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 The Best Damn Heavyweight, Period?
15 Rounds by Steve Kim (August 16, 2004)
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It seemed as though the last couple of times James Toney appeared as an in-studio guest on Fox Sports Net's 'Best Damn Sports Show, Period' that Toney was going to turn the lights out on the studio hosts - Chris Rose, Tom Arnold, Michael Irvin and John Salley.
But it will be a foregone conclusion that when he makes his next appearance on the show on September 23rd, that he'll let the punches fly. No, he won't be going after any of the show's hosts, but he will be making his return to the ring against Rydell Booker as part of the 'BDSSP' telecast which will take place live from the Pechanga Resort and Casino.
The four-year-old show has done a multitude of live remotes centering around such events as the Super Bowl and the All-Star Game, but this is by far the most unusual.
"It's the most unique," agreed Robert Lifton, the executive producer of the show, "in the aspect that we're fitting a fight in the show and we're going live. We're normally live to tape, so we're going live at 5:30 pacific, 8:30 east coast time. So that's a huge challenge for us but we're going to fit it within the framework of the show."
But unlike other sports, where you're guaranteed at least nine innings or four quarters of play, boxing can end at any time.
"The hardest thing for us is you don't know how long a fight goes; it can be one round, it can be 12," Lifton acknowledges. "So as a producer you've got to say to yourself, 'OK, I've got 90 minutes of show, I've got to plan for the worst.' Because you never know what's going to happen. So in that case, it's the most challenging."
Dan Goossen, whose company, Goossen Tutor, is promoting this event, is excited about it's prospects.
"There is such a synergy here; I mean you got 'The Best Damn Sports Show' where they've got all these fans and viewers and sports people that live on it day
in and day out. And to be able to throw James in there, it's having an event inside an event. It just brings a whole new excitement to it," says Goossen, who says that as an added treat to boxing fans, the whole week of shows will be centered on 'the sweet science'
"From the standpoint of this, we're going to have four days of boxing, boxing, boxing on 'The Best Damn Sports Show'. You talk about cross-promotion, on Monday we're going to have the Rydell Booker-James Toney press conference live before the fight. Tuesday, it'll be all boxing again with boxing stars filtered through it, whether it's Tyson, Lewis, Corrales, whoever it may be. Wednesday, we're going to do the weigh-in live on the show.
"And then that show is going to be all boxing related," continued Goossen, "It's going to give us a jolt in the arm in the boxing industry because we're going to reach a whole different audience, four days in a row leading up till this fight. It's going to be tremendous and then you've got the 'Best Damn Sports Show' on Thursday, where they're going to be doing the event live out of Pechanga casino and in the backdrop you've got the fight ready to go on. It's going to be a lot of fun and a lot of excitement and a lot of energy."
It was all fun and games last Wednesday at the press conference to announce Toney's return to the ring. At the Le Dome Restaurant on the famed Sunset Blvd.,
Toney joked around with Arnold and Salley, who dropped by to help promote the event. Arnold even got on Toney for the size of his head, which brought a chuckle from Toney. It was in stark contrast to previous meetings, when Toney wasn't exactly in good humor. On those appearances, the tension on the set was palpable. The best damn riot almost took place.
"He got upset, he didn't like it that we were joking," said Salley, in recalling those shows. "He thought we were making jokes on him when we talked about what we did with Roy Jones and how he got on television. But at that time he was in a funk and he didn't quite like it."
Salley reveals that some past history between the two may have contributed to the ill will.
"He and I got into something over some guy, over some 'he said, she said' stuff but we got past that," the former Detroit Piston explains. "They didn't want me on set because they thought it was really going to get out of hand because they realized that some press conferences are not fake when you see that. But they didn't realize that I've known the kid since he was 18-years old. I was past all that crazy stuff."
Toney can shift gears on his moods like a Porsche. At times he can be a happy, jovial guy, only to turn into a moody, angry, petulant figure the next minute. And one thing will always set him off, the mere mention of Roy Jones.
