Top award boosts Frampton

CARL FRAMPTON, already the most decorated boxer in Irish history, will be boosted by another major international honour before he steps into the ring here for what promises to be an epic world title rematch.

The Boxing Writers’ association of america have voted Frampton their 2016 Fighter of the Year, enshrining him as only the fourth UK winner of the ring’s most iconic award since its inception in the 1930s.

The Belfast Jackal will follow Ken Buchanan, lennox lewis and Ricky Hatton into a pantheon stretching back 78 years and featuring the greatest names in boxing, the vast majority of them american.

The trophy, named after the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson, is Frampton’s latest reward for two world championship feats in the last calendar year. First he unified the bantamweight title by beating English rival Scott Quigg. Then he became Ulster’s first two-weight champion by venturing to new York and moving up to take the WBA feather- weight belt from leo Santa Cruz, the previously undefeated threedivision world champion who he meets again in the MGM grand garden arena on Saturday.

Frampton had already been elected Fighter of the Year by the British Boxing Board of Control and ESPN, the US cable sports television network. In addition, he has been awarded an MBE.

as those distinctions were followed by the same accolade from Ring magazine, Barry Mcguigan — Frampton’s promoter and mentor — said: ‘Carl is uplifted by all these honours. Some boxers become weighed down by the bigger expectations awards put upon them but not him. He is humbled and inspired