As we begin to wind down the year, not just in boxing but as another disappointing 12 months in our personal lives, the sands of time silently slipping away from us, as we look at our aging hands and wonder where our lives went, the obvious most important question is, "What is the Fight of the Year?"
2014 has been a down year for boxing after a great 2013, even if the business figures don't reveal much difference between the two. Premium cable boxing in the United States has been a huge disappointment, with few real standout fights between Showtime and HBO, and frankly nothing particularly good coming from the HBO side to date.
In the video above, our friend Corey Erdman of The Fight Network runs through five top candidates for Fight of the Year as of this moment. Here are his picks:
- Francisco Rodriguez Jr vs Katsunari Takayama, August 9
- Lucas Matthysse vs John Molina, April 26
- Curtis Stevens vs Tureano Johnson, April 4
- Orlando Salido vs Terdsak Kokietgym, September 20
- Robert Guerrero vs Yoshihiro Kamegai, June 21
Two of those fights (Matthysse-Molina and Guerrero-Kamegai) aired on Showtime. None of them aired on HBO. For U.S. TV, the first and fourth fights were shown on beIN Sports Espanol, while Stevens-Johnson was broadcast by NBC Sports.
Do you have any darkhorse candidates? Do you agree with the "clubhouse leader" here, as I do?