Jai Opetaia being stripped of his IBF title while making a debut for Dana White\u2019s Zuffa Boxing<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cMy training camp hasn\u2019t really changed,\u201d Benavidez explained. \u201cBut this is the most stress-free I\u2019ve ever been,\u201d said Benavidez. \u201cTraining is always gonna be hard, but I got to the weight a week ago already. I\u2019ve never been in a position where I don\u2019t have to worry about the weight, and that\u2019s gonna make me more dangerous. When you cut weight you\u2019re running like seven miles every single day. Right now I don\u2019t have to run at all. I don\u2019t have to deplete myself, and I can use that extra energy in the fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toney, who amassed an incredible record of 77-10-3 (47 KOs), first made the leap to cruiserweight while the weight class was in its relative infancy against Mike McCallum in 1997. Toney scored a unanimous-decision for the lesser-known WBU (1995-2004 version) following a second loss to Montell Griffin at light heavyweight. He would jump back down to lose to Drake Thadzi by majority-decision less than three months later. However, Toney would quickly become a fixture at 200 pounds. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Toney would stay put at cruiserweight for the next eleven fights, with one bout creeping over at 217 pounds, until he defeated Vassiliy Jirov for the IBF world cruiserweight championship. Toney would hang at heavyweight for the next nine years. However, the now veteran was tempted into a WBA interim title fight with Denis Lebedev in Moscow, Russia. The American slickster would lose a lopsided unanimous decision before moving back to heavyweight to see out his career.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ahead of his cruiserweight debut, David Benavidez has compared himself to former three-weight world champion James Toney.\u00a0 Benavidez…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,13038,11697,82],"class_list":["post-634250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-david-benavidez","tag-gilberto-ramirez","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634250","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=634250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}