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It's 'Lights Out', but the Future's Bright for Toney and Goossen
By Steve Kim (May 1st, 2003)
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This is becoming nauseating. The newest lovey-dovey couple that has been making the rounds, all the public appearances with effusive praise of one another. Always looking so damn happy with one another. Telling everyone that after many other failed relationships in the past, that this is the one that will last forever. J-Lo and Ben Affleck?
Uh, no. Actually, I was talking about the newly crowned IBF cruiserweight champion James Toney and his promoter Dan Goossen. Who knows how long Lopez and Affleck will last, but it's clear that Toney and Goossen are in their honeymoon stage.
"I gotta tell ya, there's not a better fighter in the world," Goossen gushed to MaxBoxing from his Van Nuys offices a few days after Toney's pulsating victory over the game Jirov. "He doesn't have a weakness. If he's in top-top shape there is no other fighter that has his greatness in every attribute of his abilities. He's the best defensive fighter I've ever seen without running. He's the best jabber -- did you see those jabs? I mean, it was like he had lead in his hands when he was hitting Jirov. They reminded me of heavy-handed George Foreman punches and jabs. Power-wise, combination-wise, pin-point-wise, accuracy-wise, I mean, he's deadly."
And Toney was able to do what fighters like David Tua and frauds like Hector Camacho Jr. weren't able to do for him as the president of America Presents -- get him over the top in must-win fights.
"I've been asked many times what the secret to this business is and I've always said the same answer -- you gotta have a fighter that can win," Goossen said about finally ditching the 'bridesmaid' label from the past
few years. "And that's what got us off of it. I told James that and I told him that nine, ten months ago when we got together. He's what I needed and I was what he needed and we both had the faith and confidence in each other to get there.
"But James showed what it takes to be great and he said it after the fight 'I'll fight anybody, anywhere, at anytime'. And if you look at his record, that's what he's done."
Toney has this view of their relationship.
"Dan Goossen's like the owner of the Yankees and I'm their star, Derek Jeter, y'know what I'm sayin'?" Toney, who won his third major world title this past weekend, told MaxBoxing. "That's how I feel right now. He had a bunch of good fighters but I'm the top-notch, I'm the best of them all."
After a few moments, Toney, a huge football fan, had a different sport analogy.
"Y'know what? Dan Goossen is the Al Davis of boxing and I'm the Jack Tatum of boxing," he said, referring to the Raiders enforcer of yesteryear.
Hey, just win baby and it's ironic that Toney would compare his owner to Davis, who is known for taking chances on castoffs and old veterans that other NFL teams had discarded and forgotten about. After a magnificent run in the early '90s, Toney's professional and personal life had spiraled downhill to a point where Toney had ballooned up to 270 pounds and had taken a hiatus from the sport in 1998 and '99.
By 2002, with his bank account running on empty but his batteries refreshed, Toney was eager to get back into the ring. Toney hooked up with Goossen last summer.
"I think the biggest thing was that even through his dark days, his dark side, so to speak, his Darth Vader years, is that you still saw ability in a big body," Goossen explained of the chance he took on Toney. "So whether he was 206 pounds, 226, or 186, it didn't matter, you still saw the talent there. And it was talent that was in a body of still a young man who just turned 34 and one that hadn't taken punishment with all the A-list names on his record.
"So I knew it was just that for James Toney to turn it around that was him saying to himself and committing himself to putting time into the gym and
outside the ropes where the fights are won and lost no matter who you are."
And Goossen makes no bones about it, this was a huge victory for his promotional company that he started last year with the financial support of construction mogul Ron Tutor.
"It's what any major promoter needs to stay a major promoter or back to being a major promoter," he said. "You need a fighter that knows how to get his hand raised, you need a fighter that's exciting to watch, you need a fighter that is exciting to speak to, you need a fighter that has the charisma to make the fans love you or hate you and James Toney epitomizes all of the above. I mean, he's got it all.
"I'm not saying this as a promoter but as a fan now, I sat home and watched this fight yesterday (Sunday morning) and I was cheering in that 12th round because I never heard ringside announcers ever going 'ohh' and 'ahh' throughout the 12-round commentary. It was more like they were getting hit with those punches and expressing the terror of the punches with their
reactions so it was that type of fight. And that's why he was one of the biggest stars in the '90s, he gave the fans what they came to see. And that was somebody who gave it everything he had and he had a lot to give."
In downing Jirov, Toney probably solidified his Hall-of-Fame credentials. It was as much a career-defining performance as his upset win over Michael Nunn in 1991, where he captured his first world title. But Toney isn't completely happy with his performance.
"I give myself a C+," Toney said of his outing, "because after looking at the tape, I know I could have done a lot of things better."
Wow, that's a tough grading scale, isn't it?
"I'm an NFL coach, I'm Mike Martz, y'know what I'm sayin'?" said Toney, a St. Louis Rams fan. "I'm the Rams coach, so I have to go back and evaluate my film and see my mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes which I will correct, which if I would have done in the fight on Saturday, I would've ended the fight early."
