Terence Crawford is my #1 Followed closely by Pacquiao. I think that Terence has the strongest run considering where he started the year and where he ended it. You can pick at his opponents a bit and call him a big fish in a small pond at lightweight, but I think his run was the most surprising and impressive. But I think Manny is a close second with his win over Tim Bradley, a legit top 5 pound for pound guy and probably the biggest win anybody got this year. Kovalev has a great win too, but I think there’s a big difference between beating a prime Bradley vs beating Hopkins on his way out of boxing. My two cents.
Kovalev's win was more significant than anything anyone else's on the list. Point blank. He dominated a top 10 of all time MW, the legit # 2 or 3 LHW, the oldest champion in boxing history. It's not even close.
I agree on picking pac....I think he needed that KTFO 6 to wake him back up to loving boxing again...I think he got board with it, because he had done so much in boxing, it wasn't nothing left to GET UP FOR!!
Inoue, closely followed by Roman Amnat Ruenroeng has had an amazing year but Gonzalez sort of ****ped over him with the way he destroyed Fuentes
if Naoya Inoue defeats Narvaez in a great performance, he should get the nod of FOY. Just the fact of jumping from light flyweight to super flyweight to challenge the best fighter in this division, its quite remarkable, what about to mention that it will be his 8th professional fight? We have to mention too that the transition in the small weights is not easy, because every pound difference means a lot, due to the small size of these guys. Crawford is a great promise, but two of his wins came against guys that were having not the best moment of their respective career: Gamboa didn't have a great performance from long time ago, maybe since his win over Orlando Salido, back in 2010, and was inactive for one full year, after his dreadful fight against Darley Perez and also you should take into account that he shouldn't have even been at lightweight. Ricky Burn was flashing his decline two fights before Crawford (Gonzalez and Beltran) and seems that he is finished too. Beltran is a solid ''c" class fighter (like Gabriel Rosado).
Inoue if he beats Narvaez without controversy will take it for me. But if that doesn't happen, then my current order is: 1. Ruenroeng 2. Roman 3. Crawford 4. Pacquiao 5. Kovalev 6. Walters 7. Wladimir 8. Mayweather 9. Alvarez 10. Golovkin 11. Cotto 12. Povetkin And then it's a mesh of Drozd, Frampton, Estrada, so on and so on... Still have the chance of other fighters entering the discussion among these guys if upsets happen but even if they do the top 6 are pretty much untouchable. Possible underdog conquerors of the 12/30 and 12/31 Japanese cards could earn good shouts and Khan will have had a good year if he beats Alexander without controversy.
Kovalev -> Crawford - > Wlad - > Walters -> GGG in about that order. Kovalev had the best year, fighting often and getting a real good win for the record books. Crawford had a couple good wins, put on some good performances. Wlad continued to dominate, and had a really nice KO of Pulev who was a legit guy. Walters burst on scene win KO over Donaire. GGG didnt get the household names, but continued to show that the rest of the division is levels below in entertaining fashion. Manny had a good win over Bradley , but decisioning Bradley doe snot a FOTY make in my book. If he had KOed Bradley, or even stopped Algieri maybe I'd consider him in the running. But really KOvalev beating a legend handily and unifying titles, combined with a couple KOs, Crawford KOing a name and becoming the "man" at 135, Wlad continuing undisputed dominance and punctuating the year with a great KO, Walters making a real statement against Donaire, and GGG continuing his run of steady high quality work all trump a UD over Bradley and a UD over Algieri in my book.