Them Bones: The Night James Toney Won His First World Title

[thenonpareil]

James Toney enters the ring as a longshot against Michael Nunn on May 10, 1991.

Nobody expected James Toney, a 20-1 underdog with a low profile but a perpetual scowl, to win. Certainly not Michael Nunn, the glib IBF middleweight champion with a 36-0 record and five successful title defenses under his belt. A flashy stylist in the ring, Nunn was also a master trash-talker. With a street-regal air, Nunn belittled Toney every chance he got. When told that Toney was quoted as saying he preferred violence over sex, Nunn stepped in with a low blow. “If you’ve ever seen James Toney,” Nunn said, “you can see why he feels that way. The man is ugly. Who is going to go out with an ugly man like that?” In 1991, however, his grandiosity seemed out of place. Once thought to be the heir apparent to Sugar Ray Leonard, whose on-again, off-again Seniors Tour appearances had finally come to a violent end a few months earlier at the hands of Terry Norris, Nunn had seen his star flicker, then dim, like a fluorescent tube on the fritz, since he won the IBF middleweight title in 1987.

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