{"id":294746,"date":"2025-07-27T02:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T02:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/294746\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T02:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T02:00:11","slug":"james-toney-says-one-fighter-in-history-is-even-greater-than-muhammad-ali-ali-wanted-to-be-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/294746\/","title":{"rendered":"James Toney Says One Fighter In History Is Even Greater Than Muhammad Ali: “Ali Wanted To Be Him”"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Toney<\/a> had little doubt when he was asked to name the greatest fighter in the history of the sport of boxing.<\/p>\n

In the eyes of millions, Muhammad Ali is the best to have ever laced up the gloves, proving his credentials throughout the course of his storied boxing career which saw him change the landscape of the sport on more than one occasion.<\/p>\n

He won the world heavyweight championship three times during his 21-year tenure, defeating the likes of Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Sonny Liston and \u2018Big\u2019 George Foreman along the way.<\/p>\n

His 1974 victory over Foreman, known as \u2018The Rumble In The Jungle\u2019, is often regarded as being one of boxing\u2019s most memorable events. Ali stopped Foreman in the eighth round of their showdown in Zaire to capture the heavyweight championship for the second time.<\/p>\n

Despite his considerable success and outstanding legacy<\/a>, retired four-division world champion Toney has revealed the one fighter that he believes tops the man they call \u2018The Greatest\u2019.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the WiseNuts podcast<\/a>, Toney didn\u2019t hesitate to name Sugar Ray Robinson as the best of all time in his opinion, as he claimed Ali was \u2018trash\u2019 as his career progressed.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAli ain\u2019t the greatest fighter of all time, when he was Cassius Clay he was great, Ali is trash. The greatest fighter of all time is Sugar Ray Robinson, that guy was beautiful, he fought beautiful. Ali wanted to be him, that was Ali\u2019s idol, Ali tried to fight like him but he couldn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Similar to Ali, Robinson is credited with being one of the greatest to ever grace the sport<\/a> and many share the same view as Toney that he is at the top of the pound-for-pound all time list.<\/p>\n

A six-time world champion, Robinson reigned held the welterweight title between 1945 and 1951 before making the move up to middleweight, where he would win the belt on five occasions all within a nine year period before his retirement in 1965. All in, he had 174 wins from 201 fights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Toney had little doubt when he was asked to name the greatest fighter in the history of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-294746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114922733233000002","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}