{"id":728422,"date":"2026-06-10T23:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T23:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/728422\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T23:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T23:32:08","slug":"james-toney-ranks-only-one-man-above-himself-as-the-greatest-boxer-to-ever-live-im-second","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/728422\/","title":{"rendered":"James Toney ranks only one man above himself as the greatest boxer to ever live: “I’m second”"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Toney believes there is only one man in history that can be seen as even better than himself.<\/p>\n

Toney is a three-weight world champion<\/a>, having earned world honours at middleweight, super middleweight and cruiserweight during his near 30-year career.<\/p>\n

He also competed at heavyweight where he once overcame Evander Holyfield, before later winning the WBA heavyweight title with a win over John Ruiz, only for it to be later ruled a no contest after he failed a drugs test.<\/p>\n

When it comes to debating the greatest of all time, it is another heavyweight that is often mentioned by many boxing fans, with Muhammad Ali the legend in question.<\/p>\n

Toney disagrees with that assessment though, insisting to WiseNuts<\/a> that he places himself as the number two greatest ever, with Sugar Ray Robinson<\/a> taking the number one spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m an Ali fan myself but I\u2019m sorry, he is not the greatest fighter of all time. It\u2019s [Sugar] Ray Robinson and James Toney second, period. If you look at how we did, we did it the right way \u2026 I fought, Ray Robinson, we fought. Where is he from? My hometown, Detroit. We do it like nobody else can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robinson\u2019s achievements speak for themselves<\/a>, holding the world welterweight title for five years from 1946 to 1951, where he went on a remarkable 91-fight unbeaten streak.<\/p>\n

At one point he had picked up 129 wins in 132 fights, 85 of those by knockout. He is also a five-time world middleweight champion, and eventually hung up the gloves in 1965 having been victorious in 174 of his 201 fights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Toney believes there is only one man in history that can be seen as even better than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-728422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}