Boxers Who Experienced the Biggest Drop-Offs in 2014
Time passes quickly. Nowhere is this reality more cruelly observed than in the world of professional fighting.
In less time than it would take to earn a college degree, Juan Manuel Lopez went from being an undefeated champion to a steppingstone with five knockout losses. In that same space of time, Victor Ortiz went from being a pay-per-view opponent to being buried on the undercard.
The majority of fighters on this list were great once. Some are still great or at least close. But most of them have slipped just enough to send their status tumbling.
Boxing is a brutal sport. When a fighter's ability has slipped below a certain level and the damage has been too much, sometimes it's best to just walk away.
10. Timothy Bradley
1 of 10
I have mixed feelings about including Timothy Bradley on this list. He was straight-up robbed when the judges gave him a draw against Diego Chaves last month.
Then again, that the fight was close enough to steal is a warning sign of a drop-off. Part of the reason for the two wacky cards could simply be that the judges were surprised to see the fight play out at so closely.
Bradley also looked sluggish in defeat when he met Manny Pacquiao again in March. A fighter who is known for his incredible conditioning, he looked physically fatigued in the latter rounds against Pac-Man.
Bradley took a brutal pounding from Ruslan Provodnikov in March 2013. It took him months to recover. While he looked impressive against Juan Manuel Marquez in October 2013, Marquez is a fighter who was 10 years older than Bradley and physically weaker.
An aging technician like Marquez was a pretty good matchup for Bradley. A still-speedy Pacquiao, or a physical, bruising mauler like Chaves, may not be any longer.
9. Yuriorkis Gamboa
2 of 10
Yuriorkis Gamboa is the latest cautionary tale for why a prizefighter does not want to let too many years of his physical prime slip away.
Only a few years ago, he was one of the hottest talents in the sport. He was the No. 1 fighter at featherweight and viewed as an inevitable pound-for-pound star.
Superfights against then undefeated Juan Manuel Lopez and lightweight champion Brandon Rios were eagerly anticipated. But those fights never materialized, as Gamboa fell into a contract dispute with Top Rank.
Going into 2014, he was still undefeated but far enough off the radar that he was forced to take a risky fight against rising lightweight star Terence Crawford. Gamboa actually looked impressive in the first four rounds of their June fight.
But the larger, younger Crawford adjusted to Gamboa's speed and took control of the fight in Round 5, when he dropped Gamboa to the canvas. Crawford dropped Gamboa again in Round 8 and finished him off in Round 9.
Gamboa could still be a big factor at super featherweight. But his opportunity to be one of the biggest stars in the sport almost certainly expired in 2014.
8. Sergio Martinez
3 of 10
I moved down Sergio Martinez in my own rankings following his narrow victory over Martin Murray in April 2013. He was knocked down in that fight, and in my estimation, a second knockdown was improperly ruled a slip.
If that slip had been ruled a knockdown, Martinez would have lost to Murray on my card.
Martinez followed that win by going in for another round of surgeries. So entering 2014, he was 39 and coming off multiple surgeries in recent years. For a fighter who has always relied on explosive athleticism, the cards were pretty easy to read on Maravilla.
Miguel Cotto erased all doubt about Martinez's elite status last June. Cotto blitzed Martinez in Round 1, knocking him down three times, and stopped him for good in Round 10.
Martinez's resume is great enough to earn another big fight if he wants one. There are probably top-10 middleweights he could still beat.
But any of them would be a danger at this point.
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7. Nonito Donaire
4 of 10
It almost seems hard to believe now, but less than two years ago, Nonito Donaire was viewed as a pound-for-pound, top-five fighter. On media calls, I heard Bob Arum routinely refer to him as a potential pay-per-view star.
That plan was sidetracked a great deal in April 2013, when Guillermo Rigondeaux gave Donaire a boxing lesson. Still, Donaire remained the more exciting fighter of the two and continued to be the fighter Top Rank threw its promotional support behind.
Donaire moved up to featherweight after losing to Rigondeaux. In November of last year, he struggled against Vic Darchinyan but ultimately overpowered the multidivision champion with a Round 9 TKO.
Last May, Donaire captured the WBA featherweight title with a Round 5 technical decision over Simpiwe Vetyeka. Donaire's performance was hardly conclusive, and Vetyeka deserved a rematch.
Instead, Donaire faced rising, undefeated power puncher Nicholas Walters in October. Walters gave Donaire a brutal reality check about how competitive he could expect to be against the top 126-pound stars, stopping Donaire in six.
Donaire will probably still be able to win fights at 122 pounds, if he wants to drop back down. At the same time, the kind of beating he took from Walters, at the age of 32, might be hard to recover from fully.
6. Matt Korobov
5 of 10
When Matt Korobov turned professional in 2008, the Russian seemed like a solid candidate to become a world champion. He was a former Olympian and a two-time world champion as an amateur.
Although Korobov had remained undefeated coming into 2014, he had yet to inspire much enthusiasm from the boxing public. Still, he had earned his spot as a mandatory challenger for WBO middleweight champion Peter Quillin.
Unfortunately, Quillin's people didn't view Korobov as a worthwhile opponent and vacated the WBO belt rather than tie up a date defending it against somebody they didn't want to fight. Instead, Korobov claimed the vacant WBO belt in June by beating Jose Uzcategui.
Korobov's WBO belt was definitely a lesser world title, but it still gave him long-pursued status. However, he was not destined to keep it for long.
