East, Donaire and Pacquiao KO of the Year Winners All
By Teodoro Medina Reynoso
PhilBoxing.com
Sat, 10 Oct 2020
Since the Ring Magazine started picking the fights for its Knockout of the Year award in 1989, three Filipino fighters have figured in five of the bouts that eventually was given the annual honor in this category.
Fil-American fighter Morris East won the first KO of the Year award for the country in 1992 when he knocked out Japanese defending champion Akinobu Hiranaka in the 11th round for the WBA junior welterweight crown in Tokyo on September 9, 1992. East also became the youngest fighter from the Philippines to win a world boxing title at 19 years, one month and one day old.
Fifteen years later in 2007, Nonito Donaire won the first of his two KO of the Year awards when he knocked out Armenian defending titlist Vic Darchinyan in the fifth round in Bridgeport, Connecticut for the IBF flyweight championship on July 7, 2007. Donaire also won the Upset of the Year award for 2007 with that exciting knockout victory over Darchinyan who was then on the verge of barging into the world's top pound for pound fighters list.
Manny Pacquiao made it three for the Philippines when his smashing lights out second round knockout of UK's favorite Ricky Hatton for the Ring and IBO junior welterweight crowns on May 2, 2009 in Las Vegas was picked as the KO of the Year 2009. Pacquiao also won his second straight and third in four years Fighter of the Year award in 2009.
Donaire won his second KO of the Year award in 2011 with his scary second round knockout victory over the highly touted Mexican Fernando Montiel, himself a reputed KO artist in their WBC-WBO bantamweight unification held in Nevada on February 19, 2011. Sustaining the momentum of this victory, Donaire would be chosen as the Fighter of the Year the following year 2012.
Pacquiao would figure in his second KO of the Year fight in 2012, this time as a loser, falling to archnemesis Juan Manuel Marquez in a shocking 6th round knockout defeat in their main event minor title bout on December 8, 2012 in Las Vegas. The poster perfect knockout win by Marquez also made him a strong candidate for the Fighter of the Year but he lost to Donaire for the honor.
In sum, that's four winning bouts as against just one losing fight for the KO of the Year awards as far as the three Filipino top champion fighters are concerned.
In a happy coincidence, Morris East was like a big brother to Pacquiao when the young Manny was still starting out in the late 90s while he actually handled and trained the young Donaire for a few years in the last decade as a US based trainer and manager.
Significantly, two other Filipino fighters had the chance to win the KO of the Year honors in the award's first two years in 1989 and 1990.
Luisito Espinosa scored a sensational first round knockout of Khaokor Galaxy in Bangkok, Thailand on October 18,1989 to wrest the WBA bantamweight title. But the inaugural KO of the Year award went to Terry Norris who also scored a first round kayo of the highly touted John The Beast Mugabi earlier in the year.
Rolando Pascua also created a lot of stir when he kayoed the then legendary and still unbeaten Humberto Chiquita Gonzales for the WBC light flyweight title on December 19, 1990. But Michael Nunn's blitz first round knockout of the wily Sumbu Kalambay in their middleweight title fight beat Pascua for the honors.
Seemed like knockouts in the lighter weights no matter how epic or spectacular did not have much impact on the voters made up mostly of scribes.
Last year, 2019, Deontay Wilder won the KO of the Year with his come from behind knockout of Cuban Luis Ortiz in the defense of his WBC heavyweight crown. It trumped Andy Ruiz's upset KO of Anthony Joshua as well as Canelo Alvarez's KO of Sergei Kovalev.
Thus far this year, Jose Zepeda is leading the race for the KO of the Year award following his recent super lightweight fight versus Ivan Baranchyk which featured eight knockdowns, four against each fighter before Zepeda rendered Baranchyk unconscious with a ponderous hook in the fifth round.
However, the earlier knockout win of Tyson Fury over Wilder as well as those of Alexander Povetkin and Roman Gonzalez, both on comeback trail over Dillian Whyte and Khalid Yafai respectively can not be discounted in the final reckoning.
And there are still higher profile fights as the Teofimo Lopez vs Vasily Lomachenko, Roman Gonzalez vs Maximiano Flores, Naoya Inoue vs Jason Moloney, the Povetkin vs Whyte rematch and even the Nonito Donaire vs Nordine Oubaali that could also end in eye popping KOs.
The author Teodoro Medina Reynoso is a veteran boxing radio talk show host living in the Philippines. He can be reached at teddyreynoso@yahoo.com and by phone 09215309477.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Teodoro Medina Reynoso.
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