2020 has been and likely will continue to be a very strange year for everything, and that includes boxing.
We’re coming up on the halfway point of the year, when we sort of have an idea about year-end awards contenders, or at least usually some contenders for things like Fight of the Year. We do have some, but with boxing basically being shut down from mid-March until mid-June, certainly less than normal.
To date, some contenders:
- Elin Cederroos UD-10 Alicia Napoleon-Espinosa (Jan. 10)
- Jonathan Guzman KO-3 Rodolfo Hernandez (Jan. 18)
- Murodjon Akhmadaliev SD-12 Daniel Roman (Jan. 30)
- Jaime Arboleda SD-12 Jayson Velez (Feb. 8)
Maybe you have some others, and there have certainly been other good fights, but if I was narrowing it down for brevity (AND I AM!) those would be my choices — with the addition to the list of last night’s fight between Adam Lopez and Louie Coria, a majority decision for Lopez.
Take a look at the highlights for yourself, but if you can, watch the full fight if you missed it. Both guys showed a lot of grit, toughness, and determination, and the 21-year-old Coria’s relentlessness has to be respect. He may have only had one plan, but damned if it didn’t nearly turn out to be enough.
This was just a good, hard-hitting fight between two hungry young warriors who came to win. You can’t ask a lot more of that, especially right now. This was the fight where it felt like boxing was truly “back,” as we’ve heard touted all week.