The Year So Far
Four months in, the 2026 Fight of the Year race is already crowded enough to argue about. The calendar has been thinner on the front end than 2025’s first quarter, but the fights that did land delivered. Two genuine technical thrillers between top-five operators in their division. Three comeback knockouts that landed differently from each other. A heavyweight night in London that emptied two retirement tanks at once. A light heavyweight war on a ProBox bill most casual fans missed live and have been catching up to since. Every January-to-April FOTY list looks tentative. This one already has fights that will still be on the December ballot.
The criteria, stated plainly so the rankings are arguable on their own terms. Drama matters. Round-by-round competitiveness matters. Two-way action matters. Finishes matter when they cap a fight that was a fight. Stakes matter too - a great fight between two ranked-fifteenth contenders rates below a competitive title fight between top-five names, and a one-sided night between elite fighters can still earn its placement because of who was in it. FOTY rewards action, but the names on the marquee and what was on the line are how the list orders itself.
These are the ten fights leading the race through April. We re-rank monthly. The first big disruption point is six days from now: Inoue vs Nakatani at Tokyo Dome and Ramirez vs Benavidez at T-Mobile Arena both have the ceiling to crack the top three on a single Saturday.
Action wins FOTY. Stakes lift it. The fights that finish at the top of the year-end ballot are the ones with both.
10. Tenshin Nasukawa vs Juan Francisco Estrada - April 11, WBC Bantamweight Eliminator
The least war-like fight on the list and the one whose case rests most on what it represents. Nasukawa, the kickboxing world champion who took a humiliating decision loss to Mayweather in 2018 and rebuilt as a boxer, dominated Estrada at Ryogoku Kokugikan over nine rounds before the corner stopped it. Cards before the stoppage: 88-83, 89-82, 87-84. Estrada at thirty-five looked his age. Nasukawa at twenty-seven looked like the new face of Japanese boxing in the divisions Inoue is on his way out of. A clinic, not a war, which is why it’s tenth and not higher. The reason it makes the list at all is that nine rounds of sustained pressure-with-skill from a converting kickboxer to dethrone an active four-division titleholder is the kind of fight history files separately from its scoring. Anyone who spent a Saturday morning watching a Tokyo crowd recognise the moment in real time will tell you the same.
9. Xander Zayas vs Abass Baraou - January 31, WBO and WBA Super Welterweight Unification
A title-unification split decision in San Juan, with Baraou landing enough through the middle rounds to make the home-favourite scoring genuinely contested. Zayas took it 116-112 twice, with one card 116-112 the other way. The fight reads better as a competitive twelve-rounder between two skilled operators than as a candidate for an action-fight ballot, which is why it sits here. What lifts it above the cuts is the unification stake and how genuinely live the result felt heading into the championship rounds. Zayas at twenty-three is now the youngest active unified champion at any weight, on the back of a fight Baraou could plausibly tell you he won. Not a war. A real fight, contested at a high level, in front of the audience that mattered most for the kid.
8. Jarrell Miller vs Lenier Pero - April 25, WBA Heavyweight Eliminator
The most recent fight on the list and the one most likely to drop next month. Pero rocked Miller in the first with a left hook, snapped him back with a right hook in the second, and looked the better fighter through two rounds. Miller’s fifty-pound size advantage took over from the third, and he won the back two-thirds of the fight by walking Pero onto the ropes and outworking him. Twelve rounds, no knockdowns, unanimous decision (117-111, 117-111, 115-113). The fight is on the list because the early-round Pero work was real and the late-round Miller pressure was sustained, and because heavyweight 12-rounders that produce 1,003 punches thrown by one man do not come along often. The fight is at eight because the cards undersold how competitive it actually was and because the back half stopped being a war once Miller’s weight stopped Pero from holding centre ring.
7. Serhii Bohachuk vs Radzhab Butaev - February 1, Zuffa Boxing 2 Co-Main
Ten rounds of close-quarters slugging on the same card as Gvozdyk-Kalajdzic. The kind of fight where neither man tried to create distance once because neither felt safe doing it. Bohachuk took the split decision in a result that could have gone either way without anyone screaming robbery. The argument against is the lack of a knockdown or a finish in a fight that begged for one in the eighth and the tenth. The argument for is that the consistency of two-way exchange across all ten rounds is its own form of high-end boxing, and these were two heavy-handed 154-pounders who both had stretches where they hurt the other. Lower on this list than rounds-of-the-year purists will rank it. Higher than result-driven lists will, because the fight delivered exactly what its matchmaking promised and almost no one expected it to be this close.
6. Oleksandr Gvozdyk vs Radivoje Kalajdzic - February 1, Zuffa Boxing 2
The cleanest momentum-swing knockout of the year so far. Gvozdyk dropped Kalajdzic with a straight right in round one and looked sharp through six. Jab working, distance managed, the finish projecting on schedule. Round seven, Kalajdzic landed his own straight right early. Gvozdyk looked caught between steps, then dropped on the same shot landed twice more. Three knockdowns inside the round, ref waving it off at 2:47. Light heavyweight has produced more interesting power-puncher mismatches over the last two years than almost any division. This one stood apart because Gvozdyk was the technical favourite and Kalajdzic was the man being asked to absorb the punishment to win. The fight was not as close as a stoppage round can sound on paper. Gvozdyk was up four rounds to two going in. Which is exactly what makes the swing an FOTY-grade moment rather than a clean stoppage.
