by David P. Greisman

They’re not quite neck and neck at the turn, but there is no frontrunner yet for “Fighter of the Year.”

That’s because the winning campaign no longer involves much, well… winning.

In politics, winning comes down to quality and quantity. The triumphant candidate must go on a whirlwind tour of the country, making stop after stop and speech after speech in order to stay relevant and make his or her case.

In boxing, the best fighters just don’t step into the ring that often, not when money dictates when and where and against whom. There are fewer television dates. Boxers want more cash to get in the ring against top opponents. They wait for paydays rather then staying active, preventing getting injured or defeated and potentially losing the opportunity.

Fighting four times a year is a lot, then. Three times a year is plenty. Two is about average.

Timing matters, too. A boxer who fought in December 2010 might not return until April, May or June. Their second outing comes in the second half of the year.

This could’ve been the year, then, for Nonito Donaire or Timothy Bradley.

Donaire had a sensational night in February, knocking out the man who was supposed to be his biggest challenge at bantamweight, Fernando Montiel. Donaire would’ve followed up on that quickly had he not tried to depart his promoter. A third bout in 2011 would’ve then been highly likely. Instead, he was forced to the sideline until the situation resolved and will be back later this fall.

Bradley’s situation is similar. In January he defeated one of the other top fighters at 140 pounds, Devon Alexander, and seemed poised to face the other, Amir Khan, in July for the right to be recognized as the true champion at junior welterweight. Bradley declined the Khan fight, however, and is now inactive and facing a lawsuit from his promoters.

So as we look at the schedule for the remaining four-and-a-half months of 2011, we see numerous boxers who’ve fought just once so far this year, winning in impressive and important outings. They will fit in just one more fight on this calendar.

For Juan Manuel Marquez, his second fight of 2011 is the only one that matters, a third bout with the best boxer, pound-for-pound, in the world – Manny Pacquiao. Marquez and Pacquiao met twice before, engaging in rollercoaster battles, the first a draw, the second a split decision win for Pacquiao with one point deciding the winner.

Those fights were in 2004 and 2008. Since then, Pacquiao has stepped up in weight class after weight class, defeating big men and big names, dominating all. Marquez has largely remained at lightweight, that division’s champion, as skilled as he’s always been, but also more hittable than before.

Pacquiao has kept so much of his speed despite the additional pounds on his frame. Marquez, in his lone welterweight bout, looked much slower at 142 pounds; Floyd Mayweather Jr. handled him easily.

If Marquez were to defeat Pacquiao, then, it would be a tremendous upset and a phenomenal victory. It would instantly vault him into consideration for fighter of the year, even though his only other appearance this year was a tune-up bout against a designated opponent.

Similarly, Victor Ortiz would shock the boxing world were he to upset Floyd Mayweather Jr. Though Ortiz is the defending titleholder, Mayweather is a future Hall of Famer whose excellence was established long ago. It is a testament to Mayweather’s talent – and to his intelligence in the ring and his discipline in the gym – that he’s favored to beat Ortiz despite having been inactive for more than a year.

An Ortiz victory over Mayweather would be huge, and it’d cap off a 2011 that also saw him defeat beltholder Andre Berto in a pitched battle. The quality of those two wins would be difficult to surpass.

Alas, neither Marquez over Pacquiao nor Ortiz over Mayweather is expected to happen.

If not, that leaves the “Fighter of the Year” race to Bernard Hopkins, Carl Froch, Andre Ward and, potentially, Wladimir Klitschko. Three other fighters – Chad Dawson, Robert Guerrero and Brandon Rios – could end up being recognized as having a very good year, though not a superlative one.

Four of those fighters are facing each other.

Hopkins and Dawson will fight in October. Hopkins is the lineal light heavyweight champion, a 46-year-old wonder who became the oldest to capture a championship when he out-pointed Jean Pascal in May. Though Dawson lost to Pascal a year ago, he remains a young, talented fighter who was considered one of the best at 175 pounds until that defeat.

If Hopkins beats Dawson, he will have taken out two notable names in his division, capturing the championship and then defending it despite being years past the age at which nearly every other boxer retires.

