Boxing Preview: James Toney – Hasim Rahman

This Saturday James “Lights Out” Toney, 69-4-2 (43), challenges Hasim “Rock” Rahman, 41-5-1 (33) for the WBC Heavyweight Championship of the world at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. Given the current state of the heavyweight division since the departure of Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis, Toney – Rahman is the most exciting bout in the division and a true crossroads fight for both combatants. HBO will televise.

Rahman, in his second stint as a world champion, has all the ability and physical talent in the world to remain the WBC titlist. His status as an interim champion was recently lifted when former WBC title holder Vitali Klitschko retired and passed up a reported eight million dollar payday to pursue a career in politics, rather than defending against Rahman last November. Who knows which Rahman will show up on Saturday? Will it be the Rahman who knocked out Lennox Lewis and defeated the capable Monte Barrett, or the fighter who lost to a faded Evander Holyfield and John Ruiz?

Toney, a former middleweight and super middleweight champion in the 1990’s, always expressed a desire to fight and win the heavyweight title. After a self imposed exile from the sport of boxing during 1997-1999, Toney returned with a new promotional team, Goosen-Tutor, and not only beat the tough Vassiliy Jirov for the IBF Cruiserweight championship in 2004, but also defeated John Ruiz for the WBA Heavyweight belt on April 30 of last year. He was stripped of that title for testing positive for steroids, a finding that Toney adamantly denies attributing the positive results to medication he used to treat an injury.

The winner of this fight can look forward to lucrative pay per view fights with the other alphabet champions in the heavyweight division. The loser will likely be exiled into anonymity. Reports that Toney would officially weigh in at 250lbs were false but thirty seven year old did scale 237lbs for Saturday’s bout, the highest of his career.

Prior to the weigh in, Toney’s camp had publicly said all the right things regarding their man’s weight. Dan Goosen, the promoter of “Lights Out”, said he wasn’t concerned and Toney’s trainer Freddy Roach would rather have his fighter at a lighter weight, but has agreed to no longer focus on the issue as long as Toney continues winning his fights. Toney has stated that he was always a heavyweight forced to fight at middleweight and is now campaigning in his natural division.

Under the guidance of veteran trainer Thel Torrance, Rahman appears to be physically fit, officially weighing in at 238lbs, and very focused for Toney. The Baltimore native has something to prove and likely wants to show his shocking defeat of Lennox Lewis for the heavyweight championship back on April 22, 2001, was not a fluke.

His rematch loss to Lewis as well as losses to Holyfield and Ruiz were due to a lack of focus, problems with both trainers and promoters. Against any other fighter in the division, I would pick this determined version of Hasim Rahman to win, but not against James Toney. Its obvious that Toney is on another level than Rahman and his boxing resume verifies that. Rahman will likely come out fighting aggressive at the opening bell to take control of the fight early but will play right into Toney game of counterpunching. By the middle rounds, Rahman won’t know what to do against Toney, who will defeat the WBC Champion by a ninth round TKO.