5. Deontay Wilder vs Derek Chisora - April 4, O2 Arena
The hundredth combined fight of two retiring heavyweights, both their fiftieth. Wilder dropped Chisora twice. Lost a point. Won a split decision (115-111, 115-113 his way, 115-112 the other). Compubox: Chisora 143 of 385 thrown, Wilder 125 of 341, Chisora edged power 105 to 99. Thirty-six minutes of the kind of heavyweight fight that does not exist in technical seminars. Both men hurt, both men firing back, both refusing to take a knee on a night neither could afford to lose - Wilder fighting for one last meaningful booking, Chisora for the retirement send-off he had earned. Lower on the list than its noise level suggests because the flow was choppier than the technical fights above it and the scorecards did not reflect what most ringside scribes saw. Higher than its rounds-of-the-year case suggests because the room itself was electric for thirty-six straight minutes and the heavyweight division does not produce many of those nights anymore.
4. Subriel Matias vs Dalton Smith - January 10, WBC Super Lightweight Title
Five rounds of a real fight before Smith landed the overhand right at 2:24 of round five and finished it with the follow-up. The KO5 stat-line undersells what the rounds actually were. Matias is one of the most feared champions at 140 pounds for a reason: pressure, body work, and an attritional style that has broken better fighters than Smith on paper. Smith stood his ground from round one, stayed off the ropes, and landed enough straight rights through three to convince Matias he could not just walk through him. The finishing sequence in round five did not come from nowhere. It came from the round where the fight was always going to break, and Smith got there first with the punch he had been building. The upset magnitude (Matias 21-1 walking in) and the cleanness of the finish keep it ahead of more dramatic rounds-counted FOTY candidates further down this list. A fight that mattered, finished by a punch that earned its placement.
3. Nick Ball vs Brandon Figueroa - February 7, WBA Featherweight Title
Down on the cards heading into the twelfth, Figueroa landed an overhand left thirty-two seconds into the round, dropped Ball, then put him through the ropes with the follow-up to take the WBA strap inside the final round of a fight he was losing. Last-round comeback knockouts are the rarest finish in boxing. Most fights that go that deep end on the cards. The ones that don’t tend to involve a man who’s hurt swinging out of desperation. This was the cleaner version: Figueroa knew exactly which punch he needed and held it back until the round he had to land it. Ball, twenty-eight and undefeated walking in, was the better fighter for forty-two and a half minutes. Figueroa was the better fighter for thirty-two seconds. The 2026 calendar has produced several knockouts. None of them ended a championship fight the way this one did.
2. Najee Lopez vs Manuel Gallegos - March 13, ProBox TV
The purest action fight of the year so far, on the smallest stage. Headbutt opens Lopez over the right eye in round two. Gallegos cracks him with a counter right in round seven and puts him on the canvas. Lopez beats the count, walks straight back into the fire, and the fight stays in close range until he lands the left-right that wobbles Gallegos at the start of round eight. The ten-punch flurry that follows forces referee Christopher Young to wave it off at 2:41. WBA Continental Americas and WBO Latino light heavyweight straps on the line, neither of which moves the needle on its own. What does move the needle is that this was eight rounds of all-out boxing with a comeback finish, on a card no major outlet was covering live. Multiple writers have already filed it as their FOTY frontrunner. They are not wrong.
1. Andy Cruz vs Raymond Muratalla - January 24, IBF Lightweight Title
The cleanest 12-round technical war the sport has produced this year. Two top-five lightweights, no knockdowns, every round contested at championship speed. Cruz’s southpaw counters were the cleanest work of the night through eight, his footwork dragging Muratalla into reset patterns the champion clearly hadn’t planned for. Muratalla’s body work and late pressure decided it on two of three cards (118-110, 116-112, with the third 114-114), but anyone scoring it the other way had a defensible argument. A no-knockdown 12-rounder rarely tops a FOTY list this early. This one does because of how high both men were operating from round one. The kind of fight that makes division rankings feel meaningful again.
What May Reshapes
Six days out from publication, four fights have the ceiling to bend the top of this list before the May standings post.
Inoue vs Nakatani at Tokyo Dome is the highest-stakes fight of the year so far, in any division. Two pound-for-pound top-five names, all four 122-pound belts on the line, neither ducking the other. By the criteria above, the stakes alone push this into the top three even on a one-sided result. A competitive twelve-rounder with momentum swings - especially one Nakatani is in late - challenges Cruz-Muratalla for the top of the list. Ramirez vs Benavidez at T-Mobile Arena is the most likely twelve-round war on the May calendar - two unbeaten Mexican champions, neither willing to give ground, both with finishing power at cruiserweight. Wardley vs Dubois on May 9 is the highest finish-probability fight of the spring. Both bangers, both with knockdown histories, both on the back foot more recently than their records suggest. Usyk vs Verhoeven on May 23 in Egypt is the wildcard, with a kickboxing world champion stepping up to face a heavyweight unified champion in his prime. The ceiling is FOTY. The floor is a stoppage that does not last past four.
The criteria don’t change. The list will. The only thing this top ten has earned, four months in, is the right to be argued with.
Why We’re Tracking This Monthly
FOTY conversations almost always happen in December, when memory is short and the fights of January are a sentence. By then, Cruz-Muratalla is “that one technical war from earlier in the year” rather than a 12-round championship-caliber thriller anyone who watched it live remembers in detail. Najee Lopez vs Gallegos becomes “that ProBox card with the comeback knockout” rather than the eight rounds of all-out boxing it actually was. The fights of the first quarter get diluted by recency bias every year, and the December ballots reflect that.
Ringside is going to track this differently. Monthly standings, ranked by the same criteria each time, with the fights from the back of the calendar still on the page when the fights of December arrive. By the time we publish the year-end ballot, every fight on it will have been re-evaluated against the rest of the year four times, and the order will reflect the year as it actually happened, not the year as anyone remembered it last month.
See you in May.
Ranked by drama, two-way action, round-by-round competitiveness, and finish quality, weighted against the stakes - the names on the marquee and what was on the line lift fights up the page.