Dawson, should he beat Hopkins, will become champion and bounce back from the disappointment of last year’s loss to Pascal. It won’t be enough to earn him “Fighter of the Year,” however.

Dawson’s other win in 2011 came against Adrian Diaconu, a solid, second-tier opponent. Diaconu is a much better opponent than the man Juan Manuel Marquez knocked out in his keep-busy fight, Likar Ramos. But beating Ramos and Pacquiao would out-rank beating Diaconu and Hopkins, even though Hopkins remains one of the best in the sport.

One division south, Andre Ward and Carl Froch will face each other on Oct. 29, two weeks after Hopkins-Dawson, in the finale of the “Super Six” super middleweight tournament.

Since the tournament began in 2009, Ward and Froch have earned their spots as two of the three best 168-pounders in the world. In their sole appearances so far in 2011, Ward won a decision over Arthur Abraham, while Froch won a decision over Glen Johnson.

Those are quality victories. Their cases will largely be made, however, against each other. Whichever man wins – and how he does so – puts him on the short list of the year’s best.

Wladimir Klitschko, like Hopkins, Donaire and Bradley, has a win in 2011 over one of the top names in his division, a clear decision victory in July against David Haye. He’s yet to line up another fight for the remainder of the year. And as with past years, he’s hamstrung by the large talent gap between the brothers Klitschko and their many challengers.

Klitschko has bested 14 in a row since October 2004. What’s keeping him from being “Fighter of the Year” is that he’s always expected to win. As with politics, a landslide victory doesn’t impress as much if your challenger wasn’t thought to pose much of a challenge.

Brandon Rios has had a breakout year in 2011, topping Miguel Acosta and Urbano Antillon, nominating himself as one of the best in the lightweight division. He needs that one great foe to be the capstone of his campaign. But that one great foe would be Juan Manuel Marquez, who’s facing Pacquiao.

Robert Guerrero also impressed at lightweight earlier this year, putting forth what might be his most complete performance yet with a clear decision win over Michael Katsidis. His next bout is this month, against Marcos Maidana, one of the better fighters at junior welterweight.

Rios and Guerrero will continue to campaign for years to come. For the remainder of 2011, however, we wait and watch a wide open race as the fighters approaching the final stretch.

The 10 Count

1.  It’s almost better that Nonito Donaire is locked into his next fight being on HBO and Abner Mares is locked into his next fight being on Showtime, even though the logical conclusion to Showtime’s four-man bantamweight tournament is to have the winner, Mares, face the other top 118-pounder out there, Donaire.

It’s almost better that Donaire and Mares not face each other yet because there needs to be more pressure for Mares to have an immediate rematch with his fellow tournament finalist, Joseph Agbeko.

Mares topped Agbeko via majority decision Saturday in a fight that was close and competitive and might’ve deserved a rematch even without the controversy – controversy that has overshadowed the very good action.

Mares’ punches, particularly his left hook to the body, kept veering low. Some were on the beltline; some were lower. Some were precipitated by Agbeko’s left hand pulling Mares’ head down; some were fouls of Mares’ own doing. Some led to cautions from referee Russell Mora; some didn’t.

The problem was that Mora never went beyond cautioning Mares, never taking a point away from him, even when the fouls had reached a quantity and frequency that such a measure should’ve proven necessary. And on the most blatant low blow of them all, a left hand directly onto Agbeko’s groin in the 11th round that sent Agbeko to the canvas, Mora – who was perfectly positioned – ruled it a knockdown.

Mares controlled the first half of the fight, but Agbeko came on strong in the later rounds. One judge had it even at 113-113, with Agbeko winning seven rounds but penalized for two controversial knockdowns (what appeared to be a slip in the first round, and then the low blow in the 11th). The other two scored it 115-111 for Mares, and one wonders how those tallies would’ve come out had the in-ring officiating been different.

2.  It’s good that Showtime interviewer Jim Gray made sure to confront Russell Mora immediately after the fight was over, though I wonder if Gray, spurred by the freshness and flagrancy of the outrage, came on just a little too strong.

Mora was immediately placed on the defensive, cast as a villain and called forth to explain himself. It was exactly what we wanted to see – Mora being held responsible – but the “bad cop” routine might’ve kept us from hearing what we wanted to hear.

