Fighter of the Year - 2025

For fun, let me make a case for Bam. Crawford beat an aging ATG who has been on a visible downslide. Bam beat TWO undefeated world champs who were BOTH coming off impressive wins. And he didn't just win, he absolutely dominated them, stopped Cafu, knocked out Martinez. And he didn't fight dirty, he didn't act like an ass, he was pure class the entire way. If you're a title holder and not undisputed, what's more impressive than doing what he did?

Ok, now for Jake Paul. Let me make the case for Promoter of the Year. This ****in' Disney kid decides he's going to become a boxer, and credit to him, ACTUALLY does it. Is he a great boxer? No. Is he fairly a decent journeyman now? Could he win some low level regional tournaments? Yeah, absolutely. Ok, so then Jake Paul has some freakshow fights, willingly turns himself into a total Heel, gets all the fans of the actual sport to hate him, brings along a bunch of casuals who like him for whatever reason. Attempts an actual interesting fight with Tank -- who wins between a journeyman CW and a world class LW? Interesting science experiment. Except Tank ****s it up because he decides to fight a 1 round tuneup against his babymama. So what does Jake do? Swap in someone nobody cares about? No. Decides to give everybody who hates him EXACTLY what they've been wanting to see, and legitimately goes out there and does it, with predictable results, in front of a TV audience about 30x the size of what your average boxing event gets. Then, AFTER, with a broken ass jaw and possibly boxing career ending injuries, he's making humorous self deprecating videos about the fight. Along the way he brings a ton of attention to women's boxing, gets these ladies real money for the first time in their careers. Oh, and finally makes Anthony Joshua a thing in the US. Hate Jake all you want, but in a funny sort of way, what he's pulled off is pretty amazing.

 

That year was 2020 though, a special case. Most world-level fighters only fought once that year due to Covid so there wasn't a lot to pick from. There isn't really any justification for Crawford to win or even share the FOTY award when Inoue defended his undisputed titles 4 times in the same year, all against ranked challengers.

 

1- Naoya Inoue

2- Crawford

3- Usyk

4- Bivol

5- Oscar Collazo

6- Devin Haney

7- Jesse "Bam" Rodriguez

8- Seiya Tsutsumi

I preferred to include a variety of weight classes. I still think Oscar Collazo's achievements are too often overlooked in the boxing world; he's only the second strawweight in history to win The Ring belt, after all. And his 2025 season was more than perfect, with two successful title defenses, outclassing two dangerous challengers, especially the second, Jayson Vayson... who, even without the weight cut, is still a flyweight/super flyweight, a clear size difference compared to Oscar Collazo, and yet...

Between Devin Haney and Jesse "Bam" Rodriguez, it was a difficult choice, but I believe Haney beat the best in his division this year, which isn't necessarily the case for Jesse "Bam" Rodriguez... Fernando Daniel Martinez was already declining and undoubtedly showed the effects of his previous fights.

Seiya Tsutsumi also deserves more attention. He's the best bantamweight now that Ryosuke Nishida and Junto Nakatani have moved up to super bantamweight. He beat Takuma Inoue (the current number 2 bantamweight) and was a stylistic nightmare for him. He went toe-to-toe with Daigo Higa twice, the second encounter of which, for me, was the most intense fight of the year. And he's coming off a hard-fought victory against Nonito Donaire, who, despite being very old and almost retired, remains a formidable opponent in the division—still a top-five contender. The next step will surely be to defeat Antonio Vargas, then Kazuto Ioka, and that promises to be thrilling. There's also talk of a third fight against Daigo Higa! But everything points to Seiya Tsutsumi being one of the best champions in bantamweight history. And I'm not even mentioning his impressive victory over Riku Masuda, who is rapidly rising in the division and will likely challenge Christian Medina Jimenez (WBO) for a title in the near future.

 

3 were in The Ring top ten

 

Picasso too ?

 

Yeah, he was #3 so #4 overall.