While many believe Cain Velasquez vs. Junior dos Santos or Brock Lesnar vs. Alistair Overeem is the biggest heavyweight fight of the next four months, somewhere there is a small contingent who were secretly considering James Toney vs. Ken Shamrock as the end-all, be-all in heavyweight battles.
(C'mon...you're out there somewhere, aren't you?)
Unfortunately for those people, the battle between the boxing champion and former UFC Superfight Champion has been delayed until next year and may be off completely.
To show the level of interest in this fight, the following "press release" was posted on his site...over a week ago:
After training extremely hard in preparation, Toney was informed not long ago that his unified rules bout with MMA hall-of-famer Ken Shamrock would be delayed until early part of 2012. Already in terrific shape and weighing near the cruiserweight limit of 200 lbs. Toney has decided to instead re-focus on his boxing career and target the #1 cruiserweight contender Denis Ledbedev, who recently knocked out one of his old-time rivals, Roy Jones Jr."
There has been no comment from Shamrock or additional comment from Toney regarding when the bout could take place or even what caused it to be delayed. The two were set to fight on September 23rd in El Paso, TX, and a wild press conference followed where the two had to be separated.
As recently as July, Toney was kicked out of his gym for bringing in "the wrong traffic" and that he made another member feel "uncomfortable with a verbal and/or physical threat." He has fought once in MMA, making his debut at UFC 118 in a first-round submission loss to Randy Couture.
Shamrock (28-15-2) last fought in November 2010, dropping a 1st round TKO (injury) to Mike Bourke in South Africa.