Southpaws are like goalkeepers in football – you have to be a little crazy and touched by God in order to be on the top.
2019 was good for a lot of people in boxing, but there were some southpaws that had one of the best years in their glorious careers.
5. Terence Crawford
“Bud” won both of his fights in 2019, even though his opponents weren’t at his level. The American defeated Amir Khan in April and Egidijus Kavaliauskas in December, defending his WBO welterweight title. Still, Crawford needs to mix it with the big names in the division – Manny Pacquiao, Errol Spence, Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, Yordenis Ugas and etc. if he wants to be relevant.
4. Errol Spence Jr.
Boxing wise, “The Truth” had an amazing year. He demolished Mikey Garcia in March, but that was expected of him because Mikey went two weight classes in order to face Spence Jr. 5 months later, Errol had a unification bout with Shawn Porter and he delivered a master class performance, defeating Porter in his own game – inside slugfest. He’s now the rightful owner of WBC and IBF welterweight titles and let’s just hope the car incident won’t mark him for life and he’ll be able to make a full recovery.
3. Manny Pacquiao
“Pac-Man” turned 41 just two weeks ago, but the Philippine star is still going hard on all the youngsters. Pacquiao had two fights in 2019 and he also won them both. Firstly he toyed with Adrien Broner who was nowhere near the class of Manny. Then in July, he had a unification bout with Keith Thurman, as that clash was way tougher and exciting to watch than his previous one. The future Hall of Famer will say “Hello” to 2020 as the WBA “Super” welterweight king, as there are a lot of volunteers to face him.
2. Josh Taylor
“The Tartan Tornado” had the year of his life in terms of boxing. The Scottish boxer started the year as pretty much nobody and now he’s a unified super lightweight champion of the world. The smooth leftie has emerged as one of the most powerful boxers P4P. Not only that, but he captured the “Muhammad Ali” trophy, defeating two of the biggest hard hitters in his category – Ivan Baranchyk and Regis Prograis.
1. Vasyl Lomachenko
“Hi-tech”, “The Matrix” or just Loma. Vasyl Lomachenko is without a doubt one of the best and most skillful boxers to ever live. 2019 was more than good to him. The Ukrainian won his clashes against Anthony Crolla in April and Luke Campbell in August, making him a WBC, WBO, and WBA “Super” lightweight champion. Loma vacated the WBC strap, as he was promoted to a “WBC Franchise champion” and now he’s looking to add the IBF belt in a super fight against the young Teofimo Lopez.
