Toney speaks on fight with Couture at UFC 118, more

James Toney held a live chat a MMAFighting.com on Wednesday afternoon, here are some of the highlights of the IBA and NABO heavyweight champion's chat.

On his UFC contract:

It will be 3-5 (fights). After I knock out Randy Couture I plan on coming back and fighting in October and then hopefully I'd fight Brock Lesnar in the new year.

Could an MMA fighter make the transition to boxing?

None of them could. MMA fighters don't like to get hit. They can't stand in the pocket and trade punches. MMA guys want to submit somebody or kick them like a little girl. I think Wanderlei Silva could maybe be a good boxer, and Anderson Silva would have a chance. Georges St. Pierre might too. But seriously: Can you name me one MMA fighter who can punch as well as me?

On Couture's striking:

He's pretty good for a girl. He's got the balls to fight me but there's no MMA fighter who has the balls to trade punches with me. If they do it's suicide. If Randy tries to grab me I'll hit him so hard his grandparents will feel it. I keep reminding everybody, the fight starts standing up. To shoot you have to get close and when you do, you're going to get hurt. I'm in the business of hurting people and that's what I'm planning on doing.

On who he wanted to fight in his first UFC fight:

The person I wanted to fight right off the bat was Brock Lesnar. He's a champion, I'm a champion and I wanted to do it. But they said I couldn't do that. Then they said, "How about Kimbo?" But I said, "That's too easy. That's like kicking a little kid's butt." But then Randy started saying he wanted to fight me, so I said, "OK, you're the first one getting it."

On next week's UFC 117 main event between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen:

Good fight. Silva is similar to me except that I'm a hell of a lot better fighter than Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen is a hell of a lot better wrestler than Randy Couture.

I urge everybody to read the entire chat, it's quite good. It's clear Toney is going to go all the way in building up this fight and the combination of that fight with a BJ Penn fight could drive the pay-per-view number well north of 900,000. The Countdown special for this should be pure gold.