1980s FOTY: What FOTYs would you dispute, why, and what fights would you choose over it?

I will watch it, for sure.

Re the 80s being harder to choose than the 70s, I only meant that I agreed with more of The Ring's choices for FOTY, even when they were not my personal picks. The 80s choices weren't just a selection of heavyweight fights that had Ali in them, they were genuinely the best fights of the year (for the most part) - they seemed to stop defaulting to just heavyweight fights as well during that decade.

 

Well, yeah, I think some of those were FOTY before they even took place, such was the magnitude of the event. Had Ali-Frazier 1 only been half the fight it turned out to be then The Ring probably still would have made it FOTY regardless. As it turned out, the fight itself matched the event and so it was absolutely the deserved winner.

Ali-Foreman? Stripped of the context of the times, it's a more debatable choice but the fight captured the public's imagination and the outcome was so shocking that it was elevated to a higher level. The closest I can compare that to is Holyfield-Tyson for my generation.