The Best Champion in Boxing for 2015:
Champion of the Year is similar to, but different, from Fighter of the Year. To earn honors as Champion of the Year, a fighter’s accomplishments must be focused on facing the best contenders in his division, defending his title often, and putting on excellent performances.
In some cases, this aligns perfectly with the Fighter of the Year, in other cases, it does not. This year though the 2015 Champion of the Year and 2015 Fighter of the Year do indeed match-up…
Gennady Golovkin is the 2015 Boxing Champion of the Year
GGG is raking in the accolades for his 2015 campaign. We made his fight against David Lemieux for our vacant middleweight world championship, as Miguel Cotto was insisting on defending his “middleweight” crown at catchweights beneath the division.
Even before that though, most everyone already assumed that Golovkin was the man in the division, even if he didn’t have the hardware to back it up. This year he made that official, and continued to impress at each stop along the way.
Three fights and three stoppage wins. Martin Murray took him to the 11th round before being stopped, and paid the price of an accumulation of punishment over an extended duration. Willie Monroe was the least qualified of his opponents, and still not a terrible one, and was stopped in the 6th after GGG toyed with him for a bit. David Lemieux brought a world of momentum, confidence and punching power into his fight against Golovkin, and was battered until succumbing in the 8th.
One, two, three, setting them up and knocking them down, literally in this case, with ease.
He fights frequently, he fights worthy competition, he seeks to dominate the entire division, and he closes the show — the big drama show, that is. Everything you want in the Champion of the Year.
And also as with the Fighter of the Year, our runner-up for the award is Roman Gonzalez. One key difference between GGG and Chocolatito is that one of Gonzales’s three fights during 2015 was a stay busy match that was set above the Flyweight division.
Two other names in the mix amongst our division champions include Sergey Kovalev and Shinsuke Yamanaka.
