Handing Out 2008 Boxing Awards

Fighter of the Year: Manny Pacquiao
↵I hoped to be a little idiosyncratic with my TSB boxing awards, but this one is about as unanimous as a Fighter of the Year ballot has been in I don’t know how long. To give the 2008 FOY to anyone but Pac Man would be like giving the 2008 American Politician of the Year award to anyone but Obama. It’s just not on, as they say in the Jolly Old.
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↵To recap, Mighty Manny won a masterful rematch with Juan Manuel Marquez in March (worthy of honorable mention in the Fight of the Year category), then moved up a weight class in June and took David Diaz’s WBC lightweight belt like he was taking candy from a very slow, possibly drunk baby, and then capped off his year in December by jumping up two more weight classes and making the biggest name in the sport look like he wasn’t fit to be a sparring partner for David Diaz. It’s about as complete and awe-inspiring campaign as a fighter could have in the modern era.
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↵In fact, I’d say that about the only person in the world who had a better year was Obama himself, and even that’s a close call.↵

↵↵I admit the decision is purely based on personal preference, and heavy personal bias (in that I was ringside for Margs/Cotto and not in the building for Vazquez/Marquez). But that bias aside, even if I had watched both fights on television, I’m pretty sure that I would favor Margarito/Cotto. It was a grander affair, much more cinematic. It had the Mexico/Puerto Rico angle. And it had better dramatic pacing, not to mention the element of surprise. We’d seen Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez go to war twice before, and their second fight was the consensus FOY in 2007. We knew what we would get from them, and the fact that they managed to exceed our expectations nevertheless is quite a testament to both principals. ↵

↵↵But no one had any idea whether what seemed on paper to be a potential bloodbath between Tony Margarito and Miguel Cotto would live up to the hype. Of course, it did exactly that and then some, resulting in a welterweight title fight that was to my eyes worthy of Leonard/Hearns, both in its irresistible force vs. immoveable object quality and in its immensely pleasing fights-within-a-fight narrative. Plus, unlike the hotly disputed decision in Vazquez/Marquez (a split decision for Vazquez marred by an unfair point deduction for a not-so-low blow), Margarito/Cotto ended conclusively, with an undefeated warrior of Cotto’s stature, a man much accustomed to breaking the will of his opponents, having his own spirit and body utterly broken by a Margarito so intractable and immune to pain that the only fighter from the past that leaps to mind in comparison is the liquid metal mofo from T2. ↵

↵↵In conclusion, don’t get me wrong -- I follow this sport very closely, and I know what we saw in Vazquez/Marquez III. But Margarito/Cotto was something to me just a tad more … epic. And in that it’s not going to get its due anywhere else, here at TSB it is the Fight of the Year.↵

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↵Round of the Year: Vazquez/Marquez III, Round 4
↵Just to let all you diehards out there know that I’m not completely hating, I hereby give Vazquez and Marquez their due in the Round of the Year sweepstakes. I see that most of my fistically obsessed colleagues are going with the one-round Holt/Torres rematch, and while I agree that those sixty seconds of insanity were indeed insane, I’m sour on that fight because I think it’s clear that Holt’s ultimate KO of Torres was the product of a massive (unintentional) headbutt. ↵↵No headbutt mars the fourth of Vazquez/Marquez III. You really could choose any number of rounds in this fight for ROY, but the fourth sticks out as the genuine jaw-dropper, a savage, back-and-forth affair (like every round between these two) in which Marquez put Vazquez down on the canvas with about a minute left in the round and Vazquez got right back up and nearly returned the favor. ↵

↵↵Upset of the Year: Brian Vera -- TKO7 -- Andy Lee
↵By far the most popular choices here are two much higher profile fights than my choice -- Bernard Hopkins over Kelly Pavlik in October and Nate Campbell over Juan Diaz back in March. They were both big upsets, no doubt, but then again, Bernard and Nate are crafty s.o.b.’s who have been around the block a few times. A lot of experts were calling Nate (“The Galaxxy Warrior”) to expose the young Diaz, and as for Bernard, much as I thought he would lose to Pavlik, I’ll never be completely surprised when he beats anyone because he knows the sweet science better than anyone alive. The man is a living legend.↵

↵↵Brian Vera, on the other hand, is a Contender reject. A very, very tough one, but still, when he took on Manny Steward’s prime prospect Andy Lee on Friday Night Fights back in March, he was an “opponent” in the truest sense of the old boxing term. Steward had called Lee one of the greatest pure fighters he’d ever trained, and many thought that by the end of the year he would be fighting, and quite possibly beating, Kelly Pavlik for the middleweight crown. Brian Vera was little more than a speedbump on that trip to immortality -- he was there to take a lot of huge shots and get spectacularly knocked out by this lanky Irish southpaw known for his gigantic left-and punching power. ↵

↵↵When Lee put Vera down in the first round with that left, it seemed like the script would play out exactly as everyone planned. Unfortunately for Manny Steward and his charge, Vera hadn’t read the script. He proceeded to take ungodly punishment from Lee for the next six rounds, at which point Lee ran out of gas and the hunter was suddenly the hunted. Vera finished him in the seventh in a mammoth reversal of fortune. It was a controversial stoppage, but one that afterwards Steward did not complain about, because Lee was getting destroyed in there even though he was still on his feet. This really is my favorite kind of upset, the bona fide Rocky stuff that still happens now and then in the fight game, where the tomato-can set up to lose nobly takes down a Prima Donna prospect with the mere force of his will.↵

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↵Knockout of the Year: Edison Miranda -- KO3 -- David Banks
↵I was watching live when this KO happened on Friday Night Fights in January, and the second afterwards, I thought to myself, well, I’ll be writing about that knockout 11 months from now when I’m handing out my Knockout of the Year award. And so it is. That Miranda, La Pantera … he can’t box worth a crap, but one thing is for damn sure -- when he turns the lights out, he turns ‘em all the way out. In this thing, it looks David Banks was shot point blank by a glock nine.↵

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