In December, longtime contender Andy Lee scored one of the year's best knockouts to lift Korobov's belt.
Korobov could no doubt still beat most of the middleweights on the planet. However, I don't see him building his way back into the title picture quickly. In order to do so, he'll likely need to be willing to face a dangerous young contender.
5. Andre Ward
6 of 10
Andre Ward spent most of 2014 ranked No. 2 on pound-for-pound lists, right behind Floyd Mayweather. But he also spent 2014 completely inactive.
Ward has had legal disputes with his promoter and probably a hard time locating an opponent who is worthy of him. He still looks to be walking around in terrific shape when he works in a broadcasting capacity for HBO, so he could sign tomorrow to fight anybody in the world and likely be prepared in three months.
But Ward's talent always outstripped the amount of interest he could create with fans. And a prolonged absence does nothing but lower his standing with the more casual fans who drive pay-per-view sales.
Out of this entire list, Ward is the only one I see rising back to the top of the sport. But even when a fighter voluntarily steps down from the peak rather than being sent tumbling by a loss, it can still be a long climb back to the summit.
4. Chad Dawson
7 of 10
When Chad Dawson boldly offered to drop to 168 pounds to fight Andre Ward in 2012, he was lauded for his old-school tenacity. Ultimately, he may have badly damaged the course of his career.
Dawson had started his career at 168, but he had not competed there in years and had experienced by far the best years of his career at the light heavyweight limit of 175 pounds. He's lean even at that weight.
When I interviewed Dawson before his fight with Ward, he claimed the weight cut was going well. But when I interviewed him six months later, before his loss to Adonis Stevenson, he conceded that the cut had actually been rough.
His performance against Ward would seem to back that up. Ward physically overwhelmed him, giving him the worst beating of his career and delivering a TKO in Round 10.
That kind of sustained beating, especially in a weight-drained state, can be impossible to fully recover from. It probably isn't a coincidence that Dawson's next fight after losing to Ward was his stunning, Round 1 KO loss to Stevenson.
When Dawson entered 2014, he was on the outside looking in but had to be viewed as a factor due to his resume. His Round 1 KO of George Blades last January told us nothing, aside from that he had gained 30 or more pounds in the months after losing to Stevenson.
In October, Dawson faced journeyman/fringe contender Tommy Karpency, a talented enough veteran to provide a gauge for where Dawson was at this point in his career. The answer should have the former champion seriously contemplating retirement, as he dropped a split decision.
Dawson fought much of the fight injured, but Karpency also had some of his best rounds prior to the injury taking place. While the fight could have been scored for Dawson, a decision for Karpency was entirely reasonable.
And if Dawson is fighting that close with a guy at that level, he's no longer in the upper echelon at 175 pounds.
3. Tomasz Adamek
8 of 10
Tomasz Adamek is a two-time world champion at light heavyweight and cruiserweight. He also had enough boxing skill to rise high in the ranks of the heavyweight division.
After losing by Round 10 TKO to Vitali Klitschko in 2011, Adamek remained in the heavyweight top 10. Still, it was easy to see him as a diminishing talent. I felt he should have lost to both Steve Cunningham and Eddie Chambers.
In 2014, Adamek came up short twice against rising contenders. In March, he lost to undefeated Vyacheslav Glazkov. In November, he tumbled further, losing to fellow Pole Artur Szpilka. Szpilka is a decent boxer with a lot of grit, but he wouldn't have stood a chance against the Adamek of four or five years ago.
2. Juan Manuel Lopez
9 of 10
Not that long ago, Juan Manuel Lopez vs. Yuriorkis Gamboa was viewed as one of the hottest potential fights in boxing. But then Lopez suffered his first career loss, by Round 10 TKO, to Orlando Salido in April 2011. When he was also stopped in the March 2012 rematch, he took a drop in status that he's never recovered form.
But even after getting blasted by Mikey Garcia in 2013, Lopez was still viewed as a dangerous puncher. He solidified that reputation against Daniel Ponce de Leon last March, when he knocked out the former champion in Round 2.
But when Lopez took on rising stars in the second half of 2014, it became clear that his time as a major factor had passed. In July, Francisco Vargas stopped him in his corner after Round 3.
In September, Lopez was knocked out in Round 2 by Jesus Marcelo Andres Cuellar. The former champion has now been stopped violently five times in the past four years.
1. Victor Ortiz
10 of 10
It's not like Victor Ortiz entered 2014 anywhere near the top of the heap in boxing. Since getting knocked out on pay-per-view by Floyd Mayweather in September 2011, he had fought just once, quitting in his corner with a broken jaw against journeyman Josesito Lopez in June 2012.
But when Ortiz returned to action last January on the day before his 27th birthday, it felt like something that needed to be paid attention to. Ortiz had been so high-profile and was still so young that it seemed possible he might relaunch himself against former titleholder Luis Collazo.
Instead, Ortiz looked like he should have stuck to acting and reality television. He appeared far out of his depth against Collazo, getting knocked out in Round 2.
Ortiz nevertheless returned to action in December in a fight buried deep on the undercard of Amir Khan vs. Devon Alexander. Ortiz was easily able to stop the former featherweight journeyman Manuel Perez in three rounds, but the win proved nothing other he can still beat up club fighters who were at their best 20 pounds lighter than where Ortiz is at his best.
In other words, it proves nothing that serious boxing observers are interested in knowing.
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