Vasily Jirov - Top Ten Cruiser?

i'd say he's a top 5 cw who else would oppose him?

 

Depends what you mean by Cruiserweight...

Technically, the division started up in the early 20th Century, in Britain.

But if you limit it to a 175+ to 190/195lber from 1979 to 2006ish and then 200lbers, maybe he is there.

What Camel, Deleon, Qawi, Holyfield, Cole, Norris, Washington, Michalczewski, Hearns, Gomez, Haye have a chance of topping him...

 

some names yeah but i dunno man jirov was a beast

 

good list. I was going to say no Visily is not in the class, but I would have to make a list, but this is as good as list as any.

 

Jirov is not a top 10 Crusier. Top 20? Maybe at the tail end.

 

I definitely think he's top ten. Probably 1 spot above Nelson.

 

Id add S.T Gordon to the list of guys more accomplished at cruiser than Jirov.
His wins over De Leon and Lopez i think are better than Jirovs wins over Montana, Brown or a past it Washington.

 

Top ten to me.

 

yeah he was preety awesome on his prime

 

I'd put Jirov ahead of everyone on this list. It's too bad he never fought Nelson or Gomez, the other two best CW's of his ere. His style could have taken either one. Jirov suffered from lack of opposition, but if you look at him straight up, he's definitely a top 5 Cruiser.

 

Prime Jirov was extremely strong, forward moving southpaw. One of the most ferocious body punchers in boxing at the time pound-for-pound. I think his boxing skills were also underrated. He didn't move laterally, rather gave good upper body movement when he wanted to; he's typically thought of as a stand-up Eastern Euro fighter, but that isn't exactly true.

His pressure would have given the purely defensive Johnny Nelson all kinds of problems and I also think he would have beaten Gomez based on aggression and body punching. There was also talk that Jirov was going to fight Roy Jones in the early 2000s. I'm not saying he beats Jones, but at 190-195, that's a good fight. The only fighter to really beat Jirov was Toney, a close decision. I personally think Toney was at his best weight at 190 and is a future hof'er, so no shame in that at all.

Jirov just never had that defining win. By the time he got to Toney he was just a slight tick past his prime of a few years earlier. Had he won that fight, he's the second best Cruiser of all-time.

My all time top 10 goes like this (today at least):

1. Holy
2. Toney
3. Jirov
4. Gomez
5. Nelson
6. Qawi
7. DeLeon
8. Bell
9. Haye
10. Cunningham