So very sorry to be so slow with our service of the conclusion of the 2015 boxing awards. Your waiter humbly apologies. We’re bringing out two enormous platters to conclude them.
In the first installment, the flavor was heavy and serious. In the second one, that flavor is light and fluffy. Just add “award” at the end of every category below and devour ’em all. Feel free to send them back to the waiter if you’d prefer something else. Also, please add in some of your own dishes.
And don’t forget to consume all the major category nominees and winners from the past weeks’ awards blog entries, if you haven’t yet.
Worst Opponent Choice. Adrien Broner made a big show in 2015 of calling out… journeyman Ashley Theophane. But at least he didn’t fight a man who had only three 10-rounders in his career and who spent much of the pre-fight chatter denying that he was a stripper, the way then-top middleweight Peter Quillin did. Naturally, that man suffered a brutal, scary knockout.
Trash Talk. Terence Crawford was ice cold in telling Dierry Jean after beating him up, “He called me out twice. Did you get what you were looking for?” Ronda Rousey was ruthless after beating out Floyd Mayweather for an ESPY, “I wonder how Floyd feels being beat by a woman for once.” But nothing tops this ethering:
@RPopBox pic.twitter.com/asBakyT6Yf
— BoxingScene.com (@boxingscene) December 13, 2015
Drug Test Debacle. Mariusz Wach failed yet another drug test. So did Antonio Tarver. And Kid Galahad claimed his brother spiked his drink with performance enhancing drugs (uh, why?). But you gotta feel for David Price. Erkan Teper probably would’ve KO’d him with or without performance enhancing drugs, because that’s what people do to David Price. But this is one of the rare cases where a fighter on PEDs knocked another fighter out, and that’s worrisome.
Miscalculation. Ring Magazine put Rousey on the cover in what smelled, at the time, like a boxing publication desperately trying to catch some of the heat given off by the mega-popular mixed martial artist. Rousey then promptly lost to Holly Holm, who made her name in… boxing.
Salacious Thing. Former boxer Yusaf Mack turned up in a gay porn film then said a bunch of strange things about why he was in there. It was awkward and uncomfortable. Honorable mentions: Devon Alexander’s homophobic Twitter rant (“…when your anus is stretched out, you are destroyed. Shows how unnatural it is”); former boxer Tim Coleman getting arrested over the murder of an elderly woman; and Shane Mosley getting into a war of words with ex-wife Jin over whether she was married to someone else while she was married to him.
Histrionics. Teddy Atlas’ “fireman” speech, below, takes the cake. Referee Steve Willis’ tweetable, exaggerated facial expressions during the fights, though, comes close.
Magical Realism. Prayer and the ocean’s saltwater healed Manny Pacquiao’s shoulder, he said. Gabriel Garcia Marquez called, he doesn’t believe your story.
Bizarro Comeback. Dmitry Pirog has promised every year to come back, only then he doesn’t. Maybe 2016 is the year, Dmitry! Antonio Margarito is coming back, which nobody wants — not the people who hated him, and not the people who loved him. Zab Judah takes the cake, though. Twice, he was scheduled to return only to have fights canceled on short notice. The second time, it was because he got into a fight before fight night with the man he was supposed to fight on fight night. D’oh.
Weird Victor Ortiz Moment. When he said that Mayweather owed him a rematch “and the world knows it,” we laughed, so that’s the winner. But he also got into a fight at a Kenny Chesney concert, which was also kinda funny but mainly just “Huh?”
Ricky Hatton Memorial. Marcos Maidana, just getting so fat. Hey, man, do what you want. We’ll miss you in boxing but you earned whatever you want to do after all the thrills you gave us in the ring.
Dive. Just… just look at it.
Weird Adrien Broner Moment. This is neck-and-neck. Twice, Broner twice had run-ins with cops and made a point of letting them all know that he was rich. The second time is automatically better, because why do that twice? But it also involved him getting kicked out of a club for violating the dress code, so.
Fashion Decision. That segues into this item, don’t it? Broner loses to Sergey Kovalev because Kovalev in a picture pointed to a kid wearing a shirt with a boxing monkey on it. “Adonis looks great,” he said in a tweet accompanying the picture, mocking his rival. Adonis Stevenson is a black guy and that’s a racist thing to do, Sergey.
Ann Wolfe Quote. The always erudite trainer, upon seeing her former charge James Kirkland knocked out: “It was fucked up.”
Uncool Thing. Somebody burgled the International Boxing Hall of Fame. So very, very not cool.
Waste. Takashi Uchiyama has taken over the mantle from Omar Narvaez of “longtime #1 man in a division who keeps that spot despite fighting no one of consequence for years, just because the division is shallow.”
Trick. I’m still not convinced that this isn’t CGI or something. I could watch Amir Khan do this a million times and remain confused.
Annoying Floyd Mayweather Moment. A. Was it his bunk list of the best fighters of all time? B. Was it him choosing to fight Andre Berto for his “farewell” fight? Or was it: C. His year-end rant about how boxing — which made him super-rich — was racist, because Andre Ward were beneath “a Japanese guy”on Ring Magazine’s pound-for-pound list (a guy he hadn’t heard of despite everyone who follows boxing closely knowing them well, so, naturally, everyone ELSE is racist for thinking that; and let’s not forget Mayweather’s own racist remarks toward Asians when he taunted Pacquiao about making him sushi)? Let’s go C.
Instant Karma. Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. has played weight games with his opponents for years now. The most recent game he played was trying to force a bigger man, Andrzej Fonfara, down to 172 pounds. Fonfara promptly whooped him all fight long and then knocked him out.
Draw. The only thing I learned from Thomas Hauser’s expose of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and the resulting back-and-forth war of words is that both of them are suspect as hell. This fight has been ruled a draw.
Most Overdue Call. Wladimir Klitschko, why don’t you just fight Shannon Briggs already? Just kidding. The most overdue call is Roy Jones, Jr. retiring.
Weird Tyson Fury Moment. Where to start? The heavyweight king blamed abortion and gays for the coming Armageddon, talked about wanting to have a bare-knuckle fight with Barack Obama, dressed up like Batman and wrestled someone dressed like the Joker at a press conference and head-butted a watermelon. But the best is still him beating Klitschko, commandeering the microphone and singing the Aerosmith to his wife in front of all the fans in Germany.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZSmHzcAEw0
