Sure Toney was already way shot but he still had some good boxing in him especially by mma standards and instead of giving us a great stand up fight and pitting him against say JDS or even Rampage he put him in with a wrestler to solely further his agenda that boxing is an inferior combat sport to mma. He robbed us of a good fight because there was a chance Toney would beat a stand up mma guy and then it would "make mma look bad" .
Yeah, because JDS and Rampage couldn't have taken him down and submitted him. First, Couture lobbied the hell out of Dana White to get the match with Toney. As one of the sport's 'elder' statesmen, he wanted to take the responsibility of whipping Toney's ass for MMA. Second, I'm pretty sure Dana would have preferred NOT to deal with the Toney situation at all. But Toney was persistant and actually pulled Couture's name out the air as one of the guys he'd like to 'whip'. Dana obliged, probably to teach Toney a lesson more than anything else. It's amazing how Dana White becomes the immediate scapegoat for anything that makes people unhappy about MMA. Personally I'd waste my anger on Toney making a minor fool of himself AND the amazing sport of boxing by not taking MMA seriously. If boxing looked bad because of the Toney-Couture fight, and I don't think it did, it's 100% the fault of James "Tap Out" Toney.
if white thinks he taught toney a lesson or embarrassed him then he is foolish. he paid the man 7 figures for a fight where toney took ZERO punishment. it should have embarrassed his roster of lackeys who wont make that much in their entire ufc careers
Wrong. It proved Frankie Edgar was better than BJ Penn. It proved that Kenny Florian can't handle wrestlers at 155. And it proved that Nate Diaz has better hands than former pro boxer Marcus Davis. And the Joe Lauzon top mount to arm bar against Gabe Ruediger was a cool sub. The event was fine. The boxer versus MMA bout was a joke. It again speaks to the UFC model and filling PPV events with more than one or two good bouts. And Dana proved a point to James Toney. Toney hounded him for months about getting a fight. Dana simply got Toney to leave him alone via a quick and embarrassing beatdown by Couture. And Toney's boxing background probably helped sell more than a few PPV buys for this card. It's the kind of circus event Dana White always bemoaned about Elixte XC and Affliction so it was more than a little hypocritical. But what was he going to do? Toney was persistent.
