2019 Combat Sports Awards, Part 4: Professional Boxing
Photo by Toru Hanai/Getty Images
Happy new year! We hope you’ve enjoyed the first four months of The Fight Site, thank you for bearing with us as we develop our brand, grow the team, and tweak our website.
Early 2020 has a lot in store, including the final three installments of our “GOAT Series” as well as new podcasts, weight-class specific “Best of” articles, and profiles on athletes competing in ACA (formerly ACB).
2020 will also mark the beginning of our Patreon system, which will allow our few faithful a way to contribute to this crazy experiment and request or access special content. An idea we’re floating is the option to provide scouting services - you can hire a staff member to break down footage of training, competitions, or potential opponents. Given the superstar team we’ve assembled, I imagine some might be interested in trying that out. Let us know your thoughts!
We cover many combat sports, so it’s only fair that each team (and other interested staff) put together awards for each sport! We’ve already given out our awards for the overall ‘Combat Athlete of the Year’, MMA awards, and Muay Thai/Kickboxing. Without further ado let Kyle McLachlan take you through the professional boxing awards!
Professional Boxing Awards
Fighter of the Year
Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (2-0, 1 KO)
Naoya Inoue (2-0, 1 KO)
Artur Beterbiev (1-0, 1 KO)
Philippe Marchetti: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez
Danny Martin: Artur Beterbiev
Kyle McLachlan: Canelo Alvarez
Taylor Higgins: Canelo Alvarez
Lukasz Fenrych: Canelo Alvarez
Hamady “Baba” Diagne: Naoya Inoue
Lee Wylie: Canelo Alvarez
Scott/Asian Boxing: Naoya Inoue
Saul “Canelo” Alvarez - Boxer of the Year
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
At the end of 2018 fans of the sport might have wondered whether Saul Alvarez was all that serious anymore.
After two tough fights with Gennady Golovkin and a bumper payday with DAZN, ‘Canelo’ took on Rocky Fielding for a useless WBA trinket up at 168lbs, in a fight that ended up a (unsurprising) blowout.
Consider it a gentle spar to ease the Mexican superstar into 2019: the always tricky Danny Jacobs marked an appealing foe for Alvarez’s move back to 160 (and don’t believe a certain twitter contingent: it was a clear and impressive win for the defending champ) and although longtime light-heavyweight titlist Sergey Kovalev might have been on his last legs, Alvarez’s strategic mastery of the Russian veteran and the highlight-reel KO to cap it off—winning a title in a fourth weight class if you count the bogus WBA strap he won against Fielding—saved the day for the Mexican, and in a year capped with solid but unspectacular gains for the sport’s elites, makes him a worthy winner here.
Fight of the Year
Josh Taylor vs. Regis Prograis (World Boxing Super Series Super Lightweight Final)
Naoya Inoue vs. Nonito Donaire (World Boxing Super Series Bantamweight Final)
Philippe Marchetti: Taylor-Prograis
Danny Martin: Taylor-Prograis
Kyle McLachlan: Inoue-Donaire
Taylor Higgins: Inoue-Donaire
Lukasz Fenrych: Taylor-Prograis
Hamady “Baba” Diagne: Inoue-Donaire
Lee Wylie: Inoue-Donaire
Scott/Asian Boxing: Inoue-Donaire
Naoya Inoue vs. Nonito Donaire - Boxing Match of the Year
Photo by Toru Hanai/Getty Images
The two finalists here demonstrate that for all the scheduling issues and rumours of unhappy fighters, the World Boxing Super Series should stick around.
For our winner, there’s a possibility that it only edged out the also brilliant clash between Josh Taylor and Regis Prograis because it never should have been this good.
This writer felt Nonito Donaire’s prior showings at bantamweight demonstrated a modern great well past his prime, and that his only chance was to land his patented left hook on rising Japanese star Inoue early.
I was wrong on both counts: Nonito showed he remained championship class, and Inoue proved his championship chin, taking his fair share of blows from an undisputed knockout artist.
Inoue’s badly injured eye, Nonito surviving a gut-busting shot in the 11th round, the exchanges of fire throughout, and the mutual respect showed by men after mark this out as not just the fight of the year, but one of the all-time great bantamweight title clashes.
Knockout of the Year
Yuniel Dorticos over Andrew Tabiti
Deontay Wilder over. Luis Ortiz
Deontay Wilder over Dominic Breazeale
Canelo Alvarez over Sergey Kovalev
Ho Joon Jung over Si Woo Lee
Philippe Marchetti: Wilder-Ortiz
Danny Martin: Wilder-Ortiz
Kyle McLachlan: Dorticos-Tabiti
Taylor Higgins: Wilder-Ortiz
Lukasz Fenrych: Dorticos-Tabiti
Hamady “Baba” Diagne: Dorticos-Tabiti
Lee Wylie: Alvarez-Kovalev
Scott/Asian Boxing: Jung-Lee
Yuniel Dorticos over Andrew Tabiti - Boxing Knockout of the Year
Photo by Sumio Yamada
It might well be that the greater boxing public sees the cruiserweight divisions staunchest defenders as ‘hipsters’, and if that is the case then Cuban banger Dorticos’ knockout of American contender Andrew Tabiti was a victory for hipsters everywhere.
