Toney’s victory opens doors for bigger fight

Dean Juipe

Monday, Oct. 6, 2003 | 9:30 a.m.

Everything that James Toney gained, Evander Holyfield lost.

One is now marketable, one is not.

One is now poised for an even bigger fight, one is not.

And one may yet have his best moneymaking days ahead of him, while one clearly does not.

It was Toney who picked up the accolades and the career advancements in the aftermath of his Saturday win against Evander Holyfield at Mandalay Bay. He's the one looking ahead, while Holyfield wrestles with the very idea of ever fighting again.

Their heavyweight fight, scheduled for 12 rounds, was stopped in the ninth round when Holyfield's corner came to his rescue and threw in the towel with their man on the canvas and bleeding badly from his mouth.

"As ecstatic as I am with James' performance, there's a double-edged sword here," promoter Dan Goossen said Sunday. "I prefer not to see people I've idolized get hurt, and it was sad seeing Evander taking the punishment that James was giving out."

Holyfield admitted he was "beat up" by Toney, yet even with his 41st birthday approaching (in two weeks) he refuses to concede that he's finished with a sport that has brought him in excess of $125 million in his 20-year pro career.

"I'm not going to retire," he steadfastly said to inquiries about his future.

Toney was also ahead on the judges' cards by 4, 4 and 2 points at the time of the stoppage. He took command in the fourth round and finished the job with a body punch that had Holyfield grimacing and looking face down at the mat in the ninth.

It was only the second time Holyfield had been stopped in a fight -- Riddick Bowe iced him in their 1995 bout -- but it also lowered his record to a mere 2-4-2 since 1999.

"It's Evander's decision if he wants to fight again or not, but I will say that James told me after the fight that Evander may have beaten any other heavyweight in four or five rounds," Goossen said. The inference: Toney is no ordinary fighter.

"What we saw was the emergence of a new heavyweight on the scene," Goossen said. "In my eyes, James is now one of the two or three best heavyweights in the world.

"This fight also establishes him as a future pay-per-view star and we can only build on that."

While Toney had said he would return to the cruiserweight division and defend his International Boxing Federation title at 190-pounds in his next fight, those plans appear to have gone out the window. Goossen said there is "no way" Toney will defend the IBF title against his mandatory challenger, the nondescript O'Neil Bell, and that Toney -- who weighed 217 for Holyfield -- is more apt to pursue similarly built heavyweights.

"We're looking to keep it on a major, major level," Goossen said of Toney's future. "There are four or five great opportunities out there for James, and O'Neill Bell is not one of them."

Toney also talked of facing IBF heavyweight champion Chris Byrd and that fight has a chance of happening either in Las Vegas or Detroit, an area where both men once lived.

"Detroit's a possibility but there's nothing like Las Vegas casinos," Goossen said, indicating his preference.

Toney, 35, upped his record to 67-4-2 with 43 knockouts in a fight that drew almost 8,000 fans and a $2.5 million live gate.

Holyfield, finished or not, dips to 38-7-2.

"I kept watching him, trying to figure out how I was going to hit him," Holyfield said of the fight. "But by the time I figured it out, he had already hit me."