Toney Troubles Lister in Training

The more that comes out of James Toney’s training camp, the more I feel like I’m being victimized by some kind of elaborate, subversive PR stunt -- one in which Toney is morphing into an actual threat in a mixed-style fighting ring.

There were the reports that Muhammed Lawal was tapped by Toney in a guillotine; now there’s some noise from Dean Lister that Toney “almost submitted” him in training.

“We were going over a few things and I passed his guard and I got a mount and he turned and like grabbed my foot,” Lister told FightHype.com. “I’m lucky he didn’t break it…I had to roll out of it.” Lister, incidentally, is not just a body but an Abu Dhabi Absolute champion as well as a multi-time jiu-jitsu tournament winner. One imagines he is not prone to getting caught by foot locks while in mount.

So what’s Toney’s deal? He’s obviously preparing for some kind of ground scramble, though grabbing, like, a foot doesn’t sound like the apex of grappling prowess. I remain confident Randy Couture will tie him in knots, though Toney winning by KO or by heel hook would probably cause seizures in certain members of the audience. When has a fighter with such a small chance of winning driven this much interest? He must be a Dan Hardy fan.