The Weekly Wrap: Dec. 27 - Jan. 2

Best of 2008 awards trickle in

In a year without clear-cut favorites, the final week of 2008 saw a diverse field of fighters awarded year-end honors, with more to come in the week ahead.

World Extreme Cagefighting aired a Versus special on Dec. 29 replaying candidates for fight of the year, including Miguel Torres vs. Yoshiro Maeda, Carlos Condit vs. Hiromitsu Miura and Donald Cerrone vs. Rob McCullough -- the first time the Nov. 5 slugfest has aired. The WEC will present its own fight of the year award during their first show of 2009 on Jan. 25 in San Diego.

HD-Net's "Inside MMA" handed out "Bazzies," which are bobble-head statues of co-host Bas Rutten, to the year's best. Anderson Silva received best fighter honors, the breakthrough fighter award went to Gegard Mousasi, and knockout of the year went to Rashad Evans for his win over Chuck Liddell. Some categories had two winners. Fight of the year went to Frank Shamrock vs. Cung Le and Eddie Alvarez vs. Joachim Hansen, while submission of the year went to both Shinya Aoki, for his gogoplata from the mount against Katsuhiko Nagata, and to Yuri Ivlev's judo-throw-armbar combination on an M-1 Challenge card aboard a Russian battleship in June.

Other prominent voices in MMA pointed to Thiago Alves, Miguel Torres, Rashad Evans and Georges St. Pierre as potential fighters of the year. Eddie Alvarez was considered in the running before tapping to Shinya Aoki on New Year's Eve, though his fights with Joachim Hansen and Tatsuya Kawajiri were frontrunners for fight of the year.

Sherdog.com will roll out its 2008 honors beginning the week of Jan. 4.