Fighter of the Year

Big Ears

Not much activaty on the forum at the moment (being the unofficial off season of boxing) so I decided to get some nice discussion going .

The choices are :
Ricky Hatton : picked up the IBF and WBA belts this year , defeating long time champ Kostya Tszyu and overmatched Gollum look alike Carlos Maussa .
Some would say Tszyu was shot , I beleive it was the same Tszyu that had stopped Mitchell and that he was still a top fighter . Maussa was lucky to catch Harris on a bad night to win the title however the Colobian is awkward has a good chin and can punch .

Jermain Taylor : became the Undisputed middleweight champion 'defeating' Bernard Hopkins twice with very narrow decisions (I scored both fights a draw) .
But nevertheless he beat a legendry fighter twice and deserves recognition .

Winky Wright : a schooling of Puerto Rican legend Felix Trinidad which was one of the most one sided fights ive ever seen aswell as a close victory over tough challenger Sam Soliman .Good year for Winky has he has finally arrived as a through lb4lb top 5 guy . However he was a little unconvincing against Soliman .

Floyd Mayweather :easily outclasses and stopped Henry Brussels and gave one of the biggest warriors the sport has seen a hiding of Winky V Tito proportions stopping Gatti for the WBc LW title .A less impressive victory over Sharba Mitchell followed but it also came by stoppage . Mayweather wasn't even close to being beaten by any of his oppponets this year however he is missing the key component the others have and that's having beaten an A level fighter .

Israel Vasquez : after only outpoint Armando Guerro fairly comfortably you would not have thought of him in contention for fighter of the year . However in the last month of the year Vasquez got to prove himself against the dominant WBC Super Bantamweight champino Oscar Larios . Vasquez knocked Larios down in the first and stopped him on a cut in three . If the cut hadn't arrive Larios might have come into the fight and even won a decision . As in their first fight (this was a rubber match) Vasquez's power got him an early win by overwhleming Larios with his power .

Jorge Arce:the charismatic Arce enjoyed a very good year in 2006 . Starting with a war against Hussein Hussein which he won by 10th round stoppage after suffering a terrible slashing cut on his nose . He then stopped Angel Priolo in 3 rounds for the WBC fly-weight interim title .After the brilliant first fight against Hussein a rematch was set up , but this fight was completely different as this time Hussein crumpled under Arce's power and Hussein's corner threw in the towel after only 2 rounds (defedned iterim title) . He them faught Adonis Rivas and stopped him in 10 rounds retaining his interim title .
Ponsalek Wonjonkam won't be able to avoid Arce in 2006 after the year he's had .

Lamon Brewster : Defended his WBO heavyweight title by stopping Andrew Golota in 53 seconds . He then went to Germany to defend his title against home town fighter Luan Krasniqui , Krasniqui was outpointing Brewster but couldn't stand the pressure when Brewster upped the tempo and he stopped Krasniqui is the 9th .

Jean Marc Mormeck :A Cruiserweight unification(WBC , WBA) win over Wayne Braithwaite was Mormeck's only outing this year however it was a fairly resounding win and he looked good . However onyl fighting once in the year and Braithwaite being defeated by Guillermo Jones later in the year bring down the credit of his win .

Marco Antonio Barrera : Easily knocked out overmatched Mzonke Fana in 2 rounds to retain his WBC featherweight title .He then Unified the IBF titles teahcing Robbie Peden a boxing lesson . It seemed as though if Peden wasn't a friend of Barrera , Barrera would have stopped him at pretty much anytime he wanted .

For the last spot I was split between Zab Judah and Ivan Calderon .
Judah won the undisputed Welterweight title stopping Cory Spinks in 9 , he then defended his title against Cosme Rivera stopping him in 3 rounds .
Calderon defended his WBo minimumweight tile stopping Noel Tinacao in 8 rounds . After that he outpointed young prospect Gerado Verde in a close-ish fight .He then defended his title against former IBF champion Daniel Reyes .

I have simply decided to put these two fighters along with a other fighters you think may deserve fighter of the year into the others category .

joker77

Jorge Arce

Interesting round-up of the year Big Ears - how on earth do you actually get to see so much boxing!?! I missed out on the Hatton fights on account of them being on pay-per-view, was looking out for them to be rerun but Sky didn't seem to show them again, or am I wrong?

Anyways, back to the subject, I'm giving it to Floyd purely because of what I saw in the Gatti fight, he really took him to pieces in one of the most classiest displays of boxing I've ever seen. If I had've seen the Hatton Vs Tszyu fight it might be different.... I'd really love to see Hatton Vs Mayweather in 2006

JoeyJJ

Jermain Taylor

Ricky had a great year, hopefully he impress in his next fight and eventually get a carrer defining fight against someone like Floyd Mayweather.


This year will be very interesting can't wait to see Winky in action again, and to be finally able to see Calzaghe get a decent fight. Zab Judah looks like a very promising fight would like to see him fight.

Geiger

Jermain Taylor

I gave my vote to Hatton. Two recognised belts in one year is good going no matter what anyone says about the opposition. There's no denying Hatton gives everything he has in the ring and because of this he's very exciting to watch.

Credit to Brewster, no one was expecting him to get rid of Golota like that. Winky's performance against Trinidad was also very impressive.

Big Ears

Jermain Taylor

joker77 wrote:

Interesting round-up of the year Big Ears - how on earth do you actually get to see so much boxing!?! I missed out on the Hatton fights on account of them being on pay-per-view, was looking out for them to be rerun but Sky didn't seem to show them again, or am I wrong?

I say the Tszyu fight on ppv so I don't know if it was replayed , but I know the Maussa one was that's where I saw it . Any of the big fights in Germany are usually shown on Eurosport some time after and fights shown on Showtime and HBO can be obtained from cousins in America .Other than that SKY show quite a few big fights . That said I don't see all fights and I had to rely on internet forums and boxing journalists opinions to know what Israel Vasquez's first fight this year was like and Jorge Arce's last fight .