By Norm Frauenheim –
One year ends and another begins with a re-energized debate ignited by Naoya Inoue, who didn’t let a chance at a year-ending statement go to waste.
Inoue was efficient for his blend of power plus precision. He was extraordinary for his consistency. He’s not going anywhere. Neither is Terence Crawford.
A good case for both can made in Fighter-of-the-Year and pound-for-pound arguments. Take a poll, and you might get a draw.
From this corner, Inoue gets Fighter of the Year for his brilliance over two bouts, first Stephen Fulton in July and then Marlon Tapales Tuesday in Tokyo. He moves up in weight, from bantam to junior-feather, and continues to do what he did at junior-fly in 2014.
Fighter of the Year? How about Fighter of the Last Decade?
At the top of this pound-for-pound scale, however, it’s still Crawford for a singular performance, best of the year, in stopping fellow welterweight Errol Spence Jr. There’s a lot of talk that Spence was/is shot. Maybe. Still there’s no substantive evidence – no documented answers — to the questions included in all that talk.
What we did see was an extraordinary Crawford, whose dynamic skillset had a lot – perhaps everything – to do with making a onetime pound-for-pound contender look shot.
The eye test continues to say that nobody – not even Inoue — has Crawford’s quick-silver versatility or calculated ability to make the right adjustment at the right time. He’s still boxing’s best finisher, a fighter with a predatory instinct. He knows how and when to close the show.
With only one fight, however, he just didn’t do enough of it last year. Inoue did. Hence, this corner’s split ballot.
But there are no losers in this debate. It’s the debate itself, its intensity, that gives the business some vital momentum going into 2024.
The biggest news story in 2023 was Showtime’s decision in October to leave ringside after a 37-year run of boxing telecasts. In its final year, the network provided what could be a good springboard into a new — pivotal — year, especially with the pay-per-view bouts featuring Tank Davis-Ryan Garcia in April and Crawford-Spence in July.
A reported pay-per-view number of 1.2 million for Davis-Garcia proved there was still an audience out there, despite all the doom-and-gloom that suggested boxing was dying all over again.
Then, there was Crawford-Spence, a long-awaited fight that restored faith among hard-core fans that big fights could still get made.
What’s next? Amazon Prime. It and Saudi money figure to be the biggest stories in 2024. It’s still not known how much Amazon Prime will invest in the sport as boxing’s next broadcast platform. Meanwhile, the Saudis have already shown they’re willing to spend, especially on the heavyweights. But the sport’s inherent unpredictability is always a risk.
To wit: Joseph Parker’s one-sided decision over Deontay Wilder on Dec. 23 in a stunner that upset a bigger plan: Wilder-versus-Anthony Joshua.
Still, there are a lot of fights to be made, up-and-down the scale. Just listen to the Crawford-Inoue debate. It sounds like potential business.
Notes
Oscar Valdez Jr., badly bloodied and beaten by Emanuel Navarrete on August 12 at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale AZ, is back in the gym, according to social-media footage posted this week. The 33-year-old Valdez is popular in Mexico and Arizona. The Mexican Olympian went to school in Tucson. The former featherweight and junior-lightweight champ hopes for a possible comeback in March.
More year-end talk: Crawford and Inoue are at the top of the debate. Devin Haney is third in most of the Fighter-of the-Year conversation. For the first-time, super-middleweight David Benavidez is getting mentioned among the first five possibilities. Benavidez probably wouldn’t put himself there. After his solid decision over Caleb Plant in March and beat-down of Demetrius Andrade in November, the Phoenix-born fighter said he still had to work to do to gain pound-for-pound recognition. But Fighter-of-the-Year consideration is the kind recognition that further strengthens his case for a shot at Canelo Alvarez in May or September
