By Matthias Predonzan: Approaching the end of 2016, it is the time for the traditional practice to determine the best and more unique moments in boxing, during the closing year.
This year we didn’t have a “fight of the Century”, like in 2015, with the long waited for – Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao – match.
The fight of the year, the one everybody was waiting for or, more objectively said, the fight that would have brought the biggest pay-per-view numbers, failed to materialize. I’m referring to the fight between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady “GGG” Golovkin.
Therefore I think it is a common perception that the more important fight of the year, the one that should have determined the pound-for-pound boxing king was the match between Sergey Kovalev and Andre Ward.
Of all the recognition’s that could be made in the sport of boxing – best fight, best fighter, best trainer, best prospect and so on – the one I would like to focus at this moment, is to try to determine, more objectively as possible, the best fighter of 2016.
Of course, being boxing a sport based on personal opinions, everybody have the right to see it from his own perspective.
In order to make this discussion acceptable, I explain which one are the parameters that I took into consideration with this exercise.
– I considered boxers that are at elite level. Fighters included into the most popular pound-for-pound lists and official boxing ranking
– I considered the most impressing achievements that these boxers have reached in 2016, in term of public recognition but mostly, in term of level of opposition they have fought against and how they were able to win their fights, namely in a dominant and spectacular way.
Going through rankings and fights, I ended up with the following list of names:
Alvarez Saul
Charlo Jermall
Crawford Terence
Frampton Carl
Gonzalez Roman
Golovkin Gennady
Inoue Naoya
Joshua Anthony
Linares Jorge
Lomachenko Vasyl
Mares Abner
Pacquiao Manny
Ramirez Gilberto
Russel Jr Gary
Salido Orlando
Spence Jr Errol
Thurman Keith
Usyk Olexandr
Valdez Oscar
Varga Francisco
Yamanaka Shinsuke
Ward Andre
Accordingly with the parameters I wanted to use, the most important of which are THE LEVEL OF OPPOSITION AND THE QUALITY OF THE VICTORIES, it is clear that from the above list of 22 fighters I have to remove many important names.
Scrolling down the list, the first name to fall is Saul Alvarez.
He won his fights in a very dominant way but the level of his contenders, during 2016 was low.
The same applies to Anthony Joshua, who made big steps forward, in term of recognition but fought very average fighters in the process.
For the same reason I remove from my list also Spence jr, Ramirez, Linares, Inoue, Usyk, Valdez, Crawford, Golovkin, Russel jr, Yamanaka.
The finalists of my personal “best fighter of the year 2016” are:
Jermall Charlo
Carl Frampton
Roman Gonzalez
Manny Pacquiao
Vasyl Lomachenko
Abner Mares
Manny Pacquiao
Keith Thurman
Francisco Vargas
Orlando Salido
Andre Ward
I think Andre Ward fought only one top contender, Sergey Kovalev and his win was not a dominant one.
Same applies to Keith Thurman, Vargas and Salido.
Abner Mares fought only once in 2016.
Pacquiao and Charlo were dominant but the level of opposition a step lower than the top three that are:
Carl Frampton, Roman Gonzalez and Vasyl Lomachenko.
Considering the level of Roman Martinez and Nicholas Walters, the dominance displayed in these fights, the technical level of skill and the spectacular style and outcome of his victories, I have no doubt that Vasyl Lomachenko is the best fighter of 2016 boxing year.
Nothing was missing from Lomachenko performance.
The fighters he fought, Roman “Rocky” Martinez and Nicholas Walters are very good fighters and he completely dominated them with better technique, speed, power and ring generalship.
The two fights were highly spectacular. The Martinez fight ended with one of the most spectacular KO of the year and the same didn’t happened agonist Walters only because the Jamaican fighter decided to quit.
It looks like Lomachenko is going to climb quickly the P4P ranking and maybe able to establish himself as one of the next pay-per-view stars of boxing.