By Jamal Dicky
Well the “UFC vs. Boxing” freak show every UFC fan has been waiting for is just around the corner on Saturday Aug. 28, and the outcome is more than obvious, James Toney is going to get his ass beat by Randy Couture.
I still don’t have a clue on why James Toney an accomplished boxer, way past his prime, wants to enter the world of mixed martial arts, when he has no grappling ability at all. Randy Couture is probably the sports most decorated fighter and even at 47-years old he can still put a whooping on men half his age by tying them up on the cage or taking them down and pounding them in the face with his fists, something he will do to Toney when they fight.
Boxing and MMA are completely different beasts and Toney is my dude but I won’t be betting on the underdog Toney to win because let’s face it, Homeboy is gonna get his bell rung, for the first time in his fighting career he will be stopped in a fight and UFC President Dana White will be smiling from ear to ear when it happens.
Dana White wants to crush all competition in his way. He has already taken out his biggest MMA rival in PRIDE and already has a monopoly on MMA in North America and Canada. His next step is to crush the sport of boxing because boxing and WWE (pro wrestling) are his main pay-per-view competitors, but unlike the WWE, there is little crossover appeal from boxing fans to MMA. Most of the boxing fans that I know order UFC fights for fun, sort of like a tough-man competition, it’s like a guilty pleasure.
If you read up on Dana White’s history he first wanted to be a boxing promoter but couldn’t get his foot in the door because nobody wanted to take a Boxercise guy serious so he came across the UFC and was able to get the Fertitta brothers to buy the company for a few million, promising them that this MMA thing will be the wave of the future and the rest is history.
No matter what you think of Dana White, you have to give the man credit for making the UFC into a billion dollar company. Unlike boxing, Dana can get big fights made. Boxing can’t even get Manny Pacquiao to sign a contract to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr., that’s how bad ego’s are in boxing, when a so called bad ass like Pacquiao is scared of giving blood. If Manny Pacquiao was in the UFC he would have to give blood to prove he was clean of steroids or else he would get fired. If Dana White was the promoter, the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao fight would have been done by now. That’s what I like about Dana White, he is a strict and firm boss, and takes no crap.
But you have to wonder how much has this success gone to his head. Many times when someone starts to become powerful, they start becoming megalomaniacs’ and want more control. Dana White walks around like a big shot and confidently cusses anywhere he wants because he can. He predicts that UFC will be the biggest sport in the world even bigger than the NFL in the United States and will completely wipe out boxing.
Maybe this is the reason why James Toney took Dana White up on his offer. Toney isn’t going to make a multi-million dollar payday in the UFC aka U Fight Cheap where they pay their fighters something like 10 grand to show and 10 grand to win. James Toney is actually fighting to prove a point, despite all his trash talk, Toney is a noble character, who is basically going into battle with no sword willing to defend his sports honor. Toney is a true fighter, win or lose the man has got the balls to back up his words. But the sad reality is James Toney will just be another over-the-hill boxer going to MMA and getting humiliated in the process.
*Please refrain from leaving any Racial, Profane or Derogatory comments*
Got an Opinion? Submit Your Articles and Press Releases to be posted on Nowboxing.com
JOIN the NOW BOXING FORUM to discuss this and other boxing news topics (membership is FREE)
