Toney reached the absolute peak of his skills at middleweight, in my opinion, during the first and second McCallum fights. He was never quite able to replicate that level again. So for him to move up from the lower weight classes (assuming he was naturally lighter, setting aside the whole weight-cutting mystery enigmas) over a decade past his prime, with years of wear and tear and accumulated damage, and still beat the undefeated, 5 time champ #1-rated cruiserweight who was in his prime at the time BY SCHOOLING HIM… it honestly sounds like a fairy tale. No disrespect to Nunn, but considering everything, the Jirov win is absolutely insane.
I think it's definitely Nunn. You look closely at Jirov's career, his reputation came more from his amateur days - winning Olympic gold medal and beating Tarver on the way. His resume at Cruiserweight was very poor and He didn't do much after losing to Toney either. I don't really know how good He was. Another thing is that Jirov's style suited Toney to a tee, while Nunn in theory had the worst possible one for him - and James still found a way to win.
Both great wins but for me it's Jirov. Toney, at that point, was on an unexpected run after years in the wilderness and it peaked with Jirov. He had definitely found a reputation as something of a wasted talent. To see him come back in that fight was incredible - kind of reminded everybody again what a sublime talent he was.
Nunn is much better than Jirov, and he was stylistically a nightmare for Toney on paper. Jirov wasn’t just worse than Nunn, he was stylistically made for Toney’s counters.
When Toney beat Nunn, Nunn had just beaten Tate, Roldan, Kalambay, Barkley, Starling and Curry back to back. That is a crazy tough run of fighters with all different styles to beat back to back. Definitely the win over Nunn imp because of how good Nunn was at that time. He was a legit number one pound for pound at that time. Jirov was a scary guy at the time Toney beat him as well but nowhere near where Nunn was. I think Michael Nunn is one of the most underrated guys ever at 160. Really, James is understed as well at 160.
Nunn was the bigger challenge, I'd say. Toney was given no chance. Several things happened during the fight to turn that particular table. - Nunn made it look like it was going to go to form for the first half. - Toney hung in there and then upped the pressure during the second half. - Nunn effectively began to sit in the pocket, playing into Toney's hands. - Toney exploited this, delivering top quality punches, which culminated in the TKO victory. Anyone who bet on Toney that night made a mint. The Jirov fight was one of the best of the 2000's and posed a different set of challenges for Toney - primarily around the stage he was at in his career. But Jirov's style was tailor made for him and, combined with Jirov's extreme come-forward aggression, it was Toney's response and rise to the occasion that created the value in the action, IMO.
