According to the HBO crew and many boxing pundits, Saturday’s match between Hasim Rahman and James Toney was supposed to bring clarity to the heavyweight division. That it did, it let us know that neither fighter is going to be champion. Over twelve very close, and largely under whelming rounds, Rock and Toney battled to a majority draw. While I thought Rahman won, I do think that this fight was very much like the Guinn vs. Ahunanya fight in that no one really cared who won when it was all said and done.
The fight started off with Rahman being more active, standing toe to toe with Toney. Rahman won the first round, but Toney would win some rounds along the way as he would land the sharper punches, but with little effect. Rahman would be more active throughout, but many of his punches were smothered by the grossly out of shape Toney. Rahman constantly ignored Thel Torrence advice to stand on the outside and use his jab to beat Toney, making the fight much closer than it had to be. The fight slowed down tremendously as it wore on, and both fighters were clearly gassed by the final bell, with Toney being the more spent fighter.
THOUGHTS OF MINE
In watching the fight we learned that Toney is very out of shape, and that the steroids in his system might have actually given him a boost in power and stamina against Ruiz. We also learned that he has nowhere near a heavyweight punch, and that his balance his largely shot. We also saw, once again, that Rahman comes up short when it counts, and that his power is not as great as people think. We also saw, again, that Rahman has a plethora of defensive holes, and could easily be beaten by a true heavy with skill and a punch.
This article might seem unnecessarily harsh towards Toney and Rahman, but frankly neither of them are the future of the division, and neither of them will be champ. There are many top heavies, Brewster, Byrd, Wladimir and Valuev to name a few that could beat both of the fighters we saw Saturday. This may sound blasphemous to some, but I could see some of the fighters on my Young Guns list beating the two fighters we saw duke it out for the WBC strap. It is time the networks wake up and start showing the future, if they want to get the heavyweight division out of its doldrums give us something new, because the 90’s just isn’t cutting it anymore.
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Commentary by Julian Kasdin (March 20, 2006) 
