FOTY Anti-Freedom Edition

IB, I thought what you wrote was cogent and well written. I understood what you were saying perfectly. By the way, I just edited the OP to make Tatsuyoshi vs Sirimongkol FOTY in 97. Nobody else has expressed any confusion over what you wrote, but then nobody else has expressed any opinions about the conceit of the thread either. Although, I do thank Scartissue for the corrections he's made when I bungled a fight by not looking up the nationalities of fighters with foreign sounding names I was unfamiliar with.

I wasn't trying to be arrogant and suggest that The Ring is biased toward Americans or that they don't know much about boxing. I have a lot of respect for the journalists at that magazine, in spite of how often I disagree with some of their more recent calls. However, this thread was actually prompted in part by how much I tend to agree with some of their calls in spite of their detractors. I find that many American fighters earned their accolades on merit rather than on bias.

To some extent, I agree that the FOTY list could be better, but other times I find myself agreeing with it wholeheartedly. Was Ali vs Frazier I or Bobby Chacon vs Bazooka Limon IV the worst call they could have made those years? Far from it. But I do understand the frustration that many foreign fans feel when the big fish in their pond doesn't make the same splash in the pages of The Ring. Brazilians probably wanted Acelino Freitas on every cover. Ditto for Australians and Geale, or Germans and Sturm.

I acknowledge that there is a skew that favors American fighters, but I don't think that it is nationalistic bias or racism, as is often suggested. Not that I think we are above such things, although in large part I believe we are. But on a worldwide scale in terms of racism, corruption, and things of that sort I'd give the US a 2/10 well below average.

The real problem is the megaphone. Our fighters get more publicity. Our media spreads around the globe in ways that Japanese, Thai, South African, or Columbian media doesn't.

The other problem is perspective. The Ring, I believe, is based in North America, and so are most of it's journalists. Therefore, most of the people they know are Americans, and most of their articles will be on Americans. It's not that they like Americans more. It's that their experience is quintessentially American and that's the lens they see the world through.

The only way to correct that kind of perspective is through travel or hiring numerous foreign correspondents and probably opening branch offices in other countries. However, such networks of contacts are prohibitively expensive and time consuming to maintain, especially when The Ring probably doesn't have affiliates and distribution in most of these areas. The Ring tried for awhile. They used to have Ring En Espanol etc, but they got their pants beat off them by rival local boxing mags like Guantes. It also may be the case that The Ring sells more copies in America where English speaking American boxers are likely to move more paper than a Spanish speaking Cuban. Not that I know anything about their current business models, but there is likely a language barrier either at the reading end or the reporting side.

Partially, this thread was started as a response to foreign posters who think that American's are all nationalistic/racist/corrupt/narcissistic/etc and partially it was born out of a real desire to learn. I find that making such lists are the equivalent of boxing homework projects. Or you could even think of them as an intellectual game. I saw IntentionalButt's thread on Sirimongkol Singwancha and it sparked my curiosity. I thought of how the last couple of years there have been fights like Akira Yaegashi vs Pornsawan Porpramook that many people said were worthy of fight of the year honors, but most people had never heard of and I was intrigued. I like to unearth hidden gems and snatch them from the aether. That's what I had in mind when I started this thread. It's not meant as an attack on the good men and women at The Ring.

 

I was just thinking that I'd like to see a list of the runners up for every Ring fight of the year the way that Dan Rafael does in his columns. He usually goes five fights deep every year. Unfortunately, I had to s**** that thread idea because I don't own any of the would they be January or December issues of The Ring? And I don't know if they even archived said issues articles on their website.

Good luck finding stuff from before 2005 on the internet. All the web pages have been dropped or reprogrammed since then. It's freaking impossible even finding old East Side Boxing threads about fights, ever since the name change. They say that nothing is ever lost, and you can find dead pages somehow, but I don't know how to necrotize a black mass for all this stuff. Wave a voodoo doll made of memory sticks or some ****. Finding what I've found for this thread has been hard enough.

I have some alternates for a couple of years; but I couldn't even find one fight to put in some of them. I'll try to share some of what I got though. This is off of some sticky pads I jotted notes on, but I'll try to clean up some of the mess.

06 Vazquez vs Gonzalez
05 Jorge Arce vs Hussein Hussein
02 Dorin vs Balbi
01 Bojado vs Rubio
00 Trinidad vs Vargas
Hatakeyama vs Sakamoto
95 Yuri Arbachakov vs Chatchai Sasakul I
94 Onizuka vs Lee
Joichiro Tatsuyoshi vs Yasuei Yakushiji
89 Zaragoza vs Banke I
Harding vs Andries
88 Hideyuki Ohashi vs Jung Koo Chang
87 Bassa vs McAuley
86 Lora vs Vazquez
Myung Woo Yuh vs Mario Alberto Demarco I
84 Chang vs Tokashiki
82 Limon vs Navarette
Navarette vs Choi
Katsuo Tokashiki vs Lupe Madera I
81 Sanchez vs Gomez
Pedrosa vs Ford
80 Minter vs Antuofermo
Lupe Pintor vs Alberto Davila II
Kim vs Mathebula
79 Pipino Cuevas vs Angel Espada
Guty Espada vs Chan Hee Park
77 Monzon vs Valdez II
Carlos Palomino vs Armando Muniz I
72 Masao Ohba vs Orlando Amores
71 Laguna vs Buchanan
70 Olivares vs Castillo II
Mando Ramos vs Sugar Ramos
Efren Torres vs Chartchai Chionoi I
69 Rose vs Rudkin
67 Ortiz vs Laguna
60 Jofre vs Medel
50 Fernandez vs Ortega

The rest should be on the first post. I'm sure I screwed up somewhere and someone will be along shortly to tell me that half of these guys with the funny names are red blooded Americans and I should get my head out of my ass.

 

I lean more toward Orlando Salido vs Roman Martinez I that year. But 2016 would definitely be Orlando Salido vs Francisco Vargas.

 

I just watched Veeraphol Sahaprom vs Toshiaki Nishioka 2 from 2001 and it wasn't the barn burner I was lead to expect. Not bad, but not great either. It was kind of nice picturing them as Roman Gonzalez and Naoya Inoue but the fight didn't really heat up until round 7, and then it cooled a little.

Sahaprom has a pretty impressive record, only losing to Nana Konadu and Hozumi Hasegawa in his first 56 fights, with 14 defenses of his title. And Nishioka goes on to beat Rafael Marquez and hold a title for seven fights before losing to Donaire. It was worth it just to see two high class operators at the lower weights even if it wasn't particularly exciting.

I'm just going to have to look for something else to fill a slot for 2001. Erik Morales vs In Jin Chi looks promising.