Uhh, but weren't the Rams one of the biggest flops last year, missing the playoffs completely?
"Oh, no doubt, but I'm a great offensive coach, though," he said.
With a much better defense, too.
While Jirov lost his IBF title to Toney, he did earn his respect.
"Jirov will beat any other cruiserweight in the world, I guarantee," said an impressed Toney. "Wayne Braithwaite, Jean-Marc Mormeck, Johnny Nelson -- he'll kill 'em all. He's a good fighter. I tip my hat off to him because he didn't have to fight me like he did. He could've ran for 12 rounds, which I did expect him to do but Jirov is a helluva fighter. I'm tellin' you right now, anyone else that gets in there with him, they're gonna have trouble."
And Toney admits that he did feel some of Jirov's body punches.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm gonna be serious, he hit me with a couple of body shots, but y'know what? I'm a man. I admit when somebody gets a good shot in. He got a couple of good shots in, and when he did that, I fired back."
So now he's back on the scene. One of boxing's true characters and best practitioners is ready to wreak havoc from anywhere from heavyweight on down and he'll do it no holds barred and no words spared fashion. All this after not doing much the past seven years. Does he feel like he wasted away all that time?
"No," he answered quickly. "You know why? Because God put me on this plan. He did that for a reason to test my mentality. If this didn't happen the way it did, me and Dan Goossen wouldn't have been together or Ron Tutor."
So does Toney have a new found sense of respect that has been absent the past few years?
"I've always felt I'm 'pound-for-pound' and I ain't never lost that feeling," he insists. "I never lost that confidence that I'm the best fighter in the world. Right now, it feels so good because I displayed my trade last Saturday in front of everybody around the world. And I bet you if you check the ratings on HBO, it's probably the highest rated show in the past two years."
And his motivation was simple:
"I got sick of you so-called boxing writers, who have never been in the
ring in your lives, call fighters 'great' when they really wasn't. I'm old-school, man. Don't you know that?"
Gotcha, James.
But as Toney and Goossen map out their future plans which could include names like Chris Byrd, Roy Jones, Bernard Hopkins or a rematch with Jirov, the question is, can Toney stay in relatively good shape during his down time? In the past, Toney would struggle at the scales because of his penchant for blowing up in weight in between fights.
"Y'know, James has got some discipline now," his trainer Freddie Roach told MaxBoxing. "So I don't think it's going to be a problem with his weight. I don't think he's going to gain a lot of weight. That's why I think Jirov pulled out of the first fight, to postpone the fight, then James could get heavy again and have trouble making weight, but it didn't happen. James has stabilized, so I keep him as busy as possible because when James is busy, it's good for him."
And life with Toney isn't always easy. He can be moody and volatile, but Roach says that Toney is in the best state of mind that he's ever seen him.
"Without a doubt," said Roach, who trains Toney out of Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood, California. "He was very motivated for the fight and he trained for the fight, he ran for the fight -- the first time in a long time. So this is the best I've seen James in a long time."
Goossen says that he plans to keep Toney as active as possible. Back in his heyday as a middleweight and super-middleweight it wasn't unusual to see Toney take a non-title fight on ESPN to keep himself sharp and busy in between his bigger fights.
"Because of James burning desire to stay in that ring, we're going to keep him busy," said Goossen. "There were a lot of things coming his way before he won the world title."
"If Dan bring 'em, I sling 'em," boasted an ever-confident Toney. "I'll fight anybody, anytime, anywhere. I'm in a great position right now. I'm happy, I got a great promoter that's behind me, I got a great cast around me: my wife, my family, my friends, my trainer, Freddie Roach, who's the best in
the world, my assistant John Arthur, my cousin.
"Hey, I'm happy and when I'm happy like I am now, the sky's the limit. Y'all gonna see something now. I'm serious."
JUDGMENTAL
With all this whining over the official scoring of Toney-Jirov, I would've have thought it was Glen Feldman who bruised up and bloodied Jirov, and Melvina Lathan who had him sitting on his stool for the first time before round 12 and that it was Steve Weisfeld who sent Jirov to the canvas in the final round.
It seems that a few folks are a bit non-plussed over the margins of victory for Toney. Feldman and Lathan each had it scored 117-109 and Weisfeld scored the bout 116-110 (which is incidentally the way I scored it).
Folks, quit crying. First of all, if you lost a wager, well, y'know what? This isn't football or hoops, there's no point spreads in boxing. Secondly, if you
judged the fight like a professional bout on clean, effective and sharp punching, then Toney was clearly the winner. Jirov was busier, but he was not better.
And lastly, the right guy won, bottom line, end of story.
Judging by some of our content that we've had on our website led by head whiner Johnnie Whitehead, you'd think that everyone and their mothers were outraged.
No, just a very vocal minority that needs 'Boxing for Dummies'.
"I gave Jirov four rounds, so I thought the judging was a little off-whack," said Xavier James of HBO Sports. "But sitting there in the arena you really got the sense that James' punches were the crisper, cleaner and more effective punches and I don't know if that translated on television as much. So if their scores were predicated on that, I could understand a little bit. I think there scores were a little out of whack but the bottom line is Toney won the fight, it doesn't matter what the scores were."
