Ten years of boxing, boiled down to the “best of” in four categories: Round of the Decade, Knockout of the Decade, Fight of the Decade and Fighter of the Decade.
Sunday: Round of the Decade candidates, plus Knockout of the Decade candidates. Today: Fight of the Decade candidates now, plus Round of the Decade and Knockout of the Decade winners earlier. Tuesday: Fight of the Decade winner, plus Fighter of the Decade top 10. Wednesday: an awards-season Open Thread.
Here are the Ring magazine Fight of the Year winners, in chronological order, with additional nominees from the Boxing Writers Association of America where noted and The Queensberry Rules’ 2009 FOY. Each video included is the first segment of the full fight, except where noted, which should get you started to navigate to the rest of the bout. Who you got?
2000: Erik Morales-Marco Antonio Barrera I
2001: Micky Ward-Emmanuel Burton
2002: Micky Ward-Arturo Gatti I
2003: Arturo Gatti-Micky Ward III (brief highlights)
2003: James Toney-Vassiliy Jirov (BWAA)
2004: Marco Antonio Barrera-Erik Morales III
2005: Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo I
2006: Somsak Sithchatwal-Mahyar Monshipour
2007: Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez II
2007: Kelly Pavlik-Jermain Taylor I (BWAA) (highlights)
2008: Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez III
2009: Paul Williams-Sergio Martinez
(Videos stay up as long as they stay up on YouTube.)