James Toney Calls Out Chris Arreola
By Brent Matteo Alderson

As Chris Arreola continues to solidify himself as a world heavyweight contender, his team has to match him in a way that will not only develop him from a marketing stand point, but also as a boxer, and former world champions are the perfect recipe for such an order.
Since the sport’s beginnings, up and coming fighters have used former champions to aide in their development as well as their quest for notoriety.
From Sugar Ray Robinson who fought his friend Henry Armstrong so Homicide Hank could earn a big pay day in the twilight of his career to Joe Louis who fought Primo Carnera, Max Baer, and Jack Sharkey, former champions have generally served their purpose and usually have enough left in the tank to impart some of their tricks on aspiring pugilists without providing too much resistance. And in some cases such as Schmeling-Louis I or Holmes-Mercer, the old war-horses pull a few new ones out of the hat and disrupt the natural order of things.
At this moment a fight between James Toney and Chris Arreola makes sense for both of them. James is 41 years old and hasn’t had a meaningful fight since he lost a lopsided decision to Samuel Peter in 2007 and looked horrible in decisioning Fres Oquendo last December in a fight he probably should have lost and needs this one last big win to catapult him-self into a major title fight. And Toney is still a very attractive opponent because he’s a first ballot hall of famer and an honest to goodness three division champion who Freddie Roach once described as “the most natural fighter that I’ve ever seen.” So Toney would provide Arreola with the notoriety and the experience he’ll need to move forward in the heavyweight division. Plus Toney has never been knocked out through out a career that spans three decades and eighty professional bouts so a knockout victory would really enhance Arreola’s reputation and cement his status as one of the division’s elite contenders.
Stylistically the fight would be a classic matchup between a power punching pressure fighter and an aged legend who has been one of the sport’s great counter-punchers. An Arreola victory isn’t necessarily a forgone conclusion as some people might think. Speaking under the umbrella of anonymity, one beat writer thinks that stylistically Toney would be a bad match up for Arreola and noted, “Toney is a counter-puncher and he would counter Chris all night. That’s a bad fight for Chris and that’s why they haven’t taken that fight.”
The fight shouldn’t be too hard to make because Toney has a good relationship with Dan Goosen who promotes Arreola. Plus Toney wants the fight. In a recent interview with FightFanNation.com, he called Arreola out and stated that Chris’s team has purposefully steered away from the match, “I tried to get that fight earlier last year, but they were saving him for Klitschko. Chris Arreola don’t want me and his people know he don’t want me. The bottom line is he doesn’t want to fight me!”
Arreola’s team seems receptive to the bout and upon hearing Toney’s statement, Henry Ramirez, Arreola’s trainer commented, “We never turned James Down. I know I didn’t or Chris didn’t. James is a great fighter, but he lost to Fres Oquendo. Still James is a great fighter, but now it seems like he does more talking than fighting.”A spring date on HBO sounds good to me!

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Brent Matteo Alderson, a graduate of UCLA, has been part of the staff at BoxingScene.com since 2004 and now works as the head writer for FighFanNation.com. His published work has appeared in publications such as Ring Magazine, KO, World Boxing, Boxing 2008, and Latin Boxing Magazine. Alderson has also been featured on the ESPN Classic television program “Who’s Number One?”