Right from the off, Toney was a marmite character. A relentless trash talker and an intimidating figure to boot, his brash personality split opinion just as much as his boxing did. A troubled and difficult youth, he responded well to boxing's rigours as a teenager, but his amateur career was unremarkable, consisting of only 24 bouts and no titles.
But in 1989, Toney met Jackie Kallen. One of the very few top-flight female managers in boxing history, the glamorous Kallen saw star potential in the youngster from Ann Arbour, Michigan, right from the off. "He's probably one of the more complicated people I've ever met," she admitted a few years later. "He's very moody, but once you get to know him, you can't help but love him." The single-minded Kallen quietly went about building the Toney brand, and lifting the Michigan State Middleweight title was a decent start. It earned him a shot at the unbeaten, hard-hitting contender Merqui Sosa. Toney later described Sosa as the hardest hitter he'd ever fought, pound for pound, but won a decision.
That brought about a fight against the IBF world Middleweight champion Michael Nunn in May 1991. The bookies didn't like Toney's chances - he was installed as a 20/1 underdog in Vegas. However, after an uncertain start in which he found himself beaten to the punch and stuck on the outside, Toney began dragging the undefeated Nunn in to his kind of fight, and got his reward in the eleventh round - a left hook devastated Nunn, and though he rose to beat the count, a series of right hands when the fight resumed saw a new champion crowned.
Despite Ring awarding him their 'Fighter of the Year' title, Toney was less impressive as champion, needing an outrageously unjust split decision to scrape past the unheralded Dave Tiberi, and luckily being allowed to keep his title despite weighing in a quarter of a pound over the Middleweight limit for a defence against Franciso Del'Aquilla (Toney won inside four rounds). At just 23 years of age, already Toney was losing the battle of the bulge, a problem which would plague him throughout his boxing life.
He eventually stepped up to Super-Middleweight, putting on a mesmeric display in taking the IBF belt from Iran Barkley and looking at the top of his game as he made three successful defences before that shock loss to Jones. Once more, problems with making weight were cited; Toney was reportedly 206 lb just six weeks before the fight, and rehydrated a whole 21 lb over night after the weigh in. Sluggish and dead on his feet, Toney was no match for Jones' quicksilver attacks, taking a count in round three and losing his unbeaten record to a man who he'd shown little but contempt for in the past.
It wasn't the defeat - it was the manner of it. Toney, the great intimidator and unbeaten, now rendered to little more than a punching bag for the man who'd go on to grab many of the positive headlines which might otherwise have been Toney's in the coming years.