Tyson Fury and Teofimo Lopez joint winners of 2020 Ring Magazine Fighter of The Year award

By Boxing News - 12/21/2020 - Comments

By Scott Gilfoid: In a controversial move, Ring Magazine has announced that WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury and unified IBF/WBA/WBC/WBO lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez are the winners of the 2020 Fighter of The Year award.

Rather than just picking one guy, which is normally done, the Ring staff selected two guys and made a mess of things by putting Fury (31-0-1, 21 KOs) in with the talented Teofimo (16-0, 12 KO). What a pity.

If you’re Teofimo, do you accept the Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year award or do you turn it down and tell them to come back when they’re ready to give it to him all alone?

It’s just weird that Ring Magazine would rate Fury’s win over Deontay Wilder in the same light as Teofimo’s monstrous victory over Vasily Lomachenko.

Why does there have to be two winners?

I think I speak for everyone here when I say that picking two winners for the Ring Magazine award for 2020 is dumb, dumb, and dumb.

There only deserved to be one winner, and that was Teofimo Lopez for his sensational 12 round unanioous decision win over Vasily Lomachenko. That was a win that was light years ahead of Fury’s foul-plagued victory over the 6’7″ Wilder last February.

Image: Tyson Fury and Teofimo Lopez joint winners of 2020 Ring Magazine Fighter of The Year award

Lomachenko had captured world titles in three weight classes and won two gold medals in the Olympics. For Teofimo to beat Loma, it was a spectacular victory.

Also, Teofimo beat Lomachenko fair and square without resorting to fouling, which is more than I can say about Fury, who spent much of the fight braining Wilder with rabbit punches to the back of his head.

Fury has fought once in 2020, beating WBC heavyweight hampion Deontay Wilder by a seventh round knockout in a rabbit-punchig filled fight.

Poor Wilder was getting bombarded with rabbit shots from the word go I that fight, and the referee Kenny Bayless just stood and watched without penalizing or disqualiying Fury.

Sadly, Wilder never stood a chance with him tryig to fight under the classic Marquess of Queensberry Rules against a fighter that ruthless in making it a street fight. If you ask where Wilder went wrong, it’s easy to see. He wasn’t willing to scrach and class and throw the rules out the window to get the victory.

Tyson Fury’s win was unimpressive

Fury doesn’t rate to be the joint winner of the Ring Magazine 2020 Fighter of the Year awared in Gilfoid’s eyes. Unless we’re giving out the awards like they’re Cracker Jacks prizes, Fury doesn’t rate.

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If Fury had fought a clean fight against Wilder, you could give him partial credit, but he looked like he was using a hybrid MMA style and getting away with it. The referee should have stepped in penalized Fury until his head was spinning to get him to fight by the rules.

If Ring Magazine wanted to lump a fighter in the same category as Teofimo’s huge win, they should have given it to the talented Canelo Alvarez for the way he embarrased WBA super-middleweight champion Callum Smith last Saturday night.

Canelo’s win over Smith was leagues better than the foul-filled win by Fury over Deontay earlier this year.