Just watched Toney-Jirov for the first time....

good on you and great fight!

for me, toney's best fight was against a similarly inclined opponent in iran barkley.

however, the jirov win may be rated higher because jirov was probably more highly thought of at the time and was the best cruiser in the world.

jirov moved up to heavyweight after the fight with very little success. his style wasn't suited to fighting naturally bigger and stronger opponents and, with the exception of ruining mesi's career, hasn't done much of note

 

It is a truly amazing fight, one of my all-time favourites. The last round is probably my favourite round ever. I watch it more often than I watch any other round. I can't help a huge smile appearing on my face every time that Manny Steward screams: "Oh.... OH.... OHHHH!" as Jirov starts to stagger in the corner!

To answer some of your points directly:

- It's a shame your copy of the fight doesn't have post-fight action. Toney's interview with Jim Lampley is brilliant, one of my favourite Toney interviews. His commentary as Lampley shows him the knockdown is classic: "That right hand was sumthin' terrible... Bah!!"

- This was not the best performance of Toney's career in my opinion, though it was a fantastic one. I think Toney's best win and most underrated performance was against Michael Nunn. I think Toney's all-round best performance was against Iran Barkley. I think the best he ever looked vs a top-class opponent was his 1st fight against Mike McCallum (ie, he was not as dominant in this fight as he was vs Barkley, but McCallum was undoubtedly a better fighter than the Blade)

- Jirov moved to heavyweight not long after. He managed to be very competitive with the much larger and undefeated Joe Mesi, but did not get the decision. After that he was dominated and stopped by Michael Moorer, and I never saw any more of him after that, though I think he did plod along a while longer


I'm a huge Toney fan, so I love threads like this! Good stuff! :good

 

Kinda sad that you might consider this Toney's greatest fight considering he needed that KD on my card to win.

 

Not quite as sad as your card, then.

 

not THAT bad but most had it close, but clear, for toney

 

Yes, but I think that unlike you, the thread-starter prefers punches that land cleanly to punches that don't. That would explain the divergence in scoring.

 

one of my all time favourites

 

sad yeah right he was fighting undefeated cruiserweight champ an was 10 years after his sm chapionship days an many precevied him as done so how you consider it sad only means you haten this is another in along line of of great acomplishments wins over macallum,nunn,barkley,dewitt,prince charles etc

 

toney fought a naturally much bigger man and a 6 years younger than himself at this time and that man was also in his prime , in shape and with the style many think could give toney problems.
the fight was very close , the scorecards are misleading.
i think it is toney's best performance along with the holyfield fight.
it is hard to me to think about a better full distance fight than this one.
and Bob Foster would have KO'd toney , some say :think

 

Only if you think missed punches are more valuable than the ones that land cleanly.

Jirov showed a lot of heart and he never stopped trying but he was outclassed from start to finish,i didnt think this fight was close at all.

 

I thought the fight was somewhat close. The knockdown definitely sealed it for Toney and I think Jirov was really never the same after that fight. He just never had a great technical style so you knew his career couldnt last that long. He just outworked guys. I also think that was probably the best shape Toney was in for a long time, and he had to be to fight at that pace. Toney against anyone who will push the pace makes for a great fight.

 

Fight of the year 2003.

And I give Jirov a lot of credit, it takes two to make a classic. One of the best CWs ever, behind Holyfield and de Leon, and he had underrated skills (great bodypunching). But Toney was all wrong for him style-wise.
Jirov should have stayed at CW after his loss, he had some more decent wins there before moving up to HW (where he had no business) - imo he would have ruled the CW division for some more years had he stayed there, and probably we wouldn't have heard about Mormeck, Bell and maybe also David Haye.

Now Toney was considered to be the underdog before that fight, he was older, slower, smaller, weaker, and thought to be past his best. He won that fight on skills, experience, and, not at least, on toughness.

But it is not Toneys best win. One of his best performances, yes, along with the Iran Barkley fight, the Charles Williams fight, and arguably also the Evander Holyfield fight, but not one of his best wins.
It was an important win in regard that it marked his comeback at the very top of the boxing game (after having fought no-names on parking lots only three years prior to that), that he was considered the underdog and that Jirov gave such a good performance himself.

But his wins over Michael Nunn and his close wins over Mike McCallum are more important.
Toney was still green when he faced Michael Nunn, and it showed. He was considered an easy defense for Nunn, so that Nunn could shine before his hometown crowd. People expected a quick KO win for Nunn. Boxing experts even called Toney one-dimensional, while Nunn was considered to be the #3 P4P fighter (in the early 90s!). And it started out as everybody thought it would, with Nunn outboxing Toney for 7 rounds, but after that Toney turned the fight around and was the first (and only) man to KO Nunn. A huge upset, and a must-see fight.