Keep your Leonard Ellerby-backed and Mayweather-trained wannabe’ slicksters out of the cruiserweight class: this is the domain of Beasts from the East and bangers from Monster Island.
Tabiti—for his part—put in an admirable effort, but if his fighting makeup didn’t suit (an athletic banger trying to be a slickster) than Dorticos has constantly proven his fighting makeup is unwanted, as the former Cuban amateur standout continued in his stalking, power-punching ways.
Dorticos can look quite basic, but his one-two combos and somewhat plodding footwork allows him to catch his man off guard. This is what he did to Tabiti, walking him into a picture-perfect right hand late in the fight to add another devastating knockout to his resume.
As above, the 140lbers and the 118lbers have already had their final in ‘season two’ of the Sauerland Bros. grandest statement. It might well be that Dorticos and Latvian powerhouse Mairis Briedis see themselves as winners of a few categories once we see them in the 200lb final sometime in 2020.
Note: had it been more well known it’s feasible that Ho Joon Jung over Si Woo Lee might have swept this category. I highly suggest that you seek this out, as it’s a jaw-dropping knockout.
Breakout Contender of the Year
Teófimo López
Julio Cesar Martinez
Vergil Ortiz
Daniel Dubois
Philippe Marchetti: Teófimo López
Danny Martin: Teófimo López
Kyle McLachlan: Teófimo López
Taylor Higgins: Teófimo López
Lukasz Fenrych: Julio Cesar Martinez
Hamady “Baba” Diagne: Teófimo López
Lee Wylie: Vergil Ortiz
Scott/Asian Boxing: Daniel Dubois
Teófimo López - Boxing Breakout Contender of the Year
Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images
Teofimo Lopez snatched this award late in the day.
Coming into December he had lost some of the momentum he had built over his 14-0 career, despite a very impressive start to 2019 (knockouts of Diego Magdaleno and Edis Tatli showing he can carry his power up in class).
Then, Masayoshi Nakatani spoilt the party, managing to outbox Lopez at times, outfight him at others, and—most worryingly—standing up to the vaunted power-punchers shots.
If the in-ring action wasn’t enough pause for thought, Lopez made excuses after the fight, claiming Nakatani was too tall. Perhaps the Brooklynite was getting too big for his boots.
Erase all the criticism after December 14th: a resounding second-round blasting of notoriously tough world class operator Richard Commey and ending the year an exemplary (by modern standards at least) 4-0 (3 KOs)
Now, Lopez is not just another prospect: he’s the best challenger to pound-for-pound great Vasyl Lomachenko, and will be headlining a pay-per-view against him in 2020.
Most importantly, some fans are tipping him to win.
If that isn’t a breakout contender of the year I don’t know what is.
Upset of the Year
Andy Ruiz Jr. over Anthony Joshua
Roger Gutierrez over Eduardo Hernandez
Adan Gonzales over Robeisy Ramirez
Alfredo Angulo over Peter Quillin
Philippe Marchetti: Ruiz-Joshua
Danny Martin: Ruiz-Joshua
Kyle McLachlan: Gutierrez-Hernandez
Taylor Higgins: Gonzales-Ramírez
Lukasz Fenrych: Ruiz-Joshua
Hamady “Baba” Diagne: Ruiz-Joshua
Lee Wylie: Ruiz-Joshua
Scott/Asian Boxing: Angulo-Quillin
Andy Ruiz Jr. over Anthony Joshua - Boxing Upset of the Year
Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images
You all know the story, and after their rematch Andy Ruiz’s shellacking of Anthony Joshua seems even more unlikely.
For all the excuses made for Anthony Joshua by his legion of adoring fans in the wake of his first professional loss to Andy Ruiz, there were some of us that thought the flip-side was true: was Andy Ruiz’s potential staring us in the face all along? Was he a fighter who needed the spotlight to truly shine?
Whatever happened in the first fight, the basic restructuring of Anthony Joshua’s game plan rendered Ruiz Jr a completely impotent force second time round, and if you showed a hundred martians the second fight and polled them on their predictions on how the first fight went, I doubt even the pugilistic virgins would envision the fat man ever winning.
But he did, and for a few months Andy Ruiz was the coming man and Anthony Joshua was yesterdays news. The result reverberated on the inter webs, on U.S chat shows, and in the corners of the dingiest English pubs.
In terms of how shocking it was, in terms of how big it was, and in retrospect just how unlikely it should have been, this is a runaway winner for ‘upset of the year’.