We can all agree that the year 2025 was full of some big highs and some awful lows and there's nothing like the turn of the year to crystallise what you want to take forward and exactly what you want to leave in the past. For my money, there are a few key things from 2025 that we need to bring with us but there are just as many that we need to bin for good. Here are my top fives from worryingly competitive fields.

Imagine 12 months ago somebody telling you that not only would west Africa emerge as a destination for big time boxing but that Nigeria and Ghana would both host major shows broadcast globally on DAZN before 2025 was out. Not only that but one of the shows would be headlined by two blokes who share a barber in south London. It would have seemed beyond far-fetched but here we are. Now, let’s make sure the relevant parties build on that impetus throughout 2026. There were teething problems aplenty in the shows that took place, now it’s down to everyone to learn from those and continue the progress across the next 12 months.

Everyone loves an undisputed champion but in the men’s code there is currently only one across the 17 divisions. Read that again: one. It had felt like we were making progress in that regard but, except for Naoya Inoue at 122 pounds, we have a lot of work to do. In fact, we are even struggling for basic unifications as, in the six divisions from featherweight to junior middleweight, there are four separate champions in each. The good news is, at heavyweight, light-heavy and junior bantamweight, we are only one fight away from undisputed champions: Oleksandr Usyk vs. Fabio Wardley, Dmitry Bivol vs. David Benavidez and Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez vs. Willibaldo Garcia. If we can’t get those three sorted can we at least crack on with a few unifications elsewhere.

Sky Sports essentially exited boxing in 2024 when their exclusive deal with Boxxer ran out in June. They have not shown any non-PPV boxing since and, at the time of writing, have certainly not agreed a broadcast deal with another promoter. The UK’s two biggest promoters, Matchroom and Queensberry, are now aligned with DAZN but it would benefit the whole ecosystem if Sky, with their huge swathe of subscribers, pulled up a chair at the table again. How this would look is unclear, with Matchroom, Queensberry and Boxxer all busy elsewhere but there are plenty of other fighters who would feel at home on Sky. Come back, all is forgiven.

Say what you want about Jake Paul gatecrashing the sport but what you cannot deny is the positive impact he and Most Valuable Promotions have made on women’s boxing. There is no denying that the female code has suffered a dip since the lockdown days, when women’s bouts would regularly illuminate shows, whether they were in Eddie Hearn’s back garden or strange, silent bubbles across the country. They were cheaper and often easier to make compared to men’s fights and the 10-twos format seemed to help produce relentless action tear-ups. MVP are doing their best but let 2026 be the year that other major promoters follow suit and get fully behind women’s boxing again. There are so many good fights to be made, it would be a shame to watch them die on the vine.

Boxing’s best prospect turned 21 over the holidays but the celebrations were low-key with his January 24 clash with durable Jermaine Franklin fast approaching. It seems like the perfect fight to kick off the undefeated southpaw’s fourth year as a professional and here’s hoping it’s a busy one too. In 2025, he managed a grand total of just five minutes and 45 seconds in the ring across his two bouts - one-sided beatdowns of Mike Balogun and Dillian Whyte. Added to his 117-second dismantling of Demsey McKean in December 2024, Itauma is living proof that you don’t get paid for overtime in this game but how much developing is he doing in these fights? After three years as a pro, then-21-year-old Mike Tyson was 33-0 and had made six world title defences. Times have changed, of course, but at 13-0, there is space for Itauma to catch up with that trajectory in 2026.

Can we all just agree now that 2026 is the year when this tired and incorrect trope is finally put to rest. Often when a world title fight is close and the champion retains his belt it is proclaimed that the challenger has to really ‘rip’ the title from the champion. People nod in agreement and we all move on. Please somebody, anybody, point to the section of the boxing rulebook that states this. It’s simply not true, a challenger has to win the match by the very same metrics as the champion. In what is already a subjective sport with frustratingly inconsistent scoring, can we not invent new rules and standards for title fights?

Who would have thought that it would be Chris Young, the referee in charge of Jake Paul against Anthony Joshua, who would sum things up so perfectly. “Come on guys,” he said, pulling the two fighters together in centre-ring. “Fans didn’t pay to watch this crap”. After maybe the fourth or fifth time that Paul dropped to his knees and hugged Joshua’s thighs while under attack it was obvious to all that these weird novelty fights have run their course. If Paul decides to box on after his double broken jaw at the hands of Joshua, let’s see him in some fights against opponents in his weight class and age group. They could be fun. And will people be up for paying to see him against another left-field opponent anyway? Well, Chris Young wouldn’t.

If one was tasked with listing the reasons why boxing struggles to garner greater interest among casual sports fans, in the UK at least, the main event timing must rank in the top three. It feels like bad business sense to put the best fight on your whole event, your key product, at a time when anyone who has chosen to spend their Saturday night watching television has probably gone to bed. How are Dave and Lynne from Stockport ever going to flick over to the 12-round war that is unfolding at gone midnight when they went to bed an hour before the opening bell? And if they’ve got kids waking them up at 5am on Sunday morning, that would probably be even earlier. Stick it on at 9pm and it'd be finished before Match of the Day. What’s not to like?

Believe it or not, there was a time when WBA ‘regular’ titles did not exist. It is now getting on for 15 years since they created it and we are still waiting for anybody outside of the sanctioning body’s head office to explain why. In a world where there are already four alphabet titles at each weight to confuse the life out of casual fans, we do not need another ‘secondary’ one in there. At light-heavyweight right now, the WBA have three men holding a version of the world title: Dmitry Bivol - the proper one, David Benavidez - the interim one and Albert Ramirez - the ‘regular’ one. It might make more sense if winning the regular belt guaranteed you a shot at the full champion but that doesn’t happen either. Enough.

This one is a true pet-peeve but if I can’t even air it in this column then where can I?

The year 2026 looks like it could be a good one for domestic fights, that is to say, a fight between men or women from the same country, not one necessarily boxed at ‘domestic’ level. The best one of all could well be Inoue against Junto Nakatani but there are still hopes of Tyson Fury against Anthony Joshua or even Gilberto Ramirez against Benavidez during 2026. What does this mean? That the phrase ‘domestic dust-up’ will be wheeled out constantly. Nobody calls fights ‘dust-ups’ at any other point but stick the word domestic before it and it’s suddenly all the rage. Use AI if you have to, but just think of a different phrase. Please. For my sanity.