So we are literally just a few hours from James Toney v Denis Lebedev (the show starts on Boxnation on Sky Channel 456, from 3PM which is currently being shown for FREE!) and when this fight was first mooted few really expected Toney to ever get near the 200lbs Cruiserweight limit. A number of forum users openly stated that for Toney to make the weight he'd have to lose a limb or get some liposuction. Toney's weight has always been an issue but some how he has sorted himself out...for at least this fight.
Aged 43 Toney has lost 38lbs since he faced Randy Couture back in his UFC debut (August 28th 2010) though more impressively Toney has come in at his lowest weight since 2003 when he faced Vassiliy Jirov in an IBF Cruiserweight fight. The Jirov fight was a classic with combined punch stats of over 1800 punches thrown with Toney landing 380 of his 811 punches (an amazing 47% connect rate). Since then however Toney's size has increased significantly, most obviously in his last fight when he came to the ring weighing 257lbs against Damon Reed back in February of this year.
Toney looked not only trim at the weigh in but looked healthy as well as slim. The loss of 58 lbs in 9 months seems to have been from a dedicated effort and the veteran of 84 fights seems to be taking his 85th incredibly seriously. Whilst I wouldn't declare Toney to be the fighter he once was, this is no longer looking like the 1 sided beat down it originally appeared. Amazingly it is just over 20 years since Toney last fought outside of his native USA and that was in Monaco against Francesco Dell'Aquila, a fight Toney won by 4th round TKO, he'll certainly be trying to make it 2-0 for his career outside of the US.
Lebedev meanwhile looked like his usual self, weighing in at a very average (for him) weight of 197.5 lbs. I'd expect the Russian to win though it now appears that this could be a more interesting fight than any of us expected.
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