Ranking Boxing's Top Candidates for 2014 Fighter of the Year so Far

The boxing year has begun its inevitable sprint to the finish, and the discussions for year-end awards will begin in earnest.

None of those awards is more coveted than Fighter of the Year, and it presents fighters with the opportunity to join a pantheon of greats who have taken home that hardware in the past.

This year has been filled with great fights, impressive fighters and tremendous individual performances. 

Like everything else, this is a subjective topic that is open to a wide range of interpretations.

Here we rank the fighters based on what they've done and not who they are. 

Accomplishments, even if in just one fight, take precedence. 

Things can obviously change in the final third of the year, with plenty of good fights still taking place, but this should serve as a springboard for discussion and debate.

These are the top five contenders, as of right now, for the 2014 Fighter of the Year award.

Honorable Mention: Bernard Hopkins

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Bernard Hopkins inclusion as an honorable mention comes with a massive caveat, but we’ll get to that later.

The 49-year-old is a physical marvel, fighting long past the point where nearly all world-class fighters decide that enough is enough or see their skills decline to the point where an opponent makes the decision for them.

But not Hopkins.

He continues to push himself to new levels and test the limits of human endurance.

Hopkins unified the light heavyweight division with a ludicrous split decision—it should have been unanimous—win over Beibut Shumenov in March. It’s inexplicable that judge Gustavo Padilla could possibly have found seven rounds to award Shumenov, who was outclassed the whole way and knocked down.

The Alien next moves to what is quite possibly the biggest challenge of his career, facing dangerous and avoided Russian slugger Sergey Kovalev on November 8 at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Should he win that fight, Hopkins would reach his 50th birthday with three-fourths of the 175-pound crown around his waist, and he’d become the runaway choice for Fighter of the Year honors.

It wouldn’t even be close.

Most expected that it would be fellow light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson who would be facing Kovalev in November. But the WBC champion signed with power adviser Al Haymon and jumped over to Showtime, scuttling the bout.

The move was widely expected to lead to a Stevenson vs. Hopkins fight, but that didn’t pan out, and here we are.

Hopkins, particularly late in his career, has made a living out of making younger, stronger men look like fools in the ring, but many feel this one could be a bridge too far.

Kovalev is a serious, determined, scary dude.

Hopkins deserves a ton of credit for taking this fight, and a win would add another huge boost to his legacy.

5. Gennady Golovkin

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Gennady Golovkin packs the boxing equivalent of thermonuclear missiles in his fists. Every shot he throws could be the one that ends the fight, and if you’ve ever seen him live, you’d know that the thud on his punches is truly disturbing.

The Kazakh machine still finds it difficult to secure high-profile opponents—he’s extremely high risk—but he’s already won twice this year with a third fight coming in October.

GGG got a few rounds under his belt in February, stalking and dropping Osumanu Adama for a seventh-round knockout in a fight not televised in the United States.

The death of his father delayed plans for his in-ring return until the summer, but when it happened, it was spectacular.

Golovkin imploded former middleweight champion Daniel Geale in July, knocking him out in Round 3 with a counterpunch just microseconds after swallowing a big shot of his own.

It was a highlight-reel stuff.

Next up, veteran contender Marco Antonio Rubio in October.

Clearly, that’s not the fight fans, or likely GGG, were hoping for, but the Mexican is usually durable. He hasn’t been stopped in five years and should be able to at least give a few rounds to Golovkin.

4. Terence Crawford

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Terence Crawford is the best lightweight in the world.

He earned that honor with a breakout 2014 campaign that included two tough wins under extremely difficult circumstances.

The 26-year-old went on the road to the notoriously unfriendly—at least for road fighters—confines of Scotland and took a world title from Ricky Burns in March.

Crawford clearly did enough to win the fight, but so did Ray Beltran a few months prior, and he was absolutely robbed by the judges and saddled with a draw.

The Omaha, Nebraska, native then took his belt and his show home for a fight in June against talented Cuban fighter Yuriorkis Gamboa.

If the Burns fight made Crawford relevant, the Gamboa fight turned him into a budding star.

