UFC 118 Preview: Why MMA Fans Should Appreciate James Toney and Herschel Walker

An experienced boxer can punch fast and hard from a ton of different stances, and will have thrown hundreds of thousands of punches from different stances too, not just ideal ones. He’s just going to be more effective in some than others. I think Toney is either going to try and stick and move and rely on his footwork for takedown defense (probably a bad idea), or he’s going to risk getting taken down in order to try and land a very hard punch to the face within the first minute of the fight. Since Couture is going to have a very high percentage of succeeding with each takedown attempt anyway (I’d say at least 50% on each attempt even if Couture has to be a bit cautious of Toney’s hands, and it’s not going to get any better for Toney if the fight goes more than two minutes), Toney might as well risk everything on trying to land a punch that will rock Couture early on. I’m guessing this is what he’s going to do.

So, I give Toney maybe a 10% chance of pulling off a Mercer-Sylvia. And yes I know Couture is going to be way smarter about this than Sylvia was.

We got to hear this drivel on and on about how great Roy Nelson was and how Junior Dos Santos had no real skill and could be taken down and submitted, etc ect. Then he was nowhere to be found after the fight. Now he is here to give us his insight into the Couture vs Toney sideshow with an obvious bias towards Couture.

I love how he drops in the incomparable little token phrases like “nobody saw UFC 1” as if there were some stellar comparison to be made. The staff here at BE have been trying to come up with every possible boxing vs MMA angle for over 2 weeks and they have failed. I don’t know why Mr Mayes now thinks he is going to do it.

The facts(remember those?, they are the little parts that do not invlove bias, reality skewing and things taken out of proper perspective and context) are that there have been no boxers that have entered MMA that could ever compare to the skill level of James Toney, even far beyond his ideal weight and past his prime at 42. There is only one other that would even come close, and that would be a 50 year Ray Mercer. But even the boxing experts will grant that a prime Ray Mercer would have easily lost to a prime James Toney, let alone at this point in their careers.

Does this translate into a sure win for him?. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But against a 47 year old Couture, who has been stopped by glancing blows more than a few times in the last few years, he has a far greater chance than regular readers of an all MMA site will ever give him credit for.

Win lose or draw, he must be respected for his courage and what he has accomplished, regardless of if you like his attitude or not. There are only a handful of fighters in history that can lay claim to a 72-6 boxing record and a certain entry into the boxing hall of fame.

And by a large margin. One of his many great nights.