My FightHype Awards Ballot

Fighter of the Year: Manny Pacquiao - Tough to dispute.
Fight of the Year: Juan Manuel Marquez KO 9 Juan Diaz
Underrated Fight of the Year Candidate: Juan Urango TKO 11 Randall Bailey
Upset of the year: Juan Carlos Salgado KO 1 Jorge Linares - Absolutely SHOCKING.
KO of the Year: Manny Pacquiao KO 2 Ricky Hatton - There's only OOOOOOONE Ricky Flattened.
Robbery of the Year: Juan Diaz UD 12 Paul Malignaggi
Ridiculous Scorecard of the Year: Gale Von Hoy - 118-110 Juan Diaz over Paul Malignaggi - I hope the check cleared.
Ridiculous Scorecard of the Year, Runner-up: Pierre Benoist - 119-110 Paul Williams over Sergio Martinez
Ridiculous Scorecard of the Year, 3rd Place: Dave Moretti - 97-92 Breidis Prescott over Miguel Vazquez
Profanity Filled Postfight Crying Fit of the Year: Chris Arreola
Fade of the Year: Jermain Taylor vs. Carl Froch
Completely Worthless Fighter of the Year: Carl Froch
Non-Combat Moment of the Year: HBO's Tribute to Arthur Curry
Statement Win of the Year: Jean Pascal UD 12 Adrian Diaconu
Future Fast Food Endorser of the Year: James Toney - It will take something big to take it away from JT. "Burger King! Yeah baby! Burger King! Burger King!"
Sad but Funny Moment of the Year: Juan Urango vs. Hermann Ngoudjo - 5 minute round ... Seriously, how in blue hell does that happen?
Cure Your Insomnia Fight of the Year: Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. UD 10 Troy Rowland
One-Sided Drubbing of the Year: Andre Ward UD 12 Henry "Sugar Poo" Robinson
Jim Lampley Vocabulary Builder Word Usage Moment of the Year: Skulduggery, used during round 1 of Mosley-Margarito - I never thought I'd hear anyone but Mike Tyson use that word in a sentence for no good reason.
"Just Go Away" Fighter of the Year: Hector Camacho Sr.
Bitch of the Year: Mikkel Kessler - That nonsense after the Ward beatdown was shameful. Victor Ortiz had this wrapped up until Kessler started whining.
Classic Boxing Pick Just to Piss JonnyBlaze Off of the Year: Roy Jones Jr. KO 1 Archie Moore
Classic Boxing Pick Just to Piss JonnyBlaze Off of the Year Runner-up: Pernell Whitaker KO 2 Benny Leonard
Fallen Fighter Who Will Be Dearly Missed of the Year: Vernon Forrest - Many, many lives were touched by this man, and his absence will be felt directly and indirectly by millions of people for years to come. RIP Viper.


2010 has the all makings of a great year for the sport, and it starts off with a bang... just like 2009 did: Shane Mosley in the ring. We'll all be here on the FightHype Community for it all. We've got some great posters on here, and our community will only continue to grow. I've browsed a few forums and there's not another one around that comes close to this one when it comes to knowledgeable discussion and quality. For poster awards, I wouldn't know where to begin. We've got some fantastic posters around here. The only category for which there is a clear winner is Resident Hater of the Year, and your winner is Stevenski. Honestly, that vote should be unanimous. Here's hoping our regulars stay regular, some names from the past resurface, those who don't post enough step up their game, and the newcomers can jump right into the fray and contribute (with the notable exceptions of the PBF nuthuggers who just never shut up and have nothing of substance to throw into the mix... they need their own damn board). Perhaps this is the year we've been anticipating for so long. Maybe the dreams become reality.

Could it all come together? Pacquiao-Mayweather and Mosley gets the winner? A big-time culmination of the Super Six? Williams-Pavlik? Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fights someone with a pulse? Darchinyan-Donaire II? Holyfield-Bowe IV? Col Reb finally gets his wish and nails Chelsea Clinton? Who knows... maybe it all comes together in the 12 months that are just ahead.

My best to everyone here as we leave 2009 and enter 2010.

Ben, thanks for having this place for us all. It's one thing to truly love the sport and enjoy it as much as we do. It's another thing to be able to interact with those who share the same passion (or obsession... whatever). Many thanks.

There's nothing quite like being a connoisseur of the Noble Art., the Sweet Science... the world of boxing.

Evander Holyfield returns in January 2010... seriously.

There are some things in the boxing world that need to happen and never do. There are other things that should never happen and are essentially unstoppable.

This bit of news falls in the second category.

On January 16, 2010, in Uganda, former IBF Heavyweight Champion Francois Botha defends his essentially worthless WBF Heavyweight Title against Evander Holyfield.

