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The Young Pup vs. The Old Dog
After fighting each other in a controversial contest at the Staples Center in Los Angeles this past September, Samuel Peter and James Toney are set to do it again, this time at the American Airlines Arena in Miami on January 6, 2007.
This is a difficult fight to predict because I thought Toney won the first bout. I can’t go by anything other than what I saw the first time around; Toney standing in the middle of the ring, taking the fight to Peter, hitting and not getting hit. I’m hoping that Toney is even more motivated and he comes into the rematch in even better condition.
He doesn’t have the power to KO Peter, so it would behoove him to chip away at that body. If Peter loses steam, maybe then Toney can do something significant to the head.
But then again, Peter was better than I’d seen him previously. He counterpunched effectively and managed to stagger Toney twice. The rematch is going to be about who makes the better adjustment, who has the most fire in the belly, who can peak over the other guy’s shoulder and see destiny.
At 38 years of age, Toney has a reputation to be lazy in the ring, but that is no feather in Peter’s cap. His power has tended to be enough, knocking out all but five of the fighters he’s been successful against. At his current pace, Peter may be able to knock out 44 opponents in 56 fights, shortly into his 30’s. That’s one more KO than Toney currently has (who hopefully won’t be around in five years for his own sake) with 69 wins, but Peter doesn’t have the accuracy to KO Toney.
If one fighter comes in less motivated than he was in the first fight then he’s giving his opponent a belated Christmas present.
Peter is going to have to rough Toney up; push him around the ring and make him uncomfortable. He’s going to have to be able to match one punch for every two of Toney’s. Peter will have to add a lot more combos and show more defense. Toney was able to hit him virtually at will and that’s obviously bad.
If Toney possessed the power of a Klitschko, no one would know who Sam Peter is anymore; he would have been erased. Peter has to prepare big time because the only thing Toney was missing was a hard punch. The seasoned veteran was faster, more productive and better defensively.
The only reason Peter got the nod from the judges was because he was stronger. Team Peter should expect Toney to be stronger and better defensively, so they need to be more agile and better defensively themselves.
Toney is going to have to camp out on Puke Hill so he can throw enough logs on the fire to keep the heat going for all 12 rounds. He’ll have to do what he did the first time, but three fold. “Lights Out” showed some of us that he won the first fight, now he has to convince everyone. He missed too many times with the second punch of his 1-2 combos, although everyone could appreciate his aggression. If Toney can manage to stop Peter from coming forward or even drive him back a time or two, he can bring it home.
You have the young pup versus the old dog and they’ve both tasted each other’s blood. The pup has a lot to learn but is aware of that, while the old dog has more natural talent than the pup could ever hope for. Can the young pup learn enough from the first scrap to win more decisively or has the old dog gotten his growl back after licking his wounds?
I pick the old dog because despite Peter showing that he’d learned a few new tricks and managing to put the gloves on his opponent a few times, a couple of questions have been answered. For example, Toney may have wondered if the vaunted power of Peter was too much for him. As it turns out, it wasn’t. Peter was confident that he would just walk over Toney, but now he knows that he can’t. That might make Peter tentative when he should press even more than he did in the first fight.
One adjustment that Toney will definitely make is throwing the left hook less often as Peter countered it too well. Does Peter hit the gym and hulk up on the off chance the one or two clean punches he lands do more than stumble Toney the second time? That would be a mistake because Toney will be waiting for Peter’s power. The old dog may not learn new tricks but he certainly learns from his mistakes.
