James Toney Interested in Fighting Randy Couture, Will Likely Debut on UFC 115 or 116

Randy Couture wants to fight Toney Badly

James Toney, after finding out that Randy Couture wants to fight him:

Damn…oh really? That’s what I’m talking about. That’s right up my alley. Oh, hell yeah! …Let me tell you something, I came to the UFC to do one thing and that’s to fight the best out there. If it’s Couture, so be it. If it’s somebody else, so be it. Let’s get it on and popping. When Dana White said MMA fighters are better than boxers, come on now, you know better than that.

All day! The fights start standing and that’s my comfort zone all day, you heard me. If they think they going to rush me to the ground and think it’s going to be easy and I don’t know what I’m doing, come on man. I’m a very strong man. I know what I have to do and if they shoot in on me, they getting launched into outer space like a satellite.

Juanito Ibarra, he’s good man; that motherf*cker know his shit. He got Rampage to the top and we gonna do the same thing. I’m going to destroy these dudes. If Randy Couture put on his Twitter page that he wants to see me, tell him it ain’t shit. Let’s make it happen. If not in June, he can be the one after that.

They talking about June or July, so I’ll be ready. That still gives me plenty of time, you know what I’m saying?

UFC 115 is on June and is rumored to be headlined by the third bout between TUF 11 coaches, Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, while UFC 116 which is on July, and is rumored to be the return of the UFC’s biggest PPV draw, Brock Lesnar. If Toney’s fight indeed pushes through on either date, it looks like he’s going to be fighting along side the UFC’s biggest stars.

Toney is already excellent at playing the heel and hyping up this boxing vs MMA shtick, but even in his own sport he hasn’t really been a proven draw. In fact, he has been having trouble getting boxing fights recently, and it probably played a part in making him decide to sign with the UFC. There will surely be boxing fans and a few casuals who will purchase their first UFC PPV for the simple fact that a boxing champ, albeit a faded one, is competing, but it is yet to be seen how huge and significant that cross-over appeal really is.

That being said, being backed up by the UFC promotional machine, being paired up against someone like Couture, and being on the same card with a Liddell or a Lesnar caliber draw, will probably guarantee great results. How much of those can be attributed to Toney though — we’ll have to wait and see, but if you ask him about it, he says people are going to be asking for more:

Ah man, you know it’s going to be through the roof. People want to see this. To all my haters out there, I love you. Keep hating because you gonna make my buy rate go up… I train every day, 2 to 3 times a day. I’m doing my thing, so you know what? Whatever they bring, I got something for ‘em.

Dana is a business man and he’s done a great job with the UFC and he brought it back to the top of the game. Now he has the top dog in boxing in his organization and it’s going to flourish even more now. Like I said, I’m already a heavyweight boxing champion and now I’m coming to the UFC. I’m bringing everything: excitement, charisma and pizzazz. They gonna love it and they gonna need more, you know what I’m saying?