Vassily Jirov

He was not very successful as a heavyweight. Which was to be expected given his style of fighting. He lost to Joe Mesi, in a fight where he actually did some serious [permanent?] damage to Mesi, and was knocked out by a past it Michael Moorer.

 

alot of the guys who were at the top of the heap around 05-06 ... jirov had whooped while he was at cruiser

 

He was a helluva cruiserweight in his prime. A bit pudgy but a lot of movement and great workrate.

He did not have the build to go HW.

 

jirov fought in a decent, if not great era at cruiserweight, but he simply did not fight enough good fighters to determine whether or not he could have given them trouble. a survey of jirov's career history shows a shocking lack of matches against capable, world class opposition. he is remembered, primarily for his fight with james toney--which was terrific, even if toney ate his way into the division--and for beating joe mesi into what should have been a permanent retirement after a brain-injury in that mauling, rough fight.

jirov was a hard man, tough, rugged, a banger with better than average handspeed on the inside, a good, consistent workrate...an excellent pressure fighter with a good chin at cruiser. i think he could have hung in with a better class of fighter. but, instead of getting in with henry maske, virgil hill, fabrice tiozzo (who was moving up from 175, i know), carl thompson, even someone like glen kelly...he just churned out easy wins over eurosport garbage cans. he did stop dale brown, a hugely underrated fighter, late in their fight, in impressive fashion. aside from that knockout victories over saul montana and alex gonzalez are pretty much all he's got to back it up.

vassily never should have moved to heavyweight--and probably wouldn't have if the limit had been changed to 200-pounds while he was in the mix at cruiser. jirov was slow on his feet as it was, the added weight put cement shoes on and slowed his hands down, denying him the benefit of being able to pop quick, slashing shots on the inside...and thus denying him the opportunity to box out of trouble against bigger, stronger guys throwing heavier shots.

jirov probably would have been a great light heavy if he could have gotten ultra serious about training and shaved himself down to tight, hard mass. such a move would have made him more mobile and boosted his stamina as well. jirov never fought the best in his prime to hang onto the ibf trinket and spent the latter part of his career unneccessarily grinding out fights against guys not of the same physical dimensions...a misappropriated talent, in my opinion.

 

:good

Jirov was at his best when he was around 185...when he started weighing in at 200 later in his career he was visibly a lot slower and out of proper fighting shape.

In his younger days, he was a mean fighter with an awesome, herky-jerky sort of style...his body moved every which way, like a transformer.

 

I would've liked to see Jirov able to fight at CW today against the best, unfortunately he will have deteriorated and we'll never see how good he could've been today had he not gone up to HW.

 

Jirov quit training and it cost him the title.

 

Toney WRECKED him. He took a hell of a beating in the late stages of that fight. He just wasn't the same after that.