by David P. Greisman
It’s the first day of December — or perhaps later if you’re one of those slackers who choose not to start your work week with the joy of reading “Fighting Words” every Monday.
Nearly all of boxing’s biggest names are done for 2014. The broadcast schedule in the United States lists a pair of tripleheaders on HBO on Dec. 6 and Dec. 13, a handful of cards on Showtime on Dec. 12, Dec. 13, Dec. 19 and Dec. 20, a rare off-season show on ESPN on Dec. 11, plus several nights of boxing on the Spanish-language networks on Dec. 6, Dec. 13 and Dec. 20. None of the recognizable names on those broadcasts is even close to being in contention for Fighter of the Year.
You have to look overseas to see one of the potential finalists for the sport’s top annual honor, and you have to wait nearly until the end of the year to see him. Naoya Inoue, the 21-year-old prodigy from Japan, will be stepping up from 108 pounds to 115 and challenging titleholder Omar Narvaez. That bout takes place on Dec. 30, and if Inoue wins he should be in the conversation for Fighter of the Year.
He’s the only remaining uncertainty. Everyone else has either been eliminated from the list or has completed his campaign for 2014.
That means we can look at the candidates and, Inoue aside, analyze their qualifications with the complete picture in mind.
Every year, usually around August, I break down which boxers are still viable. The list tends to include some “ifs,” as a fighter typically needs one more notable win to wrap up an already good year, or perhaps he’s soon facing a significant opponent and that one victory would push him over the top.
Earlier this year, I listed as possible finalists the winner of the Bernard Hopkins-Sergey Kovalev unification bout; Carl Froch if he notched one more major victory; Miguel Cotto if he added a second big win; Chris Algieri if he upset Manny Pacquiao; Lamont Peterson if he topped Danny Garcia; Vasyl Lomachenko if he beat one of the other top featherweights; Giovani Segura if he topped Juan Francisco Estrada; and the winner of the Roman Gonzalez-Akira Yaegashi bout.
That column, if you care to relive and review it, can be seen at https://www.boxingscene.com/fighting-words-pondering-2014s-fighter-year--81172
Kovalev dominated Hopkins. Froch didn’t fight again. Neither did Cotto. Algieri lost a wide decision to Pacquiao. Lamont Peterson won’t be back in the ring until 2015. Lomachenko’s next bout came against an opponent whose No. 1 sanctioning body ranking wasn’t representative of his talent level. Segura was taken out by Estrada. And Gonzalez destroyed Yaegashi to become the true flyweight champion.
Going off my own list, that would leave just Kovalev and Gonzalez.
I’m not the only one with an opinion. Others have made valid points about additional candidates. Meanwhile — while every fan, writer, website and publication can have his/her/its own Fighter of the Year — I can at least report on some of the names the Boxing Writers Association of America is considering.
Slightly more than a dozen “full” BWAA members were at the organization’s East Coast meeting on Nov. 8 in Atlantic City, at which we nominated candidates for the various year-end awards. There will be a West Coast meeting on Dec. 13 in Las Vegas. The tallies from both meetings will be combined, and the top five candidates in each category make it onto the ballots that are subsequently sent out to members.
The nominating votes at the East Coast meeting from top to bottom were: Terence Crawford (12); the Kovalev-Hopkins winner (12); the Pacquiao-Algieri winner (9); Cotto (9); Gennady Golovkin (7); Gonzalez (5); Floyd Mayweather (5); Nicholas Walters (3); Inoue if he beats Narvaez (1); Amnat Ruenroeng (zero) and Orlando Salido (zero).
We wait to see what happens in Vegas.
Crawford likely bolstered his case in voters’ eyes with his one-sided boxing clinic this past Saturday against Ray Beltran. That gives him three victories in 2014, including a title win over Ricky Burns and an entertaining stoppage of Yuriorkis Gamboa. I think it’s a very good year that is being somewhat overrated, but I also recognize that I’m a grumpy outlier.
I truly have enjoyed Crawford’s rise since last year, but Burns was a weak titleholder who’d proven to be ripe for the picking given that he was behind on the cards before an injured Jose Gonzalez quit on his stool in May 2013, then was fortunate to escape with a draw and his belt against Beltran in September 2013. Crawford outpointed Burns in March. As for Gamboa, he was undefeated and is talented but was unproven at 135 and was at too heavy a weight class.
Beltran was recently ranked No. 2 by many thanks not to his own good performances so much as the unimpressive performances of others, namely now-former titleholder Miguel Vazquez in a controversial loss to Mickey Bey, and Richar Abril, who returned from 18 months of inactivity by taking a majority decision over Edis Tatli. Beltran’s draw with Burns was his best performance; he’d since outpointed Arash Usmanee in April.
But by virtue of his being No. 2 and Crawford being No. 1, folks felt that their fight should decide a new lineal champion. While this is within widely accepted rules, and while it’s good for rankings organizations and magazines to follow their rules, I believe there shouldn’t be any rush to crown a champion when a division still needs to shake out its uncertainty. Sometimes a ranking is just a ranking, and a win simply cements that a guy is No. 1 for now.
