Lebedev defeats Toney by lopsided decision

By Boxing News - 11/04/2011 - Comments

Image: Lebedev defeats Toney by lopsided decisionBy Jim Dower: No.2 ranked WBO cruiserweight contender Denis Lebedev (23-1, 17 KO’s) made it look embarrassingly easy in defeating 43-yer-old shot-looking James Toney (73-7-3, 44 KO’s) by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision on Friday night to capture the interim World Boxing Association (WBA) cruiserweight title at the Khodynka Ice Palace in Moscow, Russia. The judges scored it 120-108, 120-108 and 120-107.

The scores fail to really show badly the faded Toney looked, however, as this fight should have been stopped early due to the amount of one-way punishment that Toney was absorbing at the hands of the hard hitting southpaw Lebedev. This fight had mismatch written all over it the moment it was signed, but it was much worse than I imagined it would be.

A slender looking Toney had no power and looked both old and badly weight drained from having dropped 50+ pounds to make the 200 pound cruiserweight limit on Thursday’s weigh-in. Without speed, power or the ability to move his feet, Toney was more of a punching bag than a competitor in this fight. Toney tried to get out of the way of the constantly forward moving Lebedev’s punches, but was hit quite often with some really devastating shots. Lebedev hurt Toney in the 8th and 9th rounds with scorching straight left hands and right hooks.

Toney, to his credit, showed good recuperative powers if nothing else. But none of Toney’s defensive tricks, such as the shoulder roll and bending at the waist, helped him avoid the searing shots from Lebedev. It looked like an old man facing a prime fighter and it was painful to watch. The last rounds were brutal with Toney taking punch after punch to the head and offering nothing back. Even the Russian audience, which was rooting for Lebedev, seemed to lose interest in the fight. It was no longer a sporting event and more like a slaughter.

After the bout ended, Toney, sounding out of touch with reality, said “I’ll see him [Lebedev] again, I promise.”
Toney may see Lebedev again on television, but that’s about the only way he’ll see him. Lebedev will never fight Toney again after this one-sided bout. Toney needs to think seriously about retiring from boxing because he just isn’t the same fighter he once was and taking beatings like the one he absorbed tonight could affect him long term. We don’t want to see Toney slurring his speech in his old age or suffering other kinds of neurological problems.

In other action on the card:

Alexander Bakhtin UD 10 Luis Melendez
Ismayl Sillakh TKO 4 Ali Ismailov
Vyacheslav Glazkov RTD 5 Daniil Peretyatko



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