But with the 12th round knockdown and a point deduction for Jirov, James' score doesn't differ too much from those of the judges.
Max Kellerman of ESPN2, who was ringside at the Foxwoods Casino, told me on Tuesday that he scored the bout 113-113. To which I replied "Wow, you were as blind as Harold Lederman, then."
On Wednesday morning I got this message on my cell from Mea Culpa Max:
"Steve, watched the fight re-air on HBO and you're right, it wasn't that close. I had it 115-111 for Toney. Unless you're in the first three rows or watching on TV, you're not going to have a great scorecard."
I don't know, the HBO trio of Jim Lampley, Emanuel Steward and Lederman were as close as you can get and they didn't seem to have a clue what they were looking at.
Lampley is one of the game's premiere broadcasters -- trust me, chances are that for his work in boxing, he'll end up in Canastota -- but for this fight, he and Steward had an especially bad night of portraying what was happening directly above them.
It was almost comical to see them go on and on about the aggression and work rate of Jirov, only to completely ignore or dismiss the surgery being done by Toney on the inside. Steward would note early on that Toney was setting a pace he couldn't handle, and talking of his 'age factor' by the fourth round, meanwhile, Toney is counter-punching Jirov with an array of lead rights, left hooks and uppercuts.
Things got almost farcical when Toney would slip twice on that ever-dangerous new Budweiser logo and Lampley would state that "now his legs begin to tire" and later when it happened again that he was "nearly
knocked down" even though referee Steve Smoger made it clear that the painted logo had caused Toney to slip -- something Lederman would note later on.
Then, in the 11th round, with about a minute to go, he would say "the round has been mostly Toney" as Toney continued his steady pace but with seconds to go in the round with Jirov throwing a fusillade of punches (most of them missing or deflected by Toney), he would talk about how Jirov was showing great courage after being buzzed in round ten and that "he's come back to dominate the 11th round." Huh? Didn't Lampley himself say that he felt as though the first two-thirds of the 11th were won by Toney? Yet somehow Jirov 'dominated' that frame?
Then after the scorecards were read Lampley stated that observers around ringside were stunned by the margin of scoring for Toney, pointing out Lou Duva and Vernon Forrest specifically as those outraged. But it has to be noted that Duva is the father-in-law of Jirov's trainer, Tommy Brooks, and Forrest shares the same promoter as Jirov (Al Haymon). I wouldn't exactly call them unbiased observers by any means.
Folks, Toney was never considered a heavy duty puncher even as a middleweight. He didn't just suddenly hit Jirov with one big punch in the 12th that caused the knockdown. He steadily chipped away at the tough
exterior of Jirov with accurate and precise punching and were him down. Many of Jirov's punches were slipped, parried, or deflected. This was a 12-round effort that sent Jirov down and the results showed in the end.
As for the conspiracy theorists who feel that the judges were all on the take for having similar scorecards. Hate to break it to you but most commissions actually grade out their officials on how consistent they are with the other judges. Maybe, juuust maybe, they all saw the same thing correctly. Also, I guess in this politically correct society, people feel the need to somehow give a consolation prize to the fighter who didn't win the fight by somehow giving them scores that are close -- as if that really mattered. It doesn't. A win is a win and a loss is a loss.
Jirov doesn't need any consolation prize, he fought gallantly and bravely. Having scorecards that were closer doesn't take any of the pain away from what he went through nor does the margin of the actual scorecards take anything away from his performance.
Jirov is clearly one of the game's premiere 190 pounders and when the time comes to make some big fights in that division he'll be right in the mix.
Outraged because the scores weren't closer? That's the stuff of losers.
12TH-ROUND ADVICE
So why did Roach tell his fighter before the 12th round "You got to put this guy on his ass"?
"The thing is, if there's a close round with me in the corner, I'm gonna to give it to Jirov -- just do to my job because I don't want any surprises," explained Roach. "So when I told James to put him on his ass in the last round, I think it sealed it for us. Without the knockdown, they might have said 'Oh, he got robbed' or something like this but with the knockdown
it sealed the win for James and there were no complaints."
Wanna bet?
STANDING TALL
I thought it was a terrible and revealing message that Jirov, who was standing in his corner throughout the fight, was sitting on his stool for the 12th round. It seemed to give a clear message to everyone that he was
feeling the toll of the punches he had taken.
It reminded me of the explanation given by Hall-of-Fame footballer Jim Brown, who said that the reason he got up so slowly after being tackled every single play he got the ball was that if he got up quickly when he wasn't hurt, if he ever got up slow, the opposition would know at that time that he was either fatigued, ailing or hurt -- or the combination of all three. If he got up slowly every time, he wouldn't give anything away.
My point is, if you're gonna stand in the corner in between rounds, do it for the whole fight.
For Questions or Comments
E-Mail Steve Kim at k9kim@maxboxing.com
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