really should still be undefeated, as his only loss was to Marco Huck last December in a 12 round split decision loss in Huck’s adopted country of Germany. I had Lebedev winning that fight by a lopsided 9 rounds to 3 score, and I could see it being even more lopsided than that.