How good was he? How highly do you rate him? How highly would you rate him in his division, historically? Was you a fan of his? If so, was that because you followed his amateur career or did a certain fight of his make you like him?
I never really followed him but I loved that fight between him and Toney and honestly after (or more precisely during) that fight I became a huge fan of both fighters. That was a fight for the ages. He certainly displayed a very good work rate, and had plenty of power and could take a punch, my only criticism is that his defense was his offense, and he never really had great, or even good, defensive skills. He pretty much depended on over whelming you with punches to win a fight.
He was a better amateur than pro. Jirov won the Val Barker Trophy in the Olympics, which is given to the best pound for pound performer. As a professional Jirov was a very good, but not great cruiserweight. Decent body attack, not much on defense.
Kovalev reminds Jirov in some ways now. Jirov was scary force at CW before the Toney fight. He was like 32-0 (30 KO) or smth. like that. Before Toney Jirov was never knocked down, dominated all of his opponents, he was very hard hitter and great bodypuncher. His defense (like Kovalev's) was average though. I think Jirov is underrated but he had very good run and is lower top-10 CW of all time IMO.
Two stories I heard. One was they would put him on a boat about a mile or more from shore and made him swim to land, and the second one involves dogs, but I don't remember the details.
I tend to agree with this assessment, that said, I'm not the most knowledge guy when it comes to the CW division. Prior to the Toney fight he had taken 14 months off due to an injury which might have affected his performance but who's to say. I think he just came across a guy with a great defense, some pop in his punches and a willingness to fight. I often thought about what would have happened if Toney stayed in that division.
Tough. Determined. Always thought he was supremely conditioned. If he's not a top 10 atg cruiser, he's close to it.
I remember thinking Toney needed the 12th to win the fight. The problem with Jirov's reign is that he mostly fought no-hopers before Toney but he was capable of beating much better fighters. The division was shallow at the time and a unification with Gomez wasn't gonna happen for whatever reason.
