James Toney’s 15 minutes in MMA really amounted to 15 seconds: that was approximately how long it took Randy Couture to shoot a low single leg and end any discussion of Toney’s value as a mixed martial artist.

If you expected that would convince Toney of the same, you don’t know this guy: Toney told FightHype.com that he was looking for a fight with Quinton Jackson based on comments Jackson made to “Inside MMA” about standing up with the boxer.

“I will go on record and say he is not dumb enough to stand and trade with me,” Toney said. “Machida almost knocked him out, so what do you think I would do to him?”

The contradiction of Toney’s MMA career is that the most interesting fight left for him -- against a striker who would look to use his kickboxing ability and keep the fight standing -- is too pricey for any promotion but the UFC, which may be out of the Toney business: he received a disclosed $500,000 salary for the Couture fight. If K-1 stumbles as badly as some expect in the coming year -- victims of the flatlining Japanese fight scene -- here’s hoping they’ve got enough in the till to give Toney what he’s asking for.

Ken Shamrock during a recent episode of “The Savage Dog Show” on how the UFC promoted James Toney:

“I believe they handled him wrong. I think that James Toney has earned the right to come into an organization, especially since he’s coming from boxing into MMA and taking a huge chance, that they should have matched him up with somebody that he at least would have had an opportunity to have success (against). They matched him up with a straight grappler. How in the world are you going to be able to have any success when you’re first coming into a new organization and a new industry that you have never, ever done before? Take away your (boxing) shoes and go in there and say, ‘OK, world champion of boxing, good luck.’”

Shamrock suggested an alternative path for Toney, proposing a three-fight deal in which Toney would have met another striker in his UFC debut. (It should be noted that Toney has said he declined a fight with Kimbo Slice to take on Randy Couture, who easily submitted him in the first round.) Shamrock believes setting Toney up for success initially would have created much greater interest leading up to a bout against a more grappling-oriented fighter.

“And then guess what?” Shamrock said. “Your buy rates go from being 900,000 to 1.5 or 2 million like boxing’s getting.”

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.