"Michael Irvin made a mistake and mentioned Roy Jones' name," said publicist Norman Horton, who accompanied Toney to one of the tapings that he appeared on. "And anybody inside boxing knows that you don't mention Roy Jones' name to James Toney. Even to this day, you mention Roy Jones' name to James, and
James gives you nothing but attitude.
"They don't know what James might do; James is unpredictable. Listen, James will start a fight right there on that stage if somebody goes too far and pushes the wrong button. He will hit somebody," Horton explained, and as if on cue, "Hey, there he goes, here we go...."
At that time, Toney, who just minutes earlier was easily chatting with a group of reporters, had become agitated over the line of questioning from one reporter about the validity of Booker as an opponent for the number one position in the WBC. Toney would proceed to get up from his seat, grab the microphone and loudly chastise all reporters and dared them to fight each other in the parking lot - with four surrounding cars serving as the ring - before they could ask him questions. It was a classic 'Lights Out' explosion.
Earlier, as he addressed reporters, he was his usual bombastic, non-politically correct self, and no one was safe from his verbal barbs, especially his fellow heavyweights.
"They gah-buge, trash, throw them in the trash can," he answered when asked about the recent heavyweight title fights that have taken place with him sidelined. "They fight like gah-buge, they're terrible."
His thoughts on the bout between Chris Byrd and Andrew Golota? "Sitting through that fight - which I thought Golota won - was treacherous."
On John Ruiz-Fres Oquendo: "Ahh, man, I turned that fight off. And luckily when I turned it back on, my man got knocked out."
His feelings on Vitali Klitschko-Corrie Sanders: "I was at that fight; I couldn't believe this guy, he had a chance to fight for the heavyweight title and he comes in there out of shape. He gave him the title."
Lamon Brewster-Wladimir Klitschko: "Brewster was getting hammered. Then Klitschko got tired and blamed it on drugs."
And Toney doesn't believe, like many others, that Vitali Klitschko is the man to beat in the heavyweight division.
"No, no, he's not. I look at it like I'm the guy to beat in the heavyweight division, because y'know what? If you're the guy to beat in the heavyweight division, you will take on any challenger at anytime. I'm going to take on any challenge at any time. I always have, always will. And I don't turn down nothing but my collar," boasted Toney, who with a win over Booker, will be the top challenger for Klitschko's WBC crown.
While he was rather harsh on his heavyweight colleagues, he saved his most venomous statements when asked about Antonio Tarver's second round knockout of Jones.
"A bitch, got knocked out by a bitch," said Toney, who then went on to chastise all of Jones' supporters and advised them all to do something so graphic it can't possibly be mentioned in this column. After all, we are a family show. But he did give a demonstration to what he thought of Jones chin. "This is Roy Jones' jaw," he said, grabbing a few utensils off the table and getting up from his seat. He would then proceed to drop them to the floor, producing loud clickity-clack sounds." That's what happened to Roy Jones, that's his jaw," he barked to a group of amused reporters. "There it goes right there."
In many ways it's because of comments like these that Toney is the perfect personality to center a broadcast of this nature. Whether you love him or loathe him,
you listen to him. And for Toney, who injured himself just weeks before his bout with Jameel McCline, it's the perfect way to reintroduce himself to the general
public. While it would have been great to make his return to either HBO or Showtime and their lucrative licensing fees, it's still a limited scope. Fox Sports Net reaches over 81 million homes. For boxing, it's the closet thing to being on regular network TV.
"Network television's a little overblown because all you have to do is reflect to the NBA Playoffs," explains Goossen, whose company has had a close relationship with FSN throughout the years. "Up until the championship series, virtually every game, other than one or two, was on cable. Ok, this is our network TV. I mean look at the Olympics, you've got 10 different networks that are under the NBC umbrella and all of them other than NBC are cable networks.
"So the cable network is our network today and don't make any mistake about it, ESPN, Fox Sports Net, they are the powers that be in the sports entity and that's
why if you ever turn them on you see all the major league sports on their networks."
