A year ends with memories of those who are gone, optimism for those who are emerging and hope for those who are back. There are lessons from unresolved controversies and controversy that never ends. Farewell Joe Frazier, Genaro Hernandez, Ron Lyle, Henry Cooper, George Benton, Nick Charles and George Kimball. It won’t be the same without you. Hello Andre Ward, Nonito Donaire, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Seth Mitchell, James Kirkland, Gary Russell Jr. and Jose Benavidez Jr. You’re the future.

Those new calendars in the mail are an empty canvas. Opinions and predictions are as irresistible as they are frivolous and about as forgettable as graffiti. Here are a few – the good, the bad and the tongue-in-cheek. But, first, a warning. For anybody who takes any of them seriously, remember that I picked Alfredo Angulo to beat Kirkland, who got up from a first-round knockdown and made the prediction game look foolish with a sixth-round stoppage.

Now, a look at what might – and might not — unfold:

Opinion: There’s a better chance of Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather in 2012 than there is of a fourth fight between Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez. Pacquiao-Marquez IV would look a lot like II and III. What’s the point? It would end in just another noisy controversy about who won. Fair or not, Marquez’ legacy rests on the brilliant way he made Pacquiao look beatable. In subtle adjustments from round-to-round last November, he forced Pacquiao to hesitate and think. It was enough to prevent Pacquiao, an instinctive fighter, from establishing a rhythm. Allow Pacquiao to get on a roll, and there’s no stopping him.

Prediction: Marquez, who keeps his promises, retires

Opinion: Somebody needs to convince Mayweather that his 90-day jail sentence on reduced charges for his role in domestic abuse is a chance to think about a legacy he has put in jeopardy. If he stays out of trouble and vows to devote the next few years to his evident talent, he still can achieve the respect he always believes has been denied him. That respect isn’t an entitlement. It’s won by fighting through adversity. For the first time in his career, he is facing some that he can’t trash-talk or side step. It’s the biggest fight of his life.

Prediction: Mayweather beats Lamont Peterson three months after his release.

Opinion: Mayweather advisor Al Haymon is the elusive powerbroker, whose influence is there, yet hard to quantify. There is power, perhaps, in the mystery. Mayweather has called the publicity-shy Haymon “The Ghost.’’

Prediction: Ghosts will get quoted more often than Haymon.

Opinion: Pacquiao will have to restore some lost confidence after getting a majority decision over Marquez in fight he halting called “not so happy.’’ He also has to find a way to solve troublesome leg cramps, which he says affected him in victories over Shane Mosley and Marquez. The fractured confidence should be easy enough to repair for the Filipino Congressman and lieutenant colonel. But the cramping is another issue. It might be a sign, an early symptom, of a fighter one step past his prime.

Prediction: Pacquiao beats Tim Bradley, then Miguel Cotto in a rematch and gets promoted to major general.

Opinion: World Boxing Council chief Jose Sulaiman is issuing statements and clarifications faster than interim titles. This time, he’s trying to say he didn’t really mean to tell the Filipino media that “beating a lady … it is not a major sin or crime.” In a subsequent statement, he said that he “developed female boxing.’’ Memo to women who hold one of the WBC’s lime-green belts: Do what Riddick Bowe did in 1992 and dump it in the nearest garbage can.

Prediction: Sulaiman will say something stupid.

Opinion: We’re just beginning to see how good Ward can be. With news that he beat a Carl Froch with a left hand fractured in two places, we’re also beginning to see how tough he is. A reported audience of fewer than 500,000 watched his victory on Dec. 17 over Froch in Showtime’s final of the Super Six Tournament. That was disappointing.

Prediction: After the hand heals, he’ll win two in 2012, pushing his record to 27-0. This time, more than 500,000 will watch his patient, yet sure path to pound-for-pound contention.

Opinion: Questions loom as to whether Canelo-Chavez Jr., will ever happen because Chavez Jr. a junior-middleweight, is said to be at about 180 pounds at opening bell. If Chavez Jr. is too heavy for Canelo, he’s too heavy for Miguel Cotto. The weight issue might force Chavez Jr. into a fight with Sergio Martinez late in 2012.

Prediction: Martinez wins a late-round stoppage.

Opinion: People close to Antonio Margarito have urged him to retire. Even if his surgically-repaired eye can withstand further punches, the tissue around it cannot. After years of sustained punishment, it doesn’t take much for it to lacerate and swell. That was evident early in his loss on Dec. 3 to Cotto.

Prediction: A defiant Margarito continues to fight, bleed and lose in Mexico.

Opinion: Referees struggled throughout 2011 to get it right. Russell Mora missed 11 low blows in Abner Mares’ first victory over Joseph Agbeko. Joe Cortez was looking away, toward the timekeeper, when Mayweather dropped Victor Ortiz, whose hands were down and his eyes on Cortez. Joe Cooper took two points from Amir Khan for pushing off Peterson. If Cooper warned Khan, it was only evident after careful review of the tape long after Khan’s loss on the scorecards was announced. Cooper’s penalties were the difference.

Prediction: More instant replay. It works in the NFL. Nobody has a tougher job than boxing’s lone ref. Let technology be his ally.

Opinion: Top Rank and Golden Boy, Bob Arum and Oscar De La Hoya, will continue to exchange insults instead of letting their respective fighters exchange punches.

Prediction: A year from now, we’ll be talking about whether Pacquiao-Mayweather will happen in 2013.

Pico Rivera–It is only fitting that one of the great Los Angeles boxing champions will receive the very first Salute To Great Champions award, and that champion will be Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez. On Saturday, June 25th in the boxing ring at the Pico Rivera Sports Arena as part of Opening Night of the Inaugural Boxeo en El Pico Rivera boxing and MMA series presented by Roy Englebrecht Promotions; Leonardo Lopez Sr. and Fernando Lopez, the operators of the arena will present the Hernandez family with a specially designed sculpture to signify the Salute To Great Champions award.

Genaro is the first recipient of this award not because he was a eight time world boxing champion….not because he just recently lost his life with a rare form of brain cancer….he is receiving this honor because he is one of the classiest, most decent champions Los Angeles has ever produced!

With a sterling 38-2 pro record with his only losses coming from Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather, and super featherweight world titles in the WBC and WBA, Hernandez has been a true Los Angeles warrior. Genaro was born in South Central Los Angeles, trained in South Central, sparred in South Central, and has kept himself grounded over the years by his ties to South Central LA.

The opening night action will feature a hybrid fight show promoted by Roy Englebrecht Promotions that will feature three pro boxing bouts and three pro mixed martial arts bouts, and will have a real local flavor. Headlining the six bout card will be two local fighters in separate bouts. Whittier prospect Humberto Zatarain who is trained by Oscar Muniz will look to stay undefeated and move to 2-0 and will face Martin Delgado out of Ontario in a lightweight matchup. In a junior lightweight female bout, Maywood’s Lissette Medel at 2-1 will face Coachella’s tough Adriana Leal.

MMA action will feature Pico Rivera’s own Matt Ruiz (1-1) facing Duarte’s Brandon Michael (2-2) in a heavyweight three rounder, and Long Beach’s Sebastian Lopez (1-1) meets North Hollywood’s Carlos Urquilla (1-1) at middleweight.

Other local fighters on the Saturday, June 25th show include Maywood’s Rigoberto Flores in his pro debut, and South Gate heavyweight Martin Santizo also in his pro debut.

Tickets priced at only $35 for floor seats and only $10 for Grandstand general admission. Tickets are on sale by calling 562-695-0747. Pico Rivera Sports Arena is centrally located off the 605 Freeway at the 60 freeway between Los Angeles and Orange Counties

By now you’ve read reminiscences of Genaro Hernandez from men who knew him far better than I did. Some covered his matches, others worked with him in broadcasting, a few were his promoters. This, by contrast, is not an adequate eulogy but an account of three memorable encounters with “Chicanito” and what they taught me about the man and his profession.

His profession, of course, was prizefighting. And the man, a two-time world champion, succumbed to rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer, last Tuesday, at the age of 45. Services for him will be held on Monday in East Los Angeles’ Resurrection Church at 11 AM. They are open to the public.

The day L.A. Boxing-Ahwatukee opened in Phoenix, I knew Genaro Hernandez only as the man who had lost to Floyd Mayweather nine years before. Jason Bress changed that directly. Jason was the head instructor at L.A. Boxing and a Muay Thai fighter who’d begun as a collegiate wrestler and later learned how to box from Genaro. Jason treated few men with reverence, but nobody ever said an unkind word about Genaro in front of Jason.

Later I would learn that nobody ever said an unkind word about Genaro in front of anyone, but I didn’t know it the day I met him.

That was March 31, 2007. It was L.A. Boxing-Ahwatukee’s grand opening. As a means of honoring his teacher, Jason asked Genaro to fly in from California. If you didn’t know who Genaro Hernandez was when you walked in that gym, it became quickly apparent. There was a professional on the speed bag doing things nobody had done on that bag in the gym’s first month and never did rival in the next three years of trying. Genaro was in the back of the gym, better dressed than most, hitting the bag with his elbow and head while spinning underneath it.

He had not fought professionally in nearly a decade but wasn’t a six-week training camp from being a super featherweight, despite standing 5 foot 11 inches. He happily fielded questions about most anything and gave serious answers.

Back then, the world was awaiting “The Word Awaits” because it was going to save boxing. The conventional wisdom was that Floyd Mayweather was a better fighter but a victory for Oscar De La Hoya would be better for the sport. Genaro doubted that.

“Wait, you want Oscar to win?” Genaro said. “I don’t know about that. Floyd’s real. I could text message Floyd right now, and he’d reply. Floyd’s a real person.”

If Genaro’s confidence in Mayweather’s character has not been entirely justified – though there are reports Mayweather is covering all funeral costs for the Hernandez family – his questions about De La Hoya’s character were indeed prophetic.

Fifteen months later, Jason Bress made a comeback fight in California. Though it was not a boxing match, and though he had not trained properly for it, he asked Genaro to work his corner. The match ended on an early stoppage Jason lost because of cuts.

