Despite the time devoted to making the right year-end selections, the awards usually end up validating the consensus choice?
?You always say I?ll quit when I start to slide, and then one morning you wake up and you?ve done slid.??Sugar Ray Robinson
There are rarely any surprises when it comes to year-end awards. Despite the time devoted to what we believe is the right year-end selection, the awards usually end up validating the consensus choice. A notable exception was when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave the Oscar for Best Picture to the ordinary ?Ordinary People? instead of the triumphant ?Raging Bull,? as it did in 1981.
In this year?s contest for Fighter of the Year, it looked like it was between Gennady Golovkin (Boxing.com?s choice), Canelo Alvarez, Roman Gonzalez, and Floyd Mayweather, the sentimental favorite who has just retired.
Few gave the nod to Tyson Fury, despite his having upset heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko on November 28 in Dusseldorf, Germany. But among those few, The Ring, neither known as the Bible of Boxing nor much of a risk-taker nowadays, stuck its neck out by naming Fury Fighter of the Year for having ?breathed energy into a lifeless division.?
That he did.
Klitschko hadn?t lost a fight in over a decade. He was being mentioned in the same breath as Larry Holmes, Muhammad Ali, and even Joe Louis. And he exuded class, both in and out of the ring.
But Klitschko, for all his attributes, had grown stale. At 39 he was starting to slide, as aging fighters always do.
And along came Tyson Fury.
He is big. He is brash. And while he might not have fought his heart out to win the title, it wasn?t necessary, since Klitschko did next to nothing.
?With his victory,? writes The Ring, ?Fury also turned boxing?s traditional glamour division upside down. The heavyweights had become largely an afterthought because of the Klitschko brothers? dominance. Now rising big men like Deontay Wilder, Anthony Joshua and Luis Ortiz?combined with Fury and a beatable Klitschko?have made the division interesting again.
?The other finalists for the award were Canelo Alvarez, Gennady Golovkin, Roman Gonzalez and Floyd Mayweather Jr. They all accomplished big things in 2015, but none shook up the sport like Fury did.?
Based on that criterion, maybe The Ring should have awarded Fury Shakeup of the Year, but that?s for another contest in another year in a category that does not yet exist.
The Ring?s other awards for 2015 are:
Fight of the Year: Francisco Vargas vs. Takashi Miura Knockout of the Year: Canelo Alvarez vs. James Kirkland Round of the Year: Amir Imam vs. Fidel Maldonado Jr. (Round 3) Upset of the Year: Tyson Fury vs. Wladimir Klitschko Comeback of the Year: Badou Jack Trainer of the Year: Joe Gallagher Prospect of the Year: Takuma Inoue Event of the Year: Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao (ahem) Most Inspirational: Anthony Crolla
