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Gutsy show, Dale
It deflated Calgary, a city hoping for a world champion in their favourite punching son from Forest Lawn.
Oh sure, there was that last-second, desperate, flash-in-the-back-of-the-mind hope that Brown'd get up after the big punch.
That maybe it was a low blow.
That maybe the ref would forget what number came after 'nine' in the count to 10.
But he didn't. And it wasn't. And he didn't.
The TV replay told the truth.
It was a helluva punch by a helluva puncher, and the Cowboy took the full force of it in the breadbasket, an absolute right-hand bomb by still-International Boxing Federation cruiserweight champ Jirov on the undercard of the De La Hoya-Trinidad 'Fight of the Millennium' at the City of Sin's Mandalay Bay last night.
But Brown needn't be at all ashamed, even though he might find it tough to sample one of Vegas' cheap $4.99 buffets today following the Russian Tiger's fight-winning body blow.
The 27-year-old Calgarian did us proud.
He boxed a super fight, a rugged affair between two warriors who surprised the crowd ... and the critical pundits with their heart-filled punch-fest.
Brown started slow, came out kinda cautious in the first round, a strategy that played against the 25-year-old Jirov's big-time punching style.
Jirov won the round, but Brown began to dictate the fight in the second and the third, making the champ miss and surgically punching holes in his lax defence.
Jirov opened a small cut over Brown's left eye in the fourth, and then knocked the Calgarian to one knee in the fifth with a mighty downward-spiralling left, then a smart little left follow-up to the chin.
Brown got up at the eight-count, and the bell sounded to give him a chance to regroup.
Brown recovered in the sixth, but was guarded. He started to wait out Jirov and stem the Tiger's advances.
Jirov won seven, too, but the Cowboy took back the fight in the eighth, landing five good rights in a row to shake the Kazakh's fine tuning and opening a cut over the right eye.
The technically smart-and-quick Brown defence confused Jirov, and started to shine through.
When the Cowboy kept the Kazakh in the middle of the ring, the 'Russian Tiger' looked more like a lost puppy.
Jirov resorted to a head-butting defensive strategy in the ninth and start of the 10th to fend off the charging Brown, but the fight changed in an eyelash with a wicked punch to Brown's ribcage.
Jirov won impressively, but Brown was no speedbump on the way to bigger and better things.
Brown opened even more eyes to his own rise, to his capability in the ring in this, his first big title shot.
And maybe it'll hurt him as other top cruiser contenders check out the tape and decide they want no part of the tenacious Calgarian.
But even in defeat, Brown represented Calgary well.
He should be proud. We sure are.
LESSER MOMENTS: Olympian Eric Morel remained undefeated in a super flyweight fight, taking a unanimous decision over Miguel Angel Granados of Mexico.
Morel (23-0, 16 KOs) knocked down Granados in the second with a right hand, but bruised his right knuckles in the round and did the same to his other hand two rounds later.
Morel won by 10 points on one ringside card, and eight on the other two.
In two speciality bouts, heavyweight Butterbean and Mia Rosales St. John both won their scheduled four-rounders.
Butterbean, who outweighed Ken Craven by 110 lbs., stopped the Ellisville, Miss., fighter, with a flurry of punches in the second round. Butterbean, 320 lbs., improved to 47-1-2, while Craven fell to a reported 12-6.
St. John, who will be featured in next month's Playboy magazine, improved to 13-0 by outpunching Kelly Downey of Merriam, Kan., in a featherweight fight.
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