The old familiar faces are still around, but 2014 saw the start of a changing of the guard that hopefully will brighten your TV viewing in 2015. Ring Magazine did a survey of more than 10,000 readers in its January issue that asked the question, ?Who is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world?” and received a somewhat surprising result in that neither Floyd Mayweater Jr. nor Manny Pacquiao was the winner. That distinction belonged to the angel-faced assassin from Kazakhstan, Gennady ?GGG? Golovkin, by a considerable margin. Triple G received 42.58 percent of the vote, with Pacquiao a distant second at 27.56. Mayweather was third at 15.9. Guillermo Rigondeaux finished fourth at 3.41, and Andre Ward rounded out the top five in fifth place with 2.51 percent of the vote. While a lot of those votes were probably based on popularity rather than skill, the results were indicative of the changing of the times. Several of the favorites of the past decade are nearing the end of that long road, with some of them ? Sugar Shane Mosley and Jorge Arce come to mind ? already there. Juan Manuel Marquez, 41, and Carl Froch, 37, are contemplating retirement, while Mayweather, 37, and Pacquiao, 35 (he started at 16) are probably two or three fights away from retirement. Put Miguel Cotto, 34, and Sergio Martinez, 39, in that category, too. Wladimir Klitschko, who seems to have been around forever, but still dominates the heavyweight division, is 38. Even the incomparable Bernard Hopkins, who turns 50 in January, will likely be retired by the end of 2015 (he plans one more ?farewell? fight). Longtime WBA featherweight champ Chris John is 35, Rigondeaux, 34, and Zab Judah, who may have already retired, is 37. The 46-year-old Antonio Tarver has already retired once and should have stayed retired. Supplanting those champions are the likes of Golovkin, Ward, Sergey Kovalev, Nicholas ?Axe Man? Walters, Terence ?Bud? Crawford, and such budding young stars as Demetrius Andrade of Providence, Canelo Alvarez, Mikey Garcia, Danny Garcia (no relation), Kell Brook, Keith Thurman, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Gary Russell Jr., and American heavyweight hope Deontay Wilder, he of the 32 fights and 32 knockouts. (We will find out Jan. 17, when Wilder takes on WBC champion Bermane Stiverne, if Wilder is for real or just another over-hyped fraud). Other bright prospects who could break into that upper echelon of contenders in 2015 include lightweight Felix Verdejo (16-0, 12 KOs), junior featherweight Joseph ?JoJo? Diaz Jr. (12-0, 8 KOs) and Providence junior lightweight Toka Kahn-Clary (14-0, 9 KOs). The 22-year-old Kahn-Clary, who is trained by Rhode Island?s Peter Manfredo Sr., was included in Ring Magazine?s ?New Faces? segment (January issue). So there?s a lot to look forward to in 2015. In the meantime, there are awards to be handed out for 2014. So let?s get to it. FIGHTER OF YEAR: Gennady Golovkin No surprise here. Not only did he go 3-0 in 2014, extending his unbeaten record to 31-0, 28 KOs (18 straight), he was the hottest boxing attraction on the tube as evidenced by that Ring survey. His second round annihilation of Marco Antonio Rubio drew the second highest viewership of a cable boxing show in 2014 with 1.34 million viewers, a 33 percent increase over his third round KO of Daniel Geale at Madison Square Garden in July. Golovkin is also the most feared middleweight in the world, with Cotto and Alvarez among those fighters who have failed to respond after being called out by Golovkin. FIGHT OF YEAR: Lucas Matthysse-John Molina Matthysse was rocked in the first round and down in the second and fifth rounds, but came roaring back to stop Molina in the 11th round. The end for Molina started near the end of the 11th round when he took 14 straight unanswered punches to the head. ?I was a bit surprised he came out for the 11th,? said Matthysse. ?Molina is a tough fighter. It was a war.? UPSET OF YEAR: Andy Lee?s knockout of Matt Korobov. I confess I did not give Lee any chance in this one, even though I didn?t know anything about Korobov except for his reputation and his record of 24-0, with 12 KOs. He just looked so much stronger than Lee. After watching two or three rounds I was more convinced than ever that this fight wouldn?t last five rounds. Well, it lasted six, but it wasn?t Korobov who had his hand raised. Lee landed a counter left hand on the button in the sixth that turned the fight completely around. With Korobov wobbled by the left hand, Lee pounced with a fusilade of unanswered clean shots that prompted the referee to wave a halt, giving Lee (34-2, 23 KOs) the vacant WBO world middleweight title. Well done, Andy. KNOCKOUT OF YEAR: Carl Froch over George Groves. They?re still talking in the UK about the right hand with which Froch flattened Groves in their rematch before more than 80,000 screaming fans at Wembley Stadium in London. It was another war between these two rivals, which ended the same way as the first one. But give Groves A for effort in both. Three other spectacular endings in the Lights Out category were registered by Crawford over Yuriokas Gamboa (KO-9), Walters over Nonito Donaire (TKO-6), and Klitschko over Kubrat Pulev (KO-5). BRIGHTEST NEW STAR OF YEAR: Nicholas ?Axe Man? Walters. Walters exploded on the boxing scene Oct. 18, when he decked former four-division champion Nonito Donaire twice on his way to a six-round demolition of Donaire that gave Walters the WBA featherweight (?super?) crown. Walters (25-0, 21 KOs) had given a hint of things to come with a five-round knockout of Vic Darchinyan, another former multiple division champion, but his dominance of Donaire was jaw-dropping. Runner-up in this category is Terence ?Bud? Crawford (24-0, 17 KOs), who won the vacant WBC lightweight title with a unanimous decision over Ricky Burns in Glasgow, Scotland, and followed that up with the ninth-round KO of Gamboa. ALL TALK, NO WALK AWARD: Adonis ?Superman? Stevenson. The WBC light heavyweight champion claims to be the king of the light heavyweights, but until he fights Kovalev, which he was unwilling to do in 2014, no one is paying much attention. P.S. to Superman: Dmitry Sukhotskiy is no Sergey Kovalev. BRAWL OF THE YEAR: Orlando Salido-Terdsak Kokietgym. Salido was down three times and Kokietgym four times in this wild knockdown, drag-out war before Salido ended it with a TKO in the 11th round to win the vacant WBO interim junior lightweight crown. RODNEY DANGERFIELD AWARD: Demetrius Andrade. When Andrade won the WBO world junior middleweight title in November, 2013, he thought his days of being avoided by the top contenders in his division were over. Wrong. He has had just one fight since then, a seventh-round TKO over mandatory challenger Brian Rose. The Providence southpaw has had only two offers since then, one of which was with Matt Korobov for the vacant WBO middleweight title. That was turned down because he has no desire to move up a weight division at this time in his career.. He then had an offer to fight the No. 2 junior middleweight contender Jermell Charlow on the Dec. 13 card that featured the Amir Khan-Devon Alexander bout. But despite being world champion in the only legitimate world title fight on the card, Andrade was getting ?low end? money, according to Andrade?s manager/father, Paul Andrade, who pulled his son off the card. Meanwhile, the top WBO contenders in the junior middleweight division, including No. 1 contender Canelo Alvarez, have shown no interest in fighting Andrade. So he remains a champion without an opponent, or apparently much respect. Hopefully, he?ll get a little more of both in 2015.
