By Jake Donovan
Looking back at 2014, chances are that most casual boxing fans – which ranges from everyone just below the hardcore level to those who tune in for the occasional big fight – will remember August 9 as the night the bottom nearly fell out from the sport.
It was the night that Golden Boy Promotions, Al Haymon and Showtime joined forces to present a card littered with gross mismatches. The show took place at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, headlined by Danny Garcia’s two-round wipeout of Rod Salka, a fringe 130 lb. contender who’d moved up more than two weight classes for what became a meaningless non-title fight at a 142 lb. catchweight.
As the voting results come in for the 2014 Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA) awards, it seems that show caught the voting member panel’s attention more so than any other boxing action to have taken place on the evening of August 9.
It’s the only way to explain how the BWAA completely blew it when it came to honoring the 2014 Fight of the Year.
The oversight would be somewhat more forgivable if the strawweight unification bout between Francisco Rodriguez Jr. and Katsunari Takayama didn’t benefit from stateside coverage. It would be forgivable if the bout wasn’t at all replayed, or if a full viewing wasn’t available anywhere online.
An out-of-sight, out-of-mind alibi was apparent among BWAA members who successfully argued that the blood-soaked first fight between Delvin Rodriguez and Pawel Wolak was more befitting of 2011 Fight of the Year honors than was the relentless war between Akira Yaegashi and Pornsawan Porpramook. Rodriguez-Wolak took place in New York and aired live on ESPN2; Yaegashi-Porpramook took place in Japan, well beyond the scope of stateside coverage and at a time when most U.S. media members were sound asleep.
Chalk it up to a lack of research, but the fact that the latter bout required heavy campaigning from key media members and was already battling from behind by the time it made its way to the ballot made it understandable why the 2011 voting went the way it did.
No such excuses exist for the latest election results.
Rodriguez-Takayamaa aired stateside, shown live on beIn Sport Español and replayed no fewer than three more times over the course of what was left of 2014. It was also made available online – legally or otherwise – almost immediately following its thrilling conclusion, in which Rodriguez prevailed by decision in just the fourth successful unification bout in the history of the strawweight division.
From the moment it was over, those who watched were already hailing it a slam dunk choice for 2014 Fight of the Year. It didn’t take any longer than the end of the weekend for many others – including those of whom were ringside for the earlier mentioned Showtime card in Brooklyn and were forced to play catchup – to join in on the celebration of what took place in Monterrey, Mexico.
The summertime date gave the fight nearly five months to build momentum as nominees were collected for the BWAA ballot. By year’s end, nearly every credible boxing publication – including BoxingScene.com and the online boxing pages for ESPN and Sports Illustrated – wasted nary a second over mulling the choice for Fight of the Year.
Other categories didn’t carry quite the same luxury. With so little happening in a 2014 year that wasn’t, the Fighter of the Year race was wide open to the point where variance was expected. The choices of Terence Crawford (ESPN.com and BWAA), Sergey Kovalev (SI.com and The Ring) and Naoya Inoue (BoxingScene.com) reflect such struggles in forming a consensus, as all had equally superb in-ring campaigns for the 2014 boxing season.
As for Fighter of the Year? Voting came down to two key areas: those who are referred to as full-time boxing writers, and those who truly treat boxing as a full-time job.
The latter is among a group who go out of their way to take in as much boxing as possible – particularly anything that’s on U.S. TV, for starters – and can offer an informed opinion on any given subject in the sport.
In the spirit of fair play and not tooting our own horn, an example outside of the BoxingScene.com family can be found on perhaps the sport’s most identifiable mainstream site, ESPN.com. Its senior writer, Dan Rafael is affectionately referred to by its followers as ‘King Fight Freak’; he is also known to be among the few recognizable writers to take in an entire night at the fights, rather than stroll into press row for the main event and a few key undercard fights.
This much is evident in Rafael’s Monday Morning Scorecard, which is his full recap of fights from around the world. The scorecard is ESPN.com’s alternative to posting live results on such fights, the manner in which most boxing-only websites provide coverage.
In that vein, BoxingScene.com readers were able to read about the 12-round war between Rodriguez and Takayama almost immediately upon its thrilling conclusion. By Monday morning, so too were those who choose ESPN.com or other similar mainstream entities as its primary source of boxing intake.
Certainly everyone tasked with covering the sport had the chance to catch the fight by the time nominations were collected for the 2014 ballot. Or perhaps it was viewed by just enough voters to actually make it onto the ballot without much resistance.
The final votes suggest the latter.
A media embargo prevents this website from revealing the balance of the BWAA picks as this goes to publication. Once all of the remaining winners are released, the selection of Fight of the Year – which, for the record was a terrific fight and one of the few bright spots on the year for those involved with the bout - will be remembered by most as the sport’s first true entry to kick off the race for the category, one that will remind fans that it too happened in 2014.
It just wasn’t the best fight that happened in 2014.
Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox
