Best Middleweight: Kawasaki ZX-6R

Year in and year out, Kawasaki’s Ninja 600 sportbikes have been steady contenders, achieving a great deal of success on racetracks while also showing tremendous poise on the street. Yet even the Ninja’s fine balance of performance and versatility hasn’t quite been enough to put it on top of the hotly contested middleweight category. But following a lengthy nine-year dry spell, a green machine is once again in the limelight. Credit a focus on dramatically improved engine performance that helped it smoke its competitors, plus substantial weight reduction, more precise handling and sharper styling, all of which created an unmatched blend of just the right ingredients for middleweight supremacy.