Two-time Welterweight Champion Shawn Porter has named his 2023 Knockout of the Year, and his selection is one that most boxing fans would not even consider a candidate, although Porter has explained that “it doesn’t get any better.”
Talk of the 2023 Boxing Awards is well underway, and one of the most divisive and subjective categories is the knockout of the year. To most, it is the highlight-reel one-punch knockouts that spring to mind, such as Junto Nakatani’s earth-shattering left-overhand against Jason Moloney and Zhilei Zhang’s brutal right-hook to break the formidable chin of Joe Joyce.
However, for Porter, Naoya Inoue’s Boxing Day stoppage of Marlon Tapales stands out, he told ProBox TV.
“I’m going with Naoya Inoue versus Marlon Tapales. Listen, I have to explain this, the hellacious knockouts are cool, they’re crazy to see, it’s amazing and that’s the exclamation point for the guy who gets the knockout.”
“When I saw Marlon [Tapales] go down on one knee, then he went down on a second, [he was] completely done. There is a difference between being done that way, being done on the stool and you have a ‘No Mas’ situation and all these other things, Inoue literally made Tapales go down on one knee, then on a second knee and the body language said “I can’t do this anymore’. I’ve been there before on my feet, I knew what I saw and I said ‘yo, that was special’.”
“So to me, for Inoue to put on a performance against a guy who was completely game and ready for that fight and render him helpless at the end of that fight, I know that is not a complete knockout, but that is the stoppage of the year right there. For a fighter, it doesn’t get any better than that.”
The Ring Magazine Award winners will be announced in early 2024, with nominees confirmed in around two weeks’ time.