Oh boy. It's the matchup that the boxing faithful have been clamoring for, finally coming to fruition and changing the landscape of the division forever.

Either that, or providing further evidence of how truly awful the state of heavyweight boxing is at present. Holyfield vs. Botha? What is out there for the winner? A unification with IBU Champion Gene Pukall? I know what you're thinking: "Who is Gene Pukall?" Exactly. This is getting ridiculous. The fact that Holyfield is still fighting is one thing, especially considering that Nikolay Valuev, who lost his WBA championship to David Haye earlier this month, should have lost the title in late 2008 to 46-year old Holyfield who, on my card, won 10 of 12 rounds. Plus, the man is a legend and, despite concerns for his health and the fact that it is in direct conflict with sanity and common sense, he has earned the right to decide when it is time to stop fighting. It seems that prizefighting is the only occupation in which a worker can be told when they must stop going to work, and that is not necessarily fair. Just don't let Holyfield-Bowe IV happen in any form other than a video game simulation. (You can laugh but please remember that both are still 'active fighters'. Just food for thought.)

But why is Botha still fighting, and why is Holyfield, a legend who should be able to rustle up a fight with almost anyone, fighting him on his own turf for a paper title? Botha is a heavyweight who was never anything special to begin with, in spite of the belief of "The White Buffalo" of FightHype Community fame, who is now over 40, overweight, and still nothing more than a blip on the screen in a diluted heavyweight division. There are few, if any, logical answers to those questions. This fight is pointless, especially for Holyfield. Evander was thought to be on borrowed time before his first fight with Mike Tyson in 1996. If he still has aspirations of regaining the world championship again, he needs to do it soon and fighting Botha does very little to further that goal.

Do I want to see Holyfield fight either Klitschko? No! That's the last thing I want to see. That's a fight that is dangerous for Holyfield, a man who more than six years ago was knocked out by James Toney.

The heavyweight division is in desperate need of a true contender, a potential exciting champion that can shake up boxing's biggest and most visible division with his fights and not just his mouth. David Haye? All mouth. The Klitschkos win but leave much to be desired for the casual fan. Think back six years. Roy Jones was attempting to move up to heavyweight from 175 to face John Ruiz for the WBA Heavyweight Championship. Yeah, I know. The name of John Ruiz doesn't bring about the same fear and trembling as a prime Tyson but it's still a tall order for a 5'11" light heavyweight, and former middleweight, champion. The buzz for that fight was huge. Among dedicated fight fans, that fight generated more interest than any heavyweight title fight in years since the first Holyfield-Tyson fight in November 1996, even more than Lewis-Tyson, which we all knew was a mismatch when it finally happened in 2002.

Jones dominated Ruiz that night, winning a minimum of 10 rounds, making history, and looking amazing in the process. Immediately, fantasy matchups were being mentioned. What next? Jones-Holyfield? Jones-Tyson? Jones-Toney II at heavyweight? A David vs. Goliath matchup with Lennox Lewis?

The correct answer was: None of the above.

Jones vacated the title, dropped back down to light heavyweight, did it far too quickly, and got knocked out by Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson. The rematch with Tarver was a loss, the potential matchups went out the window and, with them, the excitement that was thought certain.

There is no heavyweight excitement for now, only a string of fringe contenders and C-level fighters with less than impressive credentials. Think back to the musical chair champions of the 1980s. When Larry Holmes held the world title, the WBA and WBC belts jumped between Tim Witherspoon, Tony Tubbs, Pinklon Thomas, Trevor Berbick, Gerrie Coetzee, and so on. Does anyone think that David Haye or Kevin Johnson or Chris Arreola or Tony Thompson would have gotten close to a belt in those times; times of which people dare to refer to as weak for the division? I'll take Terrible Tim and a motivated Tony Tubbs over this crop any day of the week. Something has to happen soon that lights the fire under the division and only two things will do that: an exciting young contender and great fights on a big stage. Holyfield vs. Botha fails to meet either criteria.

So for any great athletes that don't mind taking a few punches, working hard, and potentiall making a few million dollars for 2 or 3 fights a year, it's time to man up. Boxing may not desperately need you, but we'd sure love to have you.

Opening Bell

To be sure, when it comes to the Squared Circle, the Sweet Science, the Noble Art, or whatever you wish to call it, I'm rather opinionated when it comes to the world of boxing. It is, in its basic form, the most pure of all sports. No, not when it comes to the promoters or the so-called sanctioning bodies but in terms of the competition itself. There are no teammates to blame, no finger pointing to be done that deflects responsibility and accountability onto someone else, or even equipment or instrument failure to blame. As a fighter, when you step into the ring it's all about you, and it's all on you. No other sport can make such a claim.

