By Michael Collins: In a move that doesn’t surprise me one bit, heavyweight contender Tomasz Adamek (46-2, 28 KO’s) will be facing soon to be 44-year-old James Toney (74-7-3, 45 KO’s) on September 8th at the at the Prudential Center, in Newark, New Jersey.
For the casual fan who doesn’t have a clue how much Toney’s skills have deteriorated in the past few year, they’ll love this fight, and see it as top notch boxing at it’s best. However, for fans who realize how far gone Toney is at this late stage in his career, this fight is another disappointing bout for Adamek where he’s being matched against yet another older fighter.
I want to give Adamek a break here because he was whipped pretty badly by WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko last year in a 10th round stoppage loss for Adamek, but you’d like to see Adamek working his way back up the ladder against better opposition than this. Of course, this has been Adamek’s pattern of opposition since he moved up to the heavyweight division. To get a shot against Vitali, Adamek beat Andrew Golota, 42, Kevin McBride, 38, Michael Grant, 39, Vinny Maddalone, 38. Toney fits in with the past match-making for Adamek.
What’s troublesome is Adamek looked completely awful in his last fight, beating a one-armed Eddie Chambers by a controversial 12 round decision in New Jersey. Chambers hadn’t fought in 16 months when he was picked out for the fight, which I suppose is why he got the shot. If Adamek is going to get another title shot against one of the Klitschkos, you sure hope he doesn’t get it from wins over guys like Toney or controversial decisions over fighters like Chambers. That would be sad, because he’ll get destroyed again and it would be better if he at least proved that he deserved another shot.
Toney is coming off of a win over Bobby Gunn in his fight last April. Other than that, Toney was easily beaten by cruiserweight Denis Lebedev last November in a one-sided loss. Toney hasn’t beaten a credible contender in seven years since defeating Dominick Guinn in 2005.
While some boxing fans are in favor or mismatches like the Adamek-Toney fight, I think it’s bad for boxing, especially when it’s a main event like this one will be.