Beltway Boxing 2011 -- Beltway Boxer of the Year!

We now come to the final award -- the easiest one to choose for 2011. We indeed had a number of boxers make great strides in their career by winning big matches or becoming well-known in the boxing world.

But there was only one who went from top 10 contender to mandatory contender to world champion. He and his camp took calculated risks but his talent made the chances pay off.

The BATB Beltway Boxer of the Year is:

Lamont Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KO's) WBA/IBF Light Welterweight champion, Washington, DC

In 2010, the Peterson camp took a huge gamble in turning down a $300,000 bout against Amir Khan in England. Nothing felt right about the contract, the camp said. There was a rematch clause that they didn't like. Peterson instead took a $10,000 bout against Victor Ortiz that ended in a 10-round draw. It looked like the gamble would not pay off.

But fortune shined on the Peterson camp when the IBF eliminator came their way on July 29 of 2011. Peterson traveled to Las Vegas and closed the show in the 12th round with a great knockout. Because Khan had defeated Zab Judah earlier in the year, Peterson would be the mandatory challenger and ended up being paid twice what he would have made the first time the bout was proposed. The stage was set and because Khan insisted on having the fight in DC, the stage would be at the Washington Convention Center.

To paraphrase the late newsman Paul Harvey, we now know the rest of the story. But the epilogue of the story seems to get better with every passing week. Despite the controversy surrounding the win, many boxing fans along the Beltway and around the world have celebrated one of the great rags-to-riches stories in recent boxing history. Peterson and his brother Anthony have been feted all around the city with Lamont Peterson getting the key to the city from DC Mayor Vincent Gray and both brothers being named the grand marshals for the Martin Luther King Day parade in Southeast, DC.

It's been quite a while since a Beltway Boxer had a more complete year than Lamont Peterson, who wins this award for the second time in the BATB era.

Honorable Mention:

Gary Russell, Jr. (19-0, 11 KO's) super featherweight, Capitol Heights, MD.

If not for the magnitude of Lamont Peterson's year, Russell probably would have won this award hands down. The 2008 US Olympian won seven bouts in 2011 against opponents with a combined won-loss record of 156-49-5. Russell thrilled national TV audiences with his blinding hand speed and great power. Russell's first-round knockout of Heributo Ruiz on November 26 turned Russell into a true contender. Four national media outlets have named him the prospect of the year, something BATB did in 2010 (along with Seth Mitchell). There is already talk of a world title shot in 2012.

Seth Mitchell (24-0-1, 18 KO's), heavyweight, Brandywine, MD

The man called "America's Best Heavyweight" had another outstanding year culminating in an eye-opening knockout win over Timur Ibragimov on the Peterson-Khan undercard. Mitchell has nine straight knockouts and put himself in the top 10 of one of the major governing bodies. Mitchell's development has been so fun to watch and it will be very interesting to see what 2012 brings.

Tori Nelson (5-0-1), WBC Female Middleweight champion, Ashburn, VA

You could say Nelson set the standard for winning world championships in the Beltway with her 10-round split decision WBC title win over Lorissa Rivas on July 29 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Nelson, like Peterson, has a very interesting back story as she holds down three jobs (cafeteria worker, school bus driver and IHOP waitress) and is a single mother of two. So the fact that Nelson was even able to take the title bout and then win the title is an amazing story.

Nelson is not resting on her laurels as she tries for her second world title in February at the Patriot Center. We await the next chapter of this story.


Previous BATB Beltway Boxers of the Year:

2006: Eric Aiken
2007: Darnell Wilson
2008: Lamont Peterson/Joshua Snyder
2009: Fernando Guerrero
2010: Tim Coleman

That concludes the awards. I'll have a special comment sometime on Wednesday.