Mora didn’t admit his mistakes, and his explanations didn’t satisfy. He said that Mares’ low blow in the 11th round was parried low by Agbeko’s glove, though the replay clearly showed a shot headed low from the outset.

We wanted to hear Mora apologize like referee Kenny Bayless, who apologized to Manny Pacquiao for erroneously ruling that he’d suffered a knockdown against Shane Mosley. We wanted to hear Mora apologize like baseball umpire Jim Joyce, whose blown call ruined Armando Galarraga’s pitching of a perfect game on what should’ve been the 27th out in 27 batters.

We might still hear that from Mora someday. In the meantime, his exceptionally bad day at the office leaves many questioning his fitness for this line of work.

Even the best in their fields make the occasional mistake. Mora’s mistakes were many. They were high profile. And they were inexcusable.

It is up to him as to whether they ever will be forgivable.

3.  So much for there being a late night talk show outlet for boxers: TBS announced last week that it is canceling “Lopez Tonight.”

Meanwhile, WWE’s resident redhead, Sheamus, appeared last week on “Conan,” a host who is similarly coifed. Maybe Saul Alvarez should seek that route…

4.  CNN is available in 100 million homes in the United States. HBO has about 31 million subscribers in the country.

And yet I think more people would be watching HBO at midnight than would be watching CNN.

Alas, midnight is the time that “24/7 Mayweather-Ortiz” has been stuck in, a time when CNN will rerun episodes of the documentary/infomercial series ahead of the Sept. 17 fight.

This is supposed to be the beginning of the cross-pollination that is intended to expand HBO’s pay-per-view audiences – following what we saw earlier this year with sister networks Showtime and CBS collaborating to market Manny Pacquiao’s fight with Shane Mosley, continuing later this year with HBO and its sister networks promoting Pacquiao’s November bout.

This seems more like one set of network executives at CNN giving in to the needs of their counterparts at HBO, all at the behest of their bosses at Time Warner.

Midnight on Saturday nights (and one Friday night) is about as bad as the Saturday at noon time slot in which CBS aired the first episode of “Fight Camp 360: Pacquiao vs. Mosley.”

Right idea. Wrong direction.

5.  It’s about time for a rematch between Alfredo Angulo and Kermit Cintron.

6.  More head-shaking news from the World Boxing Council:

The sanctioning body is apparently upset that Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. will be defending his WBC trinket on Sept. 17, the same night that Victor Ortiz will defend his WBC belt against Floyd Mayweather Jr. The Ortiz-Mayweather pay-per-view includes two other fights for that organization’s belts: Erik Morales vs. Lucas Matthysse and Saul Alvarez vs. Alfonso Gomez.

A blog post on the WBC website had initially threatened to make Chavez Jr.’s match with Ronald Hearns a non-title bout. The competing cards, it argued, would potentially drive Mexican viewers away from the Ortiz-Mayweather pay-per-view (which probably upsets WBC members because that card will produce more money in sanctioning fees) and toward the Chavez fight.

The threat has since been edited out of the blog post.

(Thanks to Twitter user EverardoM for the head’s up.)

7.  That threat, written in Spanish and translated via Google, said the authority for the WBC to withdraw its approval of the title bout comes through its constitution, “which authorizes the WBC to oppose and act against actions that result in injury in boxing, and this is it.”

In other words, the WBC has a self-destruct button.

8.  “Taco Man” – the nickname of Juan Suazo, a junior welterweight who is now 8-5-3 after losing Saturday to undefeated prospect Karl Dargan.

“Spice Boy” – the nickname of Ryan Rhodes, the 45-5 last seen losing in a junior-middleweight title bout against Saul Alvarez.

There’s a superhero movie plot in there somewhere.

9.  Kimbo Slice is now 1-0 as a pro boxer. Rau’shee Warren will likely be fighting in his third straight Olympics.

We might shake our heads at the mainstream attention that Slice gets despite him not having even a fraction of Warren’s talent. But we’re the same people who are more likely to look for Slice’s fights on YouTube over the next year or two while skipping out on watching Warren go for the gold.

10.  It’s safe to say that Russell Mora’s officiating on all those low blows drove people, well… nuts.

David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. His weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com.

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