The Real James Toney: The UFC Brings a Homophobic Monster into their Midst

via www.boxnews.com.ua

The UFC took a major step backwards this week in the continuing battle between sport and spectacle.  Instead of looking to sign the best mixed martial artists in the world, boxing fan Dana White signed a past his prime, overweight, violent lunatic named James Toney to represent his sport and his company.

Chances are you don't know much about Toney.  The story didn't get buzz on ESPN or Deadspin, the arbiters of sports relevance. He's a big deal to boxing purists and is an admittedly talented boxer.  But at 41, his best days are long gone.  Not only does he come ill equipped for a fight that could end up on the mat, he also comes with plenty on baggage.

Toney has failed not one, but two drug tests in recent years. After the first failure in 2005 he blamed a Doctor.  After the second in 2007, he blamed tainted drinking water.  You can't make this stuff up.  Later, on ESPN's Outside the Lines, Toney revealed that brain injuries from years of getting punched in the head prevent his body from producing the appropriate amounts of testosterone.  For a company with a stringent anti-drug stance, this seems an odd choice of business partners.

It's not just the drugs that make Toney a risky play.  Its the violence that seems to follow him everywhere he goes.  He's a man who is a product of his environment.  He grew up selling crack and toting a gun in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Little has changed, including the people he surrounds himself with.  After a 1994 loss against Roy Jones, Toney grabbed one of more than 30 weapons and left the house threatening to kill his manager Jackie Kallen.  It's just the way he rolls.

Discipline was a constant problem for Toney.  He ate himself out of the middleweight, and then super middleweight classes.  Soon he couldn't even make light heavyweight. By 1996, just two years after fighting Jones at 168 pounds, Toney failed to make the 195 pound cruiserweight cutoff, hitting a whopping 210 pounds when he waddled onto the scale against Richard Mason.  The talented fighter was forced to go all the way up to heavyweight, a classic "what could have been."

Now, this walking controversy is Dana White's problem. This is a man who before signing his contract said  "I ain't gonna to allow any of them boys to lay on me like a lil' fag, you know what I'm saying?"

Dana White should be ashamed.  Remember just last year when he apologized to the gay community for his use of "faggot" as a term of derision?  It seems, public relations to the side, that apology meant little.  Toney, slurs, steroids, blubber, and all, is coming to the cage.