For me, anyone who knows me knows that my involvement with sports runs deep, as a participant, as a fan, as a journalist, and any number of other aptly named roles. I grew up as an Atlanta Braves fan, one of the few members on the bandwagon in the mid-to-late 1980s when everyone who actually went to a game had their own usher. These weren't division winning teams. These were teams of Dale Murphy, Bob Horner, and Ken Oberkfell. Bobby Cox? Hardly. Try Chuck Tanner and Russ Nixon. When the glory days came in 1991, I was right there enjoying it. I always watched the Lakers because of the connection with WVU by way of Jerry West. I grew up watching the Showtime Lakers of the 1980s, with Magic, Worthy, Kareem, Byron Scott and the whole crew. Now I barely watch the NBA, but when I do I watch the Lakers. There's college basketball when WVU plays, and for the entire tournament of course, and I've watched tennis since I was little as well. I fell in love with Wimbledon during every summer when school was out and I had my afternoons free to watch McEnroe, Connors, Lendl, Graf, Evert, and the rest, and that gave way to my favorite tournament, the U.S. Open. Beginning with UFC 6, a card with two of the fastest knockouts in the history of the sport (Don Frye vs. Hector Ramirez and Gary Goodridge vs. Paul Herrera), my interest in mixed martial arts started to grow, and continues to this day. Select MMA news and commentary will appear here from time to time.

The two sports that rank above all others are college football and boxing. My life as a West Virginia Mountaineer is one filled with joy and heartbreak, pain and pleasure, success and failure. The 2009 season will be my 22nd full season and 23rd season overall. I started in 1987. I was all of five years old. The stories I've accumulated and experiences I've had over the years are being documented in my short story collection entitled, "Life as a Diehard". I've missed five home games since I started going in October 1987. When West Virginia takes on Pitt on Black Friday, November 27, that will be college football game #159 for me. Being a Mountaineer isn't something I like, it's part of who I am.

The same can be said of boxing.

I can remember starting to get into boxing around the same time that I began going to Mountaineer football games. My dad watched boxing, had HBO, but was hardly a diehard fan. In fact, the Hagler-Leonard decision of 1987 really turned him against the sport for quite a while. But even during this time of displeasure, there were new sources of curiosity that kept him around. One was a short, powerful heavyweight force that was dominating the division with a fury that had not been seen since the reign of Joe Frazier. That force's name was Mike Tyson. In other news, I heard a story about a heavyweight that my father had watched more than a decade before. He told me that this man had stopped boxing and now he was trying to come back and fight again. It seemed like a joke. He was fat and bald. He was obviously overweight and smiled entirely too much for a fighter. He also possessed the blunt force power to knock his opponent's head off. That man's name was George Foreman. After watching Tyson and Foreman, I was hooked on boxing by the time I was 7 years old. I would watch every fight I could find on the airwaves. USA Tuesday Night Fights (or whichever night they were televising on that month), ESPN Top Rank Boxing, HBO World Championship Boxing, I watched it all. I was a sponge for it, just like football.

I remember watching Tyson destroy Spinks in 91 seconds. I remember watching the Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns rematch in 1989 before I was scoring fights, and wondering why they said the fight was even when it was pretty obvious that Hearns had beaten Leonard. I didn't understand why such a decision was rendered. All these years later, I still don't. As my knowledge and understanding and interest grew, boxing became more and more important. In early 1990, I knew that two big fights were happening that could make the two fighters that brought me to the sport meet in the ring. In January, I watched Foreman hammer Gerry Cooney. But in February, I watched that dream fight fade away when a 42-1 underdog named Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson and shocked the world. What drama.

The years have passed and boxing remains in its rightful place in my life. I write for FightHype, and will shamelessly link to them as much as possible. I wrote for the defunct Boxing.com when I was a teenager in the late 1990s, and I still have the jacket hanging in my closet. I'm working with an aspiring boxer. I do a little of everything. But above all, I watch (and score) every fight on every network. My DVD collection of boxing is getting ridiculous, spanning from the start of the 20th century to the latest broadcast from last weekend. There's just nothing else like it.

This will be a place full of opinion, news, commentary, shameless venting, historical analysis and perspective, and all points in between. I'm sure the guys from the FightHype community will stop by from time to time and any other fight fans who may stop in should seriously consider joining the community as well. It's... interesting. It may not be the biggest forum but it could very well be the most knowledgeable (with the exception of the Mayweather Fan Club that just seems to be completely out of touch with reality). Here's hoping it's a nice experience, and place for discussion, for every reader that visits.

The opening bell has rung.