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In a bit of good news for anyone with taste, James Toney has pulled out of a proposed September 8 fight with Tomasz Adamek, according to Chris Mannix. The fight was reported just a week ago as a done deal, and was going to be an afternoon pay-per-view fight in Newark.
No official reason has been given, but the terrible matchup was heavily criticized by basically everyone who talked about it. ESPN.com's Dan Rafael had a particularly scathing take on the fight, and in return Toney said in a YouTube interview that he would beat up Rafael.
Sadly for James, Rafael was dead-on, as has been everyone else who dumped on the idea of the fight. Toney, now 43, is fighting because he owes a lot of money in back taxes, and the simple reality is that the man just isn't any good in the ring anymore. He can beat bad fighters, but that's it. When he fought Denis Lebedev last year, I felt almost embarrassed for him. He was that bad in the ring.
Adamek still apparently plans to fight on September 8, but he was previously penciled in for a September 21 bout in NBC Sports, and that could come back into play instead. The popular, 35-year-old Pole is hoping to fight in December, as well, before taking another crack at a world title in 2013.