More than 20 years later, Danny Green can still remember the moment James Toney asked for his gun.
Seven savage rounds had just come to an end inside Freddie Roach’s famous Wild Card Boxing Club in Los Angeles.
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Green, then fighting at super-middleweight, had spent the afternoon trading bombs with a fully fledged heavyweight – and one of the most dangerous men in the entire sport.
And Toney was furious.
“He goes, ‘Kevin, go get my gun. Go get my gun,’” Green recalled to Fox Sports Australia.
“Kevin was his mate and he was holding his bag.
“And then he goes, ‘I’ll shoot all you motherf***ers.’”
Green’s response?
“I went over and spat in his spit bucket,” he laughed.
“I was so geed-up. That was my way of saying, ‘Don’t bother me with that s**t.’”
It sounds like the type of yarn that could only grow out of boxing folklore.
Except much of this one was captured on camera.
The grainy footage of Green and Toney going to war at Wild Card became one of the most famous pieces of sparring vision of its era, spreading across boxing websites and message boards before YouTube existed.
Doug Fischer, who was editor of MaxBoxing at the time, remembers the footage causing an immediate stir.
“I do recall it being posted on the old MaxBoxing website and making waves,” Fischer told Fox Sports Australia.
Green remembers it becoming the inaugural instalment of MaxBoxing’s “Gym Wars” series.
“We were the first ones to go on Gym Wars,” Green said.
“It started after the session was put up.”
Yet the story behind that footage is every bit as wild as what happened inside the ring.
And to understand the madness of what unfolded that afternoon, it is worth remembering exactly who Green was in the ring with.
Toney was no ordinary sparring partner.
“Lights Out” was already one of boxing’s greats, a three-division world champion who would eventually be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
Possessing one of the sport’s all-time great chins and absolutely freakish defensive instincts, Toney had shared the ring with everyone from Roy Jones Jr and Mike McCallum to Evander Holyfield during a career spanning almost three decades.
Less than a year earlier, he had stopped heavyweight legend Holyfield in nine rounds.
Eight months after sparring Green, Toney would beat John Ruiz for the WBA heavyweight crown, only to be stripped of the title after testing positive for steroids.
Green wasn’t a mug, either.
The West Aussie was already the WBC interim super-middleweight champion, having stopped Eric Lucas the previous December.
He was in LA with trainer Jeff Fenech in 2004 when the opportunity of a lifetime suddenly presented itself.
“We were there to spar these Russian guys and Jeff got a call from Freddie Roach who said, ‘James Toney’s down the gym. Have you got anyone for sparring?’
“Then he asked me, ‘Do you want to spar James Toney?’
“I’m a fighter, man. And I’m an old-school guy, so of course I’ll f***ing fight him.
“Let’s do it.”
There was only one problem.
Toney didn’t show.
Green returned the following day.
Still no Toney.
Exactly what happened around that point has since become part of the mythology surrounding the session.
Appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience in 2020, Radio Rahim, who filmed the sparring session, recalled Green arriving at Toney’s gym and “talking s***” and calling out the heavyweight.
Green strongly disputes that version.
“Would I have gone into James Toney’s gym, overseas in his backyard, and disrespected him by calling him out?” Green said.
“Anyone who knows me knows I would never do that. Those Radio Rahim comments are obscenely false.
“I would never ever puff my chest up like that.”
What Green does admit is making one joke after the American twice failed to appear.
“I said to Freddie, because he’s James ‘Lights Out’ Toney, ‘Tell James if he doesn’t come down tomorrow, I’ll turn his lights out.’
“I said it as a joke. We laughed. I’d never say that seriously.”
Green believes Roach may have passed the message on with a little less context.
“I reckon Freddie told him that to gee him up, to motivate him, to get him off the couch and come down.”
Whatever Toney was told, he finally arrived.
And Green immediately realised something wasn’t quite right.
“He comes into the gym yelling!” Green said.
“I’m just warming up, this skinny bloke with boardies on, and he walked past me and just growled.
“I thought, ‘Is he serious? Is this a joke?’
“Then he goes over to the toilet and goes, ‘Get the f*** out of my can! Who’s in my f***ing can?’”
Then they started fighting.
Green estimates he weighed around 80kg with his clothes on and believes Toney was approaching 120kg.
Whatever the exact difference, Green was giving away enormous size to a man whose savage gym wars were already the stuff of boxing legend.
“If he could have knocked me out, he would have knocked me out, mate,” Green said.
“He hit me with an uppercut in round one and a left hook that were big shots.
“I pressed him the whole time. I was hitting him with Saturday-nighters.
“And they barely affected him. He was just yelling at me the whole time.
“It broke my heart,” Green added, laughing.
For seven rounds they went at it before Roach finally intervened.
“Freddie called it off after round seven,” Green said.
“You can hear him: ‘That’s it. That’s enough.’
“I was good to go 10 rounds, 20 rounds. I’m in with James Toney. This is the best thing ever.”
Then came the demand for the gun.
Even that, however, wasn’t quite the end.
As Green prepared to leave, he approached Toney to thank him for the rounds.
“He starts yelling at me,” Green said.
“I didn’t take it personally. I love the guy. That’s just how it is.
“I said, ‘James, you’re not welcome Down Under, mate. If you come down we’ll get the crocodiles to eat you. You’re not welcome.’
“And then I ran out of the gym.”
They eventually spoke by phone years later and, according to Green, Toney “couldn’t have been cooler”.
For all the mythology that has grown around those seven rounds, there is little bravado from Green when he looks back on them today.
He readily acknowledges that in a real fight, against a man of Toney’s size and extraordinary ability, there would have been only one winner.
“People say, ‘James Toney would have knocked you out in a fight.’ Of course he would,” Green said.
“It’s f***ing James Toney. I would never put myself on a level with him.
“I’m just this f***ing little, greasy, skinny middleweight from Australia, having a go.
“But I’m proud of the fact that I actually went in.
“I went hammer and tongs.”
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And despite the punches, the screaming, the gun threat and one hurried exit from Wild Card, Green wouldn’t change it for the world.
“He was one of my favourite fighters,” Green said.
“Still is one of my favourite fighters.
“And to get the chance to spar him was one of the best experiences of my life.”