BoxRec

Who in your opinion is the world boxer of the year?

bigfatjourneyman wrote:Who in your opinion is the world boxer of the year?

Pac man

Pacqiuao or Mayorga.

Wonderful result for Pac man but Mayorga blew away Forrest and then proved it was no fluke by beating him again.

Flip a coin and I won't argue with either of those two.

dont laugh but if Ottke wins next weekend he must warrent a mention...

unified the title. beaten 3 strong challengers already, maybe 4 come next weekend. didnt do it in style but did it know the less..

Jones JR his year has more historical signficance than anything any of the others done.

Ok he beat Ruiz but that was way above his natural weight and Ruiz had just given Holy hell (albeit a faded one) then he dropped 23Lbs to recapture the Light Heavy title....

Second would be Toney who beat the very good Jirov and then leapt to Heavy to completely embarass Holy.


Mayorga only beat Forrestt which is not that big a deal as Forrestt has never been one of the elite IMO anyway ok he had Moselys number...so what Jr Jones had Barreras...shit happens....Mayorga will get smashed to bits against the first elite fighter he faces and thats if he gets past Spinks...

Pacman beat Barrera but that alone isnt enough for me.

I am not contradicting other peoples choices as this is all just a matter of opinion anyway but im just justifying why i chose how i did.

HH

Hardhitters11 wrote:Jones JR his year has more historical signficance than anything any of the others done.

Ok he beat Ruiz but that was way above his natural weight and Ruiz had just given Holy hell (albeit a faded one) then he dropped 23Lbs to recapture the Light Heavy title....

Second would be Toney who beat the very good Jirov and then leapt to Heavy to completely embarass Holy.


Mayorga only beat Forrestt which is not that big a deal as Forrestt has never been one of the elite IMO anyway ok he had Moselys number...so what Jr Jones had Barreras...shit happens....Mayorga will get smashed to bits against the first elite fighter he faces and thats if he gets past Spinks...

Pacman beat Barrera but that alone isnt enough for me.

I am not contradicting other peoples choices as this is all just a matter of opinion anyway but im just justifying why i chose how i did.

HH

good points all but personally i cannot give jones too much credit now we know he is a drugs cheat. Plus his victory over Tarver was controversial.

No way should Jones Jr be fighter of the year when he lost to a mediocre champion like Tarver.

I'd say it's Mayorga definitely if he becomes undisputed champ next weekend.

I can see your point Kilburn but the fact is Jones beat Tarver...check the records you will see it there...

People are not giving Jones enough credit for dropping all that weight being absolutely knackered and ill conditioned and still winning the title....There has probably never been another fighter who could have done that.

I do like Jones but i am actually a Toney fan so am not just blowing his trumpet.

What he done will be written in stone forever and will be remembered by many as the most naturally talented fighter ever.

Although many will disagree me being one of them that is how it will be...

Not that i can see the future or anything.

HH

Must have mis-read Boxing News, I was sure it said Jones beat Tarver

I

Antonio Tarver is worth a mention, after beating Roy Jones by 2/3 clear rounds....

James Toney

1) Toney
2) Jones
3) Mayorga

Honourable mention Sven Ottke.

James Toney

Yes, James Toney came back from the kitchen. I was convinced Jirov was going to do him.

If people want to credit Jones for his "win" over Tarver then that's up to them. I know what took place in that ring, I don't need 3 blind judges to tell me any different. Whether Jones was suffering from weight making is irrelavent when trying to sort out who is the fighter of the year. Jones looked like shite against Tarver and got beat. "Winning" the WBC title counts for nothing in this debate because he CLEARLY didn't deserve it.

In the minority here, but I agree with the judges (although the margin of the result was wrong).

Jones won the fight for me, and created history twice this year.

With regards to Toney I'd say he probably comes a close second. His win over Jirov was fantastic, one of the best fights of the year. But the Holyfield upset hardly goes down as a great achievement in my book. Evander looked absolutely terrible. Truly awful. At anything like his peak he wouldn't have been troubled by Toney's shots no way. All Lights Out proved to me in that fight is that he can pile the weight on and still fight very well. It wasn't a great victory.

Kilburn wrote:With regards to Toney I'd say he probably comes a close second. His win over Jirov was fantastic, one of the best fights of the year. But the Holyfield upset hardly goes down as a great achievement in my book. Evander looked absolutely terrible. Truly awful. At anything like his peak he wouldn't have been troubled by Toney's shots no way. All Lights Out proved to me in that fight is that he can pile the weight on and still fight very well. It wasn't a great victory.

I'd say it was a great victory, not many people thought he could do it and those body shots he was hurting him with weren't just down to Evander being an old man.
Plus Holy looked pretty good in the opening round as he tried to take Toney's head off.
Great win by a great fighter.
Thing I love about Toney is he just gets in there and does it. None of the Hopkins / Jones mouthing off, followed by prolonged neogtiations before turning down the fight as being too dangerous.

Mayorga is defintely in the running too, even though I thought he got outpointed by Forrest in the rematch.

I actually agreed with the judges also StuJones as Tarver was looking really good but only for an average of 30sec a round the majority of the time...the rest of the rounds he wasnt doing enough and although jones was doing little he was doing more throughout the rounds.

Also when Tarver was whaling away at Jones a lot of punches missed or was blocked and the flurries looked much better than they really were,this was due to the fact they was against Jones,as people were so not used to seeing it happen against him they gave Tarver more credit for that alone.

Fact is Jones was poor but was Tarver really that good?

Jones nicked the fight but was lucky to do so...

HH

MW -Claude Abrams said he doubted that Holyfield could even beat Audley Harrison now and I doubt you'd find too many disagreeing with him. That should tell you all you need to know about the 2003 version of The Real Deal.

Toney is still a great fighter though no doubt. Hopefully he'll have some great wins at heavyweight next year. McCline is hopeless, no way is he going to upset the apple cart even with his massive weight "advantage".

Kilburn wrote:MW -Claude Abrams said he doubted that Holyfield could even beat Audley Harrison now and I doubt you'd find too many disagreeing with him. That should tell you all you need to know about the 2003 version of The Real Deal.

He probably said that after Toney fight though - I bet he picked Holyfield to win though didn't he?

MightyWarrior wrote:He probably said that after Toney fight though - I bet he picked Holyfield to win though didn't he?

Maybe he did, not sure. But why should any of that matter? It's what Toney had in front of him on the night that's important when arguing his case for being recognised as fighter of the year. Holyfield looked like he was fighting underwater from about the second onwards.

You trying to ruck with me Mr?

Lets not forget, Toney's fantastic display against arguably the #1 cruiserweight - he dominated Jirov.

Kilburn wrote: You trying to ruck with me Mr?

That's what Friday nights are for aren't they?

No I was just trying to make the point that being wise after the event shouldn't take away the fact that Toney had the balls to get in with Holyfield in the first place. A hard hitting heavyweight legend after all.

Yep I agree MW, Toney wasn't scared of Holyfield, and I'm sure had Evander offered more resistance then Lights Out would have been more than happy to step it up and knock it out of him. Unfortunately he was only required to box within himself.