I saw Genaro a month later in the media center at MGM Grand before Antonio Margarito’s fight with Miguel Cotto. I wandered over and shook his hand and reminded him of when and where we’d met. He cut me off, smiled, and said, “I remember you.”

I told him I’d heard Jason’s side of what happened in that comeback fight but wondered what Genaro had seen. He was dismayed at Jason’s conditioning. He said you could tell Jason did not want to fight when he complained about fouling.

“He came back to the corner and said the other guy was butting,” Genaro said, and then his face changed, and he grabbed my near shoulder and raised his left thumb. “I told him, ‘Then you take your thumb and you shove it in his eye, right to his brain! This is a fight, man.’”

I have often marveled at the chasm between how fighters are when fighting and when not fighting. These vicious men are the truest and gentlest souls I’ve met. No chasm, though, was greater than what Genaro showed me that day.

In an instant, he was in a fight, someone else’s, even, and ready to hurt another man. A moment later, he was back to his kind, debonair self. We talked a little longer, and he gave me the small handshake and large, genuine smile that was his signature.

A few months later, Jason Bress came in the gym distraught. He’d learned of Genaro’s cancer. Jason was “hard core” in the strict sense of the term. When you met him, he came off as a mean little fighter who disdained you. Then you got to know him, and he turned out to be a careful and empathetic guy. Then you really got to know him, and he was a mean little fighter who disdained you. He was hard at his core.

But he was sad the day he told us about Genaro’s cancer. Our gym had a better grasp on how things would go than the optimistic coverage Genaro’s announcement brought. Our co-owner, Allen Shellenberger, the drummer from the rock band Lit, had been diagnosed with brain cancer months before. After chemotherapy, he appeared at a June fundraiser and wasn’t the same person at all.

The final time I saw Genaro was at Mandalay Bay in July. He had aged considerably. He was no longer wiry but frail. He had little hair. He was at ringside doing a broadcast. After the fight, I tapped him on the shoulder and shook his hand. We talked about Jason Bress and that L.A. Boxing grand opening. We briefly reminded each other of a better time.

Now, Allen is gone, passed away at age 39. Jason was fired and returned to California. And now Genaro has passed on, too. That day in March of 2007 holds nothing but sadness. Boxing’s brutality does not stop at the apron.

Bart Barry can be reached at bbarry@15rounds.com

Former world champion Genaro Hernandez passed away today in California at the age of forty-five after a battle of cancer in Mission Veijo, California according to Dan Rafael of espn.com

“I think that the best fight he had was when he went to France and won the world title,” Rudy Hernandez, Genaro’s brother, said a few hours after Hernandez’s death. “He was looking to land and it was just a matter of time until he would catch him and knock him out. I was his brother, his trainer, his adviser, his manager, his friend.”

Hernandez (38-2-1, 17 KOs) defended the title eight times — including five times at the Great Western Forum — but then got the shot he had always wanted, a showdown against East Los Angeles rival Oscar De La Hoya. Hernandez moved up in weight and challenged De La Hoya for his lightweight belt outdoors at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1995.

“He was a lovely man, and he was really a credit to the sport of boxing,” said Top Rank’s Bob Arum, who promoted the Nelson fight and many of Hernandez’s late-career bouts, and also quietly covered many of Hernandez’s medical expenses during his battle against cancer.

“I remember one instance (the Nelson fight) where he was fouled, and he knew he could win if he stayed down,” Arum said. “He insisted on continuing. He didn’t want to win the fight that way. He was a brave guy, a great guy.”

“As a commentator, he was everything you could ask for,” Arum said. “He had such a good understanding of what was going on inside the ring. He was just a great person. Eventually the cancer got him, but he did really well in his fight against cancer. He lasted for a long time and did everything he could to beat cancer. He showed a lot of heart.”

“We last worked together last December doing (Soto-Antillon), and he was still exhilarated by what he was watching,” said broadcaster Rich Marotta, who called many of Hernandez’s fights before partnering with him when he became a television analyst after he retired from the ring. “We will all miss him very much.”

“I had the good fortune to call many of Genaro’s fights, from early in his career when he was appearing in prelims at the Irvine Ballroom to his days as a world champion at the Forum to his biggest fight against Oscar De La Hoya at Caesars,” Marotta said. “He was the same guy through all of that, friendly, accessible to all and simply one of the finest athletes I’ve ever had the pleasure of dealing with. He was still the same guy, with the same accommodating demeanor, in the years following his boxing career as a ringside commentator.”

“He pretty much ended up playing it safe sometimes. He wanted to demonstrate his skills,” Rudy Hernandez said. “He fought as hard as he had to. He made things look a lot easier than they were. But he was a very, very dedicated fighter. Never once did he ever go into a fight not being 100 percent in shape. He was so dedicated, even when he wasn’t fighting or scheduled to fight, he remained in the gym. He fought Azumah Nelson on a Saturday, and on Tuesday he was back in the gym working out.”

Hernandez is survived by his wife, Liliana; their two children, 19-year-old Amanda and 11-year-old Steven; three brothers; two sisters; and his father, Joe Rudy Hernandez. His mother died in 2004. Rudy Hernandez said funeral arrangements were pending.