There was talk of Razor Ruddock fighting Joe Mesi in his comeback during 2001 after he beat Harold Sconiers and before his victory over Egerton Marcus. Obviously Razor was a shell of his former self at this point but he was still relatively young at this point. Do you think Razor had enough left in the tank to motivate himself into the best shape possible at that stage of his career and hand the young, untested Mesi his first loss, or was Ruddock too far gone at that point? How does this fight go down?
Here are Ruddock’s two fights from 2001 to show you what he seemed to have left at this time. This content is protected This content is protected
Do you think he is able to stop Ruddock or do you suppose the veteran has enough tricks to last the distance? Would Razor be able to make things interesting or would this be a one-sided fight?
Good question and I’m not sure. Ruddock still had some power and experience and wasn’t in bad shape against Edgerton Marcus so it might have been a decent fight
That’s right! I had forgotten that Ruddock was slated to fight Vitali at one point. He had to be replaced after an infection from a vasectomy or something like that, right?
Joe Mesi by stoppage I actually liked Mesi as a fighter, yes he wouldn't of beat Klitschko brothers as i know they were shaping him to fight them at some point. But i do think people treat him unfairly for his knockdowns vs Jirov, and forget the fact that Mesi was dominating Jirov, until Jirov hit him with an illegal rabbit punch that caused damage to his brain. Again this was an illegal shot that turned the fight around, but Mesi was definitely superior to Jirov until that illegal punch.
Wow, I can't believe there is a fantasy fight where I would actually pick Mesi to win. But, Ruddock looks totally shot by this point.
Would you all agree that Ruddock had at least a puncher’s chance in this fight? If so, a pretty good chance or more like a one in a million type of chance?
I'm going with Mesi Ruddock didn't have very much left by this point. One of the reasons Ruddock retired instead of fighting Mesi was because he was having a lot of injury problems.
I actually re-watched this fight fairly recently and the first knockdown was caused by a shot behind the head. It was a weird shot because I don't think it was intentional, it was more of a fluke that Mesi was bent over due to a body shot right before. With that said it was an illegal punch but Jirov was winning that round and had him hurt early in the ninth. The tenth an absolutely brutal round and Mesi took an insane amount of punishment. Weird fight to score because like you said, Mesi was pretty dominat most of the fight. I think Jirov won the first, ninth and 10th cleanly but the rest of the middle rounds were very clear rounds for Joe. Back to Razor vs Joe, prime for prime Razor smashes Joe but in 2001 o e a have baby Joe all day. He was a talented but undersized heavyweight. Outside of the rabbit punch, I do think Jirov was wearing him out with body shots towards the end of their fight.