So, keeping in mind my very,
very limited knowledge of boxing, I'm gonna give this a shot.
- Fight(s) Of The Year- Ruiz vs. Joshua I & II
Maybe not so much in terms of overall fight quality, because you're going to find better fights at lower weightclasses, but more in terms of the narrative leading up to these fights.
Also as far as heavyweight fights go they still really delivered. It's good to see such a resurgence in heavyweight boxing these last few years.
- Fighter(s) Of The Year- Andy Ruiz Jr. - A relative unknown, coming in against the heavyweight champ as a replacement and won.
- Anthony Joshua - He may have lost the title earlier in the year, but he came back and corrected his mistake.
- Vasiliy Lomachenko - I guess you can just put him on the list by default every year, because he just keeps convincingly beat anyone in front of him.
- Breakout Fighter(s) Of The YearI'm not gonna pretend to have a finger on the pulse when it comes to upcoming champions, but I will say from what little I read and saw about him is that Daniel Dubois has all the makings of a future heavyweight champion.
Unfortunately, Kyotaro became one of his casualties, effectively putting an end to his run.
- Knockout(s) Of The YearWhat I like about this fight is that aside from the awesome KO is that Breazeale was able to hurt Wilder a bit right before it happened.
- Comeback(s) Of The YearI have to go with Tyson Fury. And it kind of works on two levels, I guess.
Fury effectively came back in mid 2018 AND drew with Deontay Wilder, making him a candidate for 2018 as well, but he kept on track in 2019 with two wins; One of those wins is a comeback story in and of itself, since Fury suffered a bad cut above the eye in the third round against Otto Wallin. That could have ended things for him right then and there, but he had luck on his side and was able to tough it out to earn a decision victory.
- Controversy(s) Of The Year- Dillian Whyte testing positive for a banned substance before the Oscar Rivas Fight
There's a lot to this story as analyzed by our own themagi last summer:
Part I &
Part II- Two former kickboxers in Jarrell Miller and Tyrone Spong testing positive for banned substances while being scheduled for high profile fights.
With Jarrell Miller the situation seemed to be pretty cut and dried as he tested positive and subsequently his fight with Joshua was off. However, that arguably led us to the story of the year, which we'll cover in the next category.
As for Spong, there was a whole back-and-forth between alleged false positive results, accusations of being setup and a subsequent negative result. The end result? His fight with Usyk still didn't happen.
Also, the
Drake curse definitely needs some further investigation.
- Story(s)/Upset(s) Of The YearThe story of the year has to be Andy Ruiz Jr. - a late replacement for Jarrell Miller - scoring an upset TKO victory against Champion Anthony Joshua.
While reactionaries inaccurately dubbed it 'the biggest upset in the history of boxing', it was still a big deal and pretty much by default the upset of the year.
- Event(s) Of The YearI'm gonna have to go with Ruiz vs. Joshua II. While their first fight definitely has the bigger 'shock value', it really created anticipation for their rematch. Ruiz wasn't able to pull off the same stunt twice in a row, but the fight still delivered.
Last, but not least, unfortunately we've lost two fighters last year due to complications after their respective fights.
RIP Maxim Dadashev, Hugo Santillan and Patrick Day.
In conclusion, you can see my list kind of revolves around a small group of names and mostly the heavyweight division.
Can you broaden my horizon with your picks?