Fighting at home, with all the pressure that entails, Crawford rallied from some early struggles to drop Gamboa four times—all in brutal fashion—and hand the previously undefeated former world champion his first loss.

Crawford’s next trick will be a return to Omaha for a defense against the aforementioned Beltran in November.

It speaks volumes to his growing star power that the city of Omaha—not exactly a boxing hotbed—will be seeing not one but two world championship fights in a single calendar year.

3. Canelo Alvarez

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Canelo Alvarez has done a great job of resurrecting his brand in the wake of a lopsided defeat against Floyd Mayweather in boxing’s richest fight last September.

The 24-year-old Mexican is a huge star with a growing fanbase, and he’s secured two quality wins in 2014 with a third bout planned for late in the year.

Canelo returned in March, dominating and stopping the usually exciting Alfredo “El Perro” Angulo in his first fight as the top line on a pay-per-view event. His star power wasn’t diminished by the Mayweather loss, generating 350,000 buys on PPV.

He was highly aggressive in the fight, jumping on Angulo from the opening bell and peppering him with quick combinations and big power shots for every second of the bout before it was stopped in Round 10.

Canelo then proved his mettle, and his claim that he won’t duck anyone, by taking and winning a fight against tricky Cuban southpaw Erislandy Lara in July.

A fair bit of controversy was generated by the fight, but Canelo was the aggressor throughout and landed the majority of the scoring punches. It wasn’t pretty, but he deserved the win and credit for beating a man his handlers never wanted him to face.

Canelo will fight again in December—Joshua Clottey has been mentioned as a possible foe—and another big win could raise his stock.

2. Floyd Mayweather

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Floyd Mayweather is the reigning recipient of this award, and you shouldn’t be shocked if he takes it home again in 2014.

His accomplishments this year might not seem as significant as last year's, but that can be largely attributed to the lofty standards that he’s built and been held to throughout his career.

Nobody should be crying for him, but that’s the reality of his situation. Everything he does and doesn’t do is scrutinized, and he’s held to a higher standard than all other fighters.

Most fighters would get a ton of credit for facing and defeating a rugged, rough fighter like Marcos Maidana. The Argentine is a handful and a former world champion.

Mayweather did it twice, and it’s treated as routine.

Their first fight in May was tricky.

The pound-for-pound king was on the defensive early, struggling to adapt to a foe that paid him no respect and came in guns blazing. Punches came from all angles, and you could easily have had the fight even at the midway point.

But Mayweather upped his game in the second half, dominating to win what should be viewed as a clear decision over a game foe.

The rematch didn’t appear as close, mainly because Mayweather was less willing to engage, but Money captured another clear win, the 47th of his illustrious career. He did it by adapting and refusing to give any openings.

It might not have been as exciting as fans were hoping for, but it got the job done.

1. Miguel Cotto

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Miguel Cotto will only fight once in 2014, but his one win was historic, unexpected and should put him at the front of the pack for Fighter of the Year honors.

The 33-year-old Puerto Rican icon seemed like his goose was cooked after a forgettable 2012 campaign.

He lost a competitive but clear decision to Mayweather early in the year—an excusable loss for sure—but then was dominated by the then-unknown Austin Trout in his second home at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Cotto’s face—beaten, bloodied and bruised after the fight—seemed to indicate that it could be curtains for a career that was full of wars and would eventually land him in the Hall of Fame.

And you couldn’t have blamed him if he had called it a career.

Cotto instead chose to take some time off, snag a new trainer in Freddie Roach and recommit himself to the fight game. A blowout win over Delvin Rodriguez in 2013 led him to a shot at middleweight champion Sergio Martinez—a fight that few gave him much chance to win.

Martinez was just too big, fast, strong and slick for Cotto, or so the prevailing wisdom said.

Cotto blew that wisdom out of the water, blitzing Martinez with three first-round knockdowns and battering him into a corner stoppage in Round 10.

It was easily the upset of the year, and it made history by making Cotto the first fighter in the storied boxing history of Puerto Rico to win a world championship in four weight divisions.

Wilfredo Gomez didn’t do that.

Felix Trinidad didn’t do that.

Just Miguel Cotto, the 2014 Fighter of the Year.