I'll be your Judas, I'll be your Benedict Arnold. I'm rooting for James Toney

Call me Judas. Call me Benedict Arnold. Call me whatever you may, but I'm rooting for James Toney. Toney will step into the cage a rookie against a former five-time UFC Champion in Randy Couture. While most fans of MMA will be adamantly cheering against Toney (and the sport of boxing), I will have my symbolic pompoms in hand for the IBA Heavyweight boxing champion.

I like James Toney. I like what he brings to MMA. Our sport needs more James Toneys because he "gets it". He understands the business. And that's what the UFC is, a business. It's clear by the machinations of the UFC President Dana White and the advertising and promotion of this event that the "sport" of MMA is secondary to the money-making aspects. Toney understands that the public likes drama, they like a fighter who can talk that shit and then go into the cage and back it up. That's why Muhammad Ali was revered in boxing. This is the fight game. We don't have the sanitization of basketball or even football, each fighter goes into the cage with bad intentions. The public wants to see that out of their fighters before hand, the public doesn't want to see banality and the ordinary "I hope it's a good fight, I want to win" stuff you hear from 95% of the UFC's fighters. They want a reason to see a fight; James Toney has given the public a reason to see this fight. He's given me a reason to see this fight. If I could get rid of the Frankie Edgars of MMA and replace them with James Toneys, I would do so in an instant.

You also have to respect his balls. Pause. James Toney is coming in untested in MMA competition. He's only been cross-training for less than a year. He's not getting a warm-up fight. There is no Min Soo Kim (Lesnar) for him, no Joshua Franklin (Lashley), or a Greg Nagy (Herschel Walker). He's going into his MMA debut cold turkey against a 5-time UFC champion. And it's not like Couture was champion five or six years ago. Randy Couture just lost the title less than two years ago. People gave Lesnar props for coming into his second fight against a former champion in Frank Mir. Not only was that Lesnar's 2^nd fight, but Mir had been champion years before and was coming back from a near-fatal auto accident. What Toney is doing is akin to being the National Long Drive Champion in golf and then being asked to go one-on-one with Phil Mickelson. How do you not respect a man for putting it on the line like that?

MMA fans are rooting a bit too hard for Randy Couture. For weeks, I've had to read how much of the dregs of the IMMAC (Internet MMA Community) doesn't give Toney a chance at all. "Randy will take him down and sub him" or "Couture, R1, SUB" written over and over and over. I can understand picking a fight, but wholesale writing off of a man's qualifications is something I don't understand. They've also done it in quite the disrespectful manner. Like I just stated earlier, where is the respect for the man who coming in is not taking a "punk" fight? For a while I've been annoyed with most MMA fans with their calling fighters "cowards" while accusing them of "ducking" fights or many of the other things they do. So I'm rooting for Toney to take them down a peg. Even though I wrote earlier that this isn't really "MMA vs. Boxing", the perception of the fight is that it is. If "MMA" loses, they will never hear the end of it from "Boxing" and its fans. They went into the MMA arena and beat their best. A Toney win could serve as an Iron Sheik -like humbling. Probably not.

You've got to respect Toney's hustle. He's not a draw in boxing. Boxing isn't even a draw in boxing. There's not much money for Toney even as a champion. So he sees this thing called MMA making beaucoup dollars on PPV and he says to himself "Self, I gotta get in on that." So what does he do? He chases Dana White around for months, calling MMA "gay" and begging Dana to let him beat up on one of his "so-called fighters". He sees that most MMA fans are really marks (rubes) at heart. They buy into the hype that the UFC and some fighters (like Lesnar, Hardy, Sonnen, etc) talk up. Toney knows he can talk up a fight. He gets Dana to sign him to a contract that almost assuredly contains a) a signing bonus, b) a 6 figure salary and c) points on the PPV. So he will get paid. More importantly, he gets his name out in the public. Suddenly, he's relevant. He knows Dana can't resist promoting this fight over his own championship, now James Toney's next fight is more important than the UFC's own championship fight. Now his sponsorships go up, his upcoming fight contracts in boxing go up because James Toney is a household name. Get it how you live James Toney.

I bet on James Toney. This, frankly, is the most important reason I'm rooting for James. At first glance, you might look at that and say "Are you crazy? You bet on Toney?" To that I say, I didn't bet on Toney, I bet the odds. While most novice gamblers tend to bet on who they think will win most of the time, your more seasoned gamblers will tell you that you bet the odds. And the odds in this fight were too juicy. James Toney was +500. Even if you give Toney a puncher's chance, you'd think he would've gotten better odds than that. Considering Randy has been dropped and hurt by punches before, a skilled boxer (who punches much harder than Randy does) with 4 oz gloves will be able to hurt him if he gets his chin. Also take into consideration that Toney is used to hitting people that use the big gloves for defense, Randy doesn't have that luxury. So I think he has more than a puncher's chance and thus, I played the odds. Don't worry, this has been another good year for me betting and I have other bets to prop this one up.

*Bonus Reason*: This interview.

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