ESPn: Fighter of year is.... Canelo

lol at Alvarez deserving "Fighter of the Year".

 

Once again proving ESPN DKSAB.

 

Not really. He beat a bum, and a small old man.

 

Canelo instantly won this when he saved boxing from the May 2 debacle

 

Fury, Gonzales, Mayweather and even Golovkin are more deserving than Alvarez. Beating a shot Kirkland and a Cotto he outweighed by at least 15 pounds in a competitive decision does not warrant the award imo.

 

What, you referring to Mayweather vs. Cotto II @ MW in 2016 had Cotto won? :huh

That would've been a really interesting fight, actually (given how much success Miguel had last time with Floyd - a lot more than Saul himself, mind you, as long as you ignore that one daft *****'s scorecard - combined with the role played by Cotto's enhanced strength and conditioning since then and Freddie Roach in the corner, along with Mayweather showing evidence of decline and not looking so hot as he sputtered across the finish line in Maidana II, Pacquiao and Berto) - kind of a shame we didn't get to see it.

 

very suspect manipulated just to promote and endorse him as the next cash cow of the sport. ggg, gonzales, and fury have better accomplishments.

 

Honestly, this year came down to who had the best individual win.

Fury > Klitschko
Mayweather > Pacquiao
Canelo > Cotto

While GGG and Roman looked impressive neither had a signature win.

 

Any "...of the year..." which is done before the year is over has no legitimacy. This was shown last year when Naoya Inoue was robbed of fighter of the year and Shingo Inoue was robbed of trainer of the year.

 

Yeah well we all know the criteria on how you rate a fighters accomplishments.... Moron.

 

I disagree. That's a very superficial way of looking at it, and determining the F'erOTY in 2015 requires a more nuanced approach.

All three of those signature individual wins have mitigating factors that make them not quite as great as they could be. (Pacquiao was the 2nd best p4p of their generation and still beating decent fighters but was always stylistically going to be the underdog in the superfight, and had lost more of his physical tools by 2015 than Mayweather had; Klitschko was the long-reigning dominant unified HW champion but was already pushing the limits of reason on extending his able-bodied elite years and had looked very pedestrian against Jennings, and fought like a terrified pet bunny roaming outside its cage against Povetkin; Cotto was lineal middleweight champ and, like Pacquiao and Klitschko is going to be a first ballot Hall of Fame inductee but he is a blown-up natural 140/147lber who positioned himself in the right place at the right time with some very shrewd matchmaking and is nobody's idea of a great MW champ, and was considerably older and slower than Canelo)

So you need to look more than just a single win deep this year.

Beyond those HOF guys they beat (with asterisks), Fury, Mayweather, and Canelo don't have a lot of depth. Hammer, Berto, and Kirkland...meh.

So we're looking at overall body of work. Golovkin and Gonzalez both rate higher than all three by that metric.

 

I can respect that.

There will be complaining no matter who gets it.

 

Golovkin didn't really have a significant win, sure Murray and Lemieux are top MWs but let's be honest, they're not much more than B level fighters.

Gonzalez beat a bum and two guys who you can apply just as much criticism as for Pacquiao/Klitschko wins except they're nowhere near that level as fighters.

It's strange how rare a real top level win is nowadays.