FIGHT OF THE WEEK 10- James Toney vs Vassiliy Jirov

I don't remember who won the fight, so it's like a new fight to me. I am half way through it now. Jirov has an unappealing style, but he is tough for Toney because he is in great shape, busy, and doesn't let Toney rest. Toney, aesthetically, looks much better as a boxer, but his conditioning won't allow him to stay as busy as Jirov. I doubt the southpaw stance of Jirov makes much difference at the distance they are fighting. Toney is landing pretty punches, Jirov is landing A LOT of punches that aren't pretty but they are landing.

Toney was composed, a lot of fighters can't take the constant pressure of someone like Jirov, but Toney took his time, tried to take the steam off of Jirov's punches, and landed clean punches that might impress the judges. So far, I've got Jirov ahead. Toney needs to either get off the ropes or he needs to hurt Jirov and make him tentative. Jirov needs to continue what he is doing and hope his face doesn't bust up.

I'll edit this post with my score when I finish the fight.

The judge's decision was a shock to me! But they had better seats and were closer to it than I was. I scored for the more aggressive and busier fighter, but it might have looked completely different from ringside. I much prefer Toney's fighting style and I might have given Jirov some close rounds to make sure I wasn't penalizing him because of his style.

I scored the fight for Jirov 115-112 (7-3-2), giving him 1,2,4,5,6,9,11, I had round 8 EVEN, giving Jirov the round, but he lost a point for a low blow, and I scored round 7 EVEN. I scored 3,10,12 (2 Points for the knockdown), for Toney.

 

Really good fight. I didn't watch it live but only years later, as I had lost interest in Toney by this point.
Jirov was one tough SOB. I was chuckling at how this guy just didn't blink. He was so focussed it's scary.
James was so good here. Quality over quantity.

 

Love this fight - as a great Toney fan it's naturally amongst my favourites. Watched and scored it again relatively recently. To this day, I still have no idea how Lederman had this one a draw. This fight is a great example of the difference between aggressiveness and effective aggressiveness and Jirov was a little outclassed, particularly from the mid rounds onwards when Toney really started to take over for me.

Jirov was good at making room for punching on the inside and positioned Toney well at times, and needless to say he was extremely tough and well conditioned. But Toney was so much more accurate, had the far better variety of shots and the better defence. Jirov had a better time of it when he targeted Toney's body rather than head - Toney did look tired at times, taking occasional breathers and hanging his gumshield out of his mouth at times. But no shame in needing a little rest now and then in a fight of this nature and pace, and each time he looked spent he roared back with a great round, such as in ten and of course the twelfth in which he almost closed the show.

My card from my most recent scoring...

R1: Toney
R2: Jirov
R3: Jirov
R4: Toney
R5: Jirov
R6: Toney
R7: Toney
R8: Toney (10-8, Jirov loses a point for low blows)
R9: Jirov
R10: Toney
R11: Toney
R12: Toney (10-8, Jirov down and almost out)

116-110 to Lights Out. A fight and performance which temporarily revived his career after a few years in the relative wilderness.

 

I remember watching this fight live on HBO. The undercard had Tarver vs Griffin and I remember hearing rumors of Tarver moving up to fight Jirov in a rematch of their Olympic battle from the 96' games. Going into the fight, I thought Jirov was going to win this fight with ease based on his swarming pressure style. I was definitely wrong with that prediction as I thought Toney fought a brilliant fight and would have stopped Jirov had he had 30 more seconds. Watch the body shot that Toney lands on Jirov right before he knocks him done in the 12th. Not many dudes get up from a shot like that especially that late in a fight after throwing that many punches. Jirov was one tough SOB but then again, Toney was even tougher.

 

@PhillyPhan69 A Leopard? Jirov's trainer sounds psychotic, haha.

 

I thought Toney won, the 12th round should have erased all doubt. Jirov was supposed to come on in the later rounds, bit it was the other way around. But I have never seen any fighter putting so much pressure on James and making him so uncomfortable.

 

Love this fight and I love the HBO commentary for it as well. I recently came across a UK version of the fight though and I was surprised at the marked difference in what they saw compared to HBO. They have Toney running away with the fight. It is not that I disagree with the opinion, I just find those sort of wide differences of opinion interesting. I put the UK commentary on top of the best quality of the HBO broadcast that I think exists (it's in 1080p but not 60FPS unfortunately), which was recently uploaded to the semi professional looking YT channel called boxing world weekly where you can find it with the HBO commentary.

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Great fight. Had everything.

 

HBO:s Lederman is way too concerned with aggression in his scoring, it doesn't even have to be effective. That's probably what separated him from the UK commentators and the judges.

 

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