Adamek-Toney in one word: Why?

Adamek is scheduled to fight Sept. 8 at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., although the bulk of the revenue from the fight will come from a pay-per-view broadcast in Adamek's native Poland, which is why Toney was sought -- simply because he has a name.

That Main Events, or any promoter, would still try to shovel Toney into the ring is shameful. I have nothing against Toney at all. In fact, it's because I've been such a fan of his over the years that seeing this kind of fight even contemplated makes me sick.

You don't have to be a doctor to see that the man is clearly damaged. Perhaps Toney will pass his New Jersey medicals, which are supposed to be conducted this week. But it doesn't take a medical professional to diagnose that Toney shouldn't be fighting anymore, no matter how much financial distress he's in due to his tax issues.

Somebody needs to make him stop, and that obviously isn't going to be Main Events. Toney is 43, in his 24th year as a pro, has fought 86 times, sparred thousands of rounds, gained and lost inordinate amounts of weight and been in some very violent fights. He is a cracked shell of what he once was.

If you're not convinced, watch a video of Denis Lebedev destroying him for 12 lopsided rounds in November. Still not convinced? Go to YouTube and listen to any recent interview.

I've done that, and for those of you who have watched the great documentary series "Legendary Nights" on HBO, you'll know what I mean. Back to back, I watched one interview of Toney before he fought Roy Jones Jr. in 1994 and then another from a few months ago. It reminded me of the scene in the Julio Cesar Chavez Sr.-Meldrick Taylor "Legendary Nights" episode in which HBO juxtaposed a smooth-talking, bright-eyed Taylor speaking clearly before the Chavez fight in 1990 with another interview from 2002, in which a viewer couldn't make out what Taylor was saying because he was brain-damaged and his speech was so badly slurred.

This was the same thing I felt when I listened to Toney, whose speech is now badly impaired. He, too, slurs his words to the point of being almost incomprehensible at times. Yet he will be allowed to fight if he passes certain medical tests, which might have science on their side -- but not common sense.

Toney -- a two-time steroid cheat, by the way -- chose not to retire after the beatdown from Peter, but he surely should have after the fight with Lebedev. For that interim cruiserweight title bout, Toney went from 257 pounds to 199 to fight Lebedev in Moscow and took the beating of a lifetime.

Of all the tough fights Toney has had, the Lebedev bout was particularly gruesome, as Lebedev dominated every moment of the fight while Toney looked like a dead man. He absorbed huge punishment while swinging and missing and wobbling all over the ring. Toney made Jones and Evander Holyfield, two other badly shot fighters who carry on, look fresh.

I watched it live on the internet as Toney took one of the worst beatings I've seen. Here is, in part, what I wrote in my Scorecard feature after the fight:

"It was criminal that this fight was allowed to continue beyond maybe the seventh or eighth round. At that point, it simply became an exercise in public brutality rather than a sporting event."