And for ' BDSSP', this fits right into the direction they would like to go with their program.
"We're trying to event-tize our show," says Lifton. "And what better way than to take a heavyweight fight and put it within this context. But not only that, make it free. There's so many fights nowadays on pay-per-view, you can't find too many other fights. So the genesis was to find an event that our guys would be passionate about and they're huge boxing fans and they'll talk about it all day long."
Which is true; if you've watched the show on a regular basis the last few years, 'BDSSP' has always had a steady stream of boxing guests, from Mike Tyson, Antonio Tarver, Sugar Ray Leonard and Floyd Mayweather.
"That's going to be fun, I can't wait," says Salley of this upcoming broadcast. "This is the only sport I really love - outside of basketball - I know the boxers, I know all the different realms, I can watch it all day long. I watch classics, I watch stuff that's original that's happening right now. When somebody's fighting that you know and you like, it's better for you."
Being brought in to give commentary on the fight will be Barry Tompkins and Max Kellerman.
"The basic set-up is we're going to introduce the fight, do a little pre-fight set-up, throw to the guys who will announce the fight, we'll do a little in-round commentary, then right afterwards on our set, we'll have the fighters there," says Lifton.
And if this initial endeavor into boxing is successful, you could be seeing more boxing on 'BDSSP'.
"Absolutely," says Lifton. "I think this will be a barometer for the future. If this is a success, there's no reason why this can't be a launching pad for more events within the construct of our show."
BEST DAMN TRANSITION
The 'BDDSP' seem to have been at it's apex with the fivesome of Rose, Salley, Arnold, Irvin and John Kruk around 2002 and 2003. Soon Irvin and Kruk left for
other positions and can now be found on ESPN. A revolving door of replacements were trotted out, but it's been difficult to capture the chemistry this show once had.
Salley admits that during this transition, the show did struggle a bit.
"It did until we found our niche," he says. " Tom, Chris and myself found a Bryan Cox, he fits in perfectly. He has the body of John Kruk and sometimes the demeanor of Michael Irvin. So that's a critical thing and we also got Jason Sehorn and we bring guys who come back around. We work our magic. The show
handles itself."
It would be a shame if this show ever went away; it's been a great friend to the game of boxing.
LUCKY FOR LIGHTS OUT
Toney, in the midst of one of his rants, asked a question that gets emailed a lot to me, "Steve Kim!!! How the hell you gonna have a Korean guy talk about
boxing!?!?"
All I can say is this - in the past James has always referred to me as Chinese - as if we all look at the same, oh, uhh, wait - but one day I had had enough and
I told him at the Wild Card with my fist clenched right to the point of his chin, that if he ever called me Chinese again, he would regret it. Hey, I don't play around.
Well, all I can say is that I'm glad he took my threat seriously and I didn't have to cause a ruckus - because the Le Dome is a fancy place with great steaks - but
I'm just glad he showed me the proper respect.
Hey, every once in awhile you just gotta hold your ground.
TAYLOR MADE LAWSUIT
I hear that Lou DiBella is threatening to sue his prized prospect Jermain Taylor, because Taylor has the temerity to not sign a HBO deal that would also extend
his contract with DiBella.
Geez, how dare Taylor try and go into the open market and get the best deal for himself? What does he think this is, America, or something?
Didn't DiBella come into this game as the promoter who was going to advocate fighters' rights and stuff like that?
More to come on this story.
FINAL FLURRIES
Not a good day to be a JC on Friday night. Both JC Candelo and Juan Carlos Gomez were upset by huge underdogs.... Eddie Sanchez is officially 'The Spoiler of the Year' for 2004..... As for Juan Carlos Gomez, did he buy those blue trunks he was wearing at Foot Action or something?..... Gee, I guess Sugar Ray Leonard isn't feeling so bad about losing him now, I guess..... Hey, isn't it great having football back? Yeah, I know it's the pre-season and all, but there's no boxing until September and it still beats the Olympics.....
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