Kovalev deserves major credit for out-boxing Hopkins, who at 49 was still good enough to be No. 3 in the 175-pound division. I don’t know if that win will be enough; his other two victories in 2014 came against overmatched foes Cedric Agnew and Blake Caparello.
Pacquiao, as I wrote in August, may be judged in part based on past performances. He was once destroying nearly everyone who came against him. That’s not what he did to Timothy Bradley, though Pacquiao did take a clear victory against a foe who was otherwise highly ranked on observers’ pound-for-pound lists. Then Pacquiao did to Algieri what he was expected to do, showing the true difference in class between him and an opponent who’d battled to a split decision with Ruslan Provodnikov.
Cotto obliterated Sergio Martinez. Many believe this victory came because Martinez was damaged goods, a wounded champion hobbled by lingering knee injuries even after surgery and extended rehabilitation. I believe it’s possible that this time Martinez’s legs failed him because Cotto concussed him in the opening round. Nevertheless, it’s just one win for Cotto in 2014, one win that earned him the middleweight championship but one in which Martinez is perceived as not what he once was.
Golovkin is an emerging star and is considered to be a better 160-pounder than Cotto. He scored three wins in 2014, taking out Osumanu Adama in seven, stopping Daniel Geale in three and beating Marco Antonio Rubio in three. Geale is a former titleholder and by far the best Golovkin’s beaten. This otherwise is not a notable year in terms of quality of opposition.
The first two guys Gonzalez beat this year were at an even lower level: Juan Kantun was 21-5-3 and as of this writing had gone 3-6-1 in the past four years, and Juan Purisima was 11-4-1. But Yaegashi was the true champ at 112, the guy who beat Toshiyuki Igarashi, who’d beaten Sonny Boy Jaro, who’d upset Pongsaklek Wonjongkam, and so on and so forth in lineage that dated all the way back to Miguel Canto in 1975. Yaegashi bolstered his status last year by outpointing Edgar Sosa, who himself was coming off wins over Giovani Segura and Edgar Sosa.
Gonzalez beat Yaegashi up, made it look easy and showed again how elite he is. He followed that up with a technical knockout of Rocky Fuentes, who had lost a decision in a shot at a vacant flyweight title against Amnat Ruenroeng in January. We’ll come back to Ruenroeng later.
Mayweather’s 2014 consisted of two wins over Marcos Maidana, who was coming off a big win at the end of 2013 over Adrien Broner. While Maidana gave Mayweather a tougher than expected bout in May, he shouldn’t earn top honors for these victories alone.
Walters landed on the scene with emphasis when he stopped Nonito Donaire in six rounds this past October. His other victory in 2014 came via technical knockout against a shopworn Vic Darchinyan. Donaire has been considered one of the best in the sport, yet he was coming off a 2013 where he lost to a great boxer in Guillermo Rigondeaux and then struggled against Darchinyan before scoring a TKO win.
Inoue isn’t getting as much credit as he deserves. He was days away from his 21st birthday and was just 5-0 when he met Adrian Hernandez in April. Hernandez was in his second reign at 108 and was 7-1 in world title bouts. Inoue stopped him in six, then defended in September against lower-level Samartlek Kokietgym. As noted above, he faces Omar Narvaez later this month. Narvaez is a longtime titleholder — he was 15-0-1 when defending his flyweight belt and is 11-0 defending his belt at junior bantamweight — but his level of competition has long been criticized and he’s now 39 years old. Even still, if Inoue goes up and tops Narvaez, he will have become a titleholder at 108 and 115 in the same year.
Ruenroeng deserves another look. He outpointed Rocky Fuentes in January to win a title at 112, then defended it with a split decision over Kazuto Ioka, a former 105- and 108-pound titleholder who was making his debut at flyweight. This past September, Ruenroeng took another split decision, this one over prospect McWilliams Arroyo.
Several things may be working against Ruenroeng. The largely American pool of voters includes many writers who just don’t watch overseas action, even when told that they missed a great fight and can find the footage online. These voters might just turn to BoxRec and note the split decisions and also conclude that they know little to nothing about his opponents. He’s had a good year; one discussion I observed with other writers not at the BWAA meeting included several of them raving about Ruenroeng as being one of the top candidates for Fighter of the Year.
Ruenroeng’s zero from the writers in Atlantic City is different from the lack of support Orlando Salido got. That nil at least recognized that a split decision over Vasyl Lomachenko when overweight and getting away with fouling, followed by a victory in a fantastically entertaining fight with Terdsak Kokietgym, does not a Fighter of the Year make.
We don’t yet know who the top 5 will be. I have a feeling that, unfortunately, name recognition and nationality will win out.
As for me? Looking at that Top 10, my final five would be Terence Crawford, Roman Gonzalez, Naoya Inoue (if he beats Narvaez), Amnat Ruenroeng and, after further consideration, Nicholas Walters. Kovalev would be close behind in the sixth spot.
I still don’t know which way I’m going to go. Boxing’s a sport that lends itself to discussion and debate, and there are plenty of voices I respect and with whom I want to speak.
Let the conversation continue…
The 10 Count will return next week.
“Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide . Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com