Fighters with surprising amount of Fights of the Year

Harry Greb being in 2 of them just feels wrong.

 

2 FOTYs in 5 years is pretty decent.

 

More reason as to why it's a crime that we don't have footage of him.

 

Victor Ortiz was in a FotY once, which is probably 1 more than most people would ever expect from him.

 

Nino Benvenuti he was in 2 fights of the years one against Monzon and one against Griffith.

I see his fight vs Monzon I didn't think it was anything special in regards to action.

I've never seen his fight vs Griffith but I can't imagine it being entertaining as Griffith wasn't known as a entertaining fighter.

But yeah seems strange to me Benvenuti is in 2 fights of the year against 2 fighters that probably aren't the most exciting fighters well for me personally anyway.

 

Wasn’t both Gene Fullmer and Jake LaMotta in maybe 1 FOTY each? Seems low.

 

Benvenuti's fights are what the Gestapo used to show allied POW's when trying to extract information from them. When thumb screws didn't work, they'd pull out film of Benvenuti-Rodriguez, and they'd sing like canaries.

Fact.

 

The ring magazine used to usually vote for the most significant fight as the fight of the year. If Gatti-Ward was fought in 1973 Frazier-Foreman would still be voted fight of the year

 

It was a dramatic fight w/ both fighters trading KDs.

 

Rafa Marquez v Izzy Vazquez , back to back fights of the year. Up there with the best wars in boxing history , but to have back to backers, something special for sure.

 

Ivan Calderon being in one FOTY fight considering his style wasn’t known for being an all action fighter but rather a technical slickster. It helped that he was in against a fighter like Segura who always fought aggressively.

 

Carmen Basilio was in Ring's FOTY in 1955, 56, 57, 58, 59.

 

Muhammad Ali had one FOTY and it's when he was still a slicksters,against Doug Jones,also Floyd Patterson who's fragile but good fisted that he'll either got finished early or finish early,surprisingly had a good FOTY with hard punching Ingo and Chuvalo.

 

The Ring’s definition of Fight of the Year shifted over time.

For a long while, it was ‘most important’ fight of the year or ‘event’ of the year. It was the fight that would define boxing for that year due to who was fighting, the stakes, the profile of the fight and how it fit into the public’s imagination.

It didn’t mean best slugfest, best action or most competitive, edge-of-your-seat excitement.

Occasionally those converged, but not often.

Over time it became more the latter — best fight of the year, more of an insider’s award than a ‘this is what the general public would remember as being the biggest’ kind of thing.