{"id":423067,"date":"2026-01-21T06:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T06:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/423067\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T06:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T06:41:10","slug":"james-toney-makes-easy-choice-for-the-best-man-he-faced-the-biggest-fight-of-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/423067\/","title":{"rendered":"James Toney makes &#8216;easy choice&#8217; for the best man he faced: &#8220;The biggest fight of my life&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Three-division world champion James Toney has revealed what he believes to have been the \u2018biggest fight of his life\u2019 after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/boxing\/story\/_\/id\/32814418\/roy-jones-jr-james-toney-miguel-cotto-headline-class-2022-boxing-hall-fame\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">a 92-fight professional career that spanned across five weight divisions.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2018Lights Out\u2019 began his career as a middleweight and famously knocked out IBF champion Michael Nunn to first get his hands on world honours, before moving up to super-middleweight and stopping another IBF titleholder in Iran Barkley.<\/p>\n<p>At 168lbs, Toney suffered a first professional defeat to Roy Jones Jr, before trying his hand at light-heavyweight and then finally reclaiming world honours in the cruiserweight division, trumping Vassiliy Jirov for the IBF cruiserweight crown.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the Michigan-born machine achieved the ultimate goal and defeated John Ruiz for the WBA heavyweight world title, only for a failed drug test cost him that legacy-defining win.<\/p>\n<p>Reflecting on his career in an <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/hYz6_Seuqdo?si=UuxcbjZAxg90-1KP\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">interview with ESNEWS<\/a>, Toney named his 1991 split-draw with a middleweight Mike McCallum as the \u2018biggest fight of his life\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI fought the biggest fight of my life, [against] Mike \u2018The Body Snatcher\u2019 McCallum.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This admission comes years after Toney\u2019s previous comments regarding McCallum, whom he named as the best fighter he ever faced, when speaking to Ring Magazine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMike McCallum [is the best fighter I faced] \u2014 That\u2019s an easy choice, right off the top of my head it\u2019s the Body Snatcher. He was the best fighter I fought at middleweight, super middleweight and cruiserweight.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOut of all the fighters I fought, I respect him the most because he made me think about everything I tried to do. Before McCallum I was just runnin\u2019 in on everyone, but he made me slow down and think for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/features\/the-best-of-james-toney\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Toney fought McCallum on three occasions<\/a>, getting the better of him eight months after their initial draw at 160lbs before a overcoming him again up at cruiserweight in their trilogy bout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three-division world champion James Toney has revealed what he believes to have been the \u2018biggest fight of his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-423067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}