Toney: You aint going to see me lay down like Bernard Hopkins

By Boxing News - 10/18/2011 - Comments

By Jason Kim: 43-year-old James Toney (73-6-3, 44 KO’s) will be departing for Moscow, Russia on Wednesday to get their early to get ready for his November 4th fight against cruiserweight contender Denis Lebedev (22-1, 17 KO’s) in their fight at the Khodynka Ice Palace, Moscow, Russia.

Toney sees himself winning this fight and isn’t going to go out and fall down like 46-year-old Bernard Hopkins did in his controversial 2nd round TKO loss last weekend.

Toney said “You aint going to see no lay down like Bernard Hopkins did. I will be there to kick his [Lebedev] a** right in front of his people. He likes to wait until fighters from my generation get old and that’s made him feel like he can fight.”

Toney didn’t like seeing the 32-year-old Lebedev stopping Roy Jones Jr. in the 10th round last May, and feels that Lebedev cherry-picked an old past his best Jones. It’s too bad that Lebedev wasn’t around during the prime of Jones’ career because it would have been interesting to see how Lebedev would have done against the then blazing fast and almost unhittable Jones.

As much as Toney likes to talk and sound confident, he’s really up against it in this fight against Lebedev, who many boxing fans see as the best fighter in the division. Lebedev is ranked number #2 in the cruiserweight division behind Marcos Huck by fightnews.com. Lebedev already fought Huck last year and lost a controversial 12 round split decision to Huck.

Many boxing fans saw Lebedev easily winning that fight, as did I. As such, Toney is really facing the best fighter in the cruiserweight division in Lebedev at a time when Toney hasn’t picked up a quality win in many, many years. It certainly doesn’t look good for Toney in this fight. He’s fighting in a foreign country and against the best guy in the division fighting in front of his home crowd.



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