2010 Fight Card Of The Year

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So often we get caught up in the best fight of the year, that we lose sight of the overall fight cards that carry loads of quality. This award looks beyond the main event and takes the entire card into consideration. Our nominees for Fight Card of the Year are:

Fight Card of the Year

7/31 (Marquez-Diaz 2, Pirog-Jacobs, Linares-Juarez, Guerrero-Casamayor)
9/4 (Burns-Martinez, Simpson-Smith)
11/6 (Lopez-Marquez, Johnson-Green)
12/4 (Donaire-Sidorenko, Soto-Antillon, Wolak-Pinzon, Garcia-Lontchi)
12/11 (Mares-Darchinyan, Agbeko-Perez 2)

The rematch between Juan Manuel Marquez and Juan Diaz headed to pay-per-view which meant a stellar undercard would be needed to sell the product. The September UK show was highlighted by the great drama in Ricky Burns’ upset title win. Glen Johnson and Allan Green fought a much better fight than expected to boost the November 6 Top Rank show, while the December Top Rank show delivered numerous quality fights despite losing their headliner days before. Finally, the bantamweights put on an excellent card on Showtime to kick off their tournament.

And the winner is…


Marquez-Diaz 2

Expectations were high for this card, and while I don’t believe it lived up to the expectations, it still garnered enough votes amongst our panel to edge out the other nominees. To its credit, the fight card did have a bit of everything. A good story in the Linares fight, a shocking moment in the Pirog victory, and solid action in the main event between Marquez and Diaz even though it didn’t live up to the standard set in their first encounter. Since the main event didn’t have a lot of name value, Golden Boy hoped to stack the undercard with quality fights to lure in more viewers. Here’s hoping that trend continues in 2011.