Joshua Franco won the Revelation of the Year Award granted by the World Boxing Association (WBA) in its 2020 edition thanks to his great performance and the improvement he showed during the year. Franco, a native of San Antonio, Texas, became the first world champion after the pandemic pause when he defeated Australian Andrew Moloney in Las Vegas on June 23rd.

Franco has had a tough career in which he has faced great opponents, but all those successes and failures prepared him to take advantage of the first title opportunity in his career and defeat a great champion like Moloney.

Although there was a rematch in November, the fight ended a no-decision, so Joshua remains the 115-pound champion and is one of the important names in a category that has great talents like “Chocolatito” González, Juan Francisco Estrada, Carlos Cuadras or Kazuto Ioka.

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To her surprise, after an explosive fight, Belleville, Illinois-born boxer Jessica “CasKilla” McCaskill made her way into the golden pages of women’s boxing worldwide. On August 15, 2020 in Tulsa, United States, with the seal of Matchroom Boxing, McCaskill defeated the legendary Cecilia “First Lady” Braekhus in a majority decision and became the owner of the 147-pound titles, this ending the 11 immaculate years reign of Braekhus.

McCaskill earned the recognition as the Female Revelation of the Year 2020 with great merit. McCaskill had had a major test against Katie Taylor ten months before the fight that changed her life forever against the Norwegian, who had achieved 25 successful defenses and was undefeated in 36 performances.

The new queen of the welterweight division entered the amateur ranks in 2008 after approaching a gym with the only intention of being in good shape. However, she soon fell in love with the sport and even managed to win the prestigious Golden Glove Championship three times. In 2012 she moved to Chicago, where she worked in a bank. McCaskill never stopped working and training in parallel until the present.

By 2015 she became professional. In 2019 she became the World Boxing Association Super Lightweight Champion by defeating Argentina’s Anahi Sanchez, and a few months later she made the first successful defense against Argentina’s Erica Farias, whom she had already defeated a year earlier.

“The Queen of Chicago” is enjoying a great moment waiting for the next challenges, among which is the rematch agreed against Cecilia Braekhus.