Not good.
We can look back to the fight that really ended thoughts of Toney as a top level HW his first bout with Sam Peter in 2006. On paper it doesn't look that bad; the fight was close (and genuinely close as opposed to stupid judging close) and Peter was still a rising HW, a man who had knocked down Wlad 3 times in his only loss and had torn through the HW ranks.
The problem being that stylistically Peter was the type of fight Toney should have eaten for breakfast. What Sam Peter had going for him was basically power... his technique was, by boxing standards, dreadful and he didn't have the workrate to make up for it. He won his bouts by bludgeoning his opposition... something he did very well but that should have played right into the hands of a technician like Toney.
It didn't.
As I said, the fight was close... very close... and you could put together a convincing argument that Toney should have got the nod. So a rematch was signed and off the pair went.
This is when it really started to go wrong.
Peter outboxed Toney. The fight was still close... have no doubts about that... but it was a clear win for Peter regardless. When a lumbering behemoth like Peter can outbox a fighter like James Toney you know the guy has problems. Peter went on to win a version of the world title off the back of these bouts before getting humiliated by first Vitali and then Chambers.
Toney had what was supposed to be a "keep busy" fight against the frankly terrible Danny Batchelder. Batchelder was a natural LHW... possibly even SMW... who as his career fizzled out went up in weight in search of paydays. To put it in context he was 1-3 in his 4 fights prior to Toney having lost to the solid but not great Minto, Godfrey and Dimitrenko and went on to go 0-4 in his later fights against the very faded Brewster, never was Whitaker and solid prospect Pulev, all of those loses being by all accounts convincing.
He took Toney to a close split decision.
Worse was to follow when both fighters failed post-fight drugs tests. Not only had Toney struggled to beat a blown up LHW who has never won a significant fight... he struggled to do it while befitting from PEDs.
The next fight on paper looks like a failure. It was a NC afterall... virtually the same result as when Toney first faced Rahman and the bought was declared a draw. That doesn't tell the whole story. While the cards were close I saw Toney pulling away and the accidental headbut that caused the NC robbed him of a victory.
But what would that victory have meant?
Hassim Rahman is seemingly a fixture in the HW boxing world. A there-or-there abouts contender since around 1998 he went on to become the man at HW with a shocking upset KO of Lennox Lewis. Unfortunately for him Lewis brutalised him in the rematch and Rahman has done nothing really of note since. Outside of a win over Monte Barrett... who isn't exactly great... in 2004 you have to go back to that Lewis win for his last significant victory. Rahman's modus operandi has been the same for years... beat a series of bums and journeymen to get back on the radar and then wait for someone to need an opponent. It worked post-Lewis to get him the WBC title when Vitali retired, it worked post-Maskaev to get him first the bout with Toney and then with Wlad and it seems to be working now. But let us remember... in his fight before facing Toney Rahman nearly lost to Zuri Lawrence of all people.
Then there was Fres Oquendo. Fres is a solid fighter... nothing more. He's made a career of being not quite good enough to win a title, even in the watered down age of the ABC belts. He's never really beaten anyone worth mentioning and lost every time he stepped up his opposition... a point perhaps proven best when you look at his last loss prior to Toney... a clear defeat to the ancient Evander Holyfield.
Toney struggled again and his loss was very controversial... many... perhaps even most... people thought he lost that fight.
Finally there's Matthew Greer.
Yes, Matthew Greer.
He's terrible. He was 0-2 in his last two against the two best opponents he'd ever faced and nothing changed against Toney. A sacrificial lamb to the slaughter.
As for how Toney actually looks... he's like an energiser bunny where the batteries are running low. The moves are still there... the cunning defence, the dropping low, the shoulder roll, the cute counters, the digging body work... but there's less of them and they're done at about half the speed they used to be. He's still got fairly fast hands for a HW... but nowhere near as fast as they were even when he first came up the weight classes... and his defence is still great... but more punches are starting to slip through. Work rate was never his strength... and now it's pretty non-existant.
Let us also be clear. James Toney hasn't had a truly impressive performance since his NC "win" over Ruiz in 2005 and then the back to back defeats of Jirov and Holyfield in 2003.
