Championship Fighting

[GodofGamblers]

This is surely the best book i have ever read on Boxing and it is free online. You have to register, but there is no payment to be made.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3301214/Ch...0-Jack-Dempsey

I don't agree with everything he says about shoulder whirls and the way he writes off Swings, but his style of writing is fantastic and the book is just as timely today as ever.

Btw, Dadi, i am preparing a thread on Boxing Defence compared to Karate Defence.... i have always wondered how two totally different styles of defence developed. Which one is better? Which one is more efficient in a street fight? Perhaps you could give some thought to this too and we could compare our views.
thx

[ezzthetic]

This is surely the best book i have ever read on Boxing and it is free online. You have to register, but there is no payment to be made.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3301214/Ch...0-Jack-Dempsey

I don't agree with everything he says about shoulder whirls and the way he writes off Swings, but his style of writing is fantastic and the book is just as timely today as ever.

Btw, Dadi, i am preparing a thread on Boxing Defence compared to Karate Defence.... i have always wondered how two totally different styles of defence developed. Which one is better? Which one is more efficient in a street fight? Perhaps you could give some thought to this too and we could compare our views.
thx

Sorry, Kerisna... I haven't been online for a while, but I'm back now. Looking forward to your thread.

Dempsey's book is great. I'd definitely recommend you look into Curtis Cokes' book.

[GodofGamblers]

I am hesitating about writing it because the last thing I want to do is to start a flame thread where people fight over which style is better. It stems solely from the observation i made while reading that the old style boxers, the bareknuckle ones, did hand hardening (using turpentine!) and did a lot more blocking than slipping, weaving etc and had a radically different stance which is more akin to karate than to modern boxing. You're a very technical boxer so i'm sure you've noticed how they kept their weight back on the back leg, the trunk of the body leaning back to give "strategic depth" and to facilitate the weight shift for straight lefts and rights.

It intrigues me and I'd like to write something about it, but am still considering...

[John Bennett]

I think it's like golf or shooting stances where "what works best" gets discovered and refined over time via trial and error in the crucible of competition.

I don't think I've seen a sport where the players got better by adopting older techniques than those currently in use.

I now have a dim view of "body hardening" because I'm now older and suffering from when I practiced it as a young man. In the long run it makes you weaker.

[ezzthetic]

The rules dictate the game. When you change the rules, you change the game. Sometimes this can be beneficial and sometimes not. The current rules of amateur boxing, for example, have pretty much ruined it and stagnated its technical development. Sometimes, more restrictive rules make for more creative training. This is seen, in another example, in the introduction of judo. There are some things that are lost during these transitions. Some things are just playing off the old rules and are non-convertible, so to speak.

It is certainly useful to go back and trace the development of any art to illuminate your own practice. Often this will give a better understanding of why we do things. However, sometimes people get carried away with little things. Don't take it to far.

Here's a little story that illustrates this point (not quite the version I remember, but the same point is made):

The story is about a deliciously cooked ham. The dinner guests just raved about how good that ham tasted. Finally, one of the guests asked her host what her secret was to preparing such a succulent tasting ham!

She replied that her special secret was that just before cooking, she trimmed off both ends of the ham. "And why do you do that," the inquisitive guest asked?

The proud host then explained, "Well, that's how my mother taught me to cook it. That's the way I have been doing it for years, and it always comes out delicious."

Not satisfied, the curious one pressed on. "But why did she trim off both ends of the ham? How in the world does that make it taste so good?"

"I really don't know," her guest replied. "I've never thought about it. But I'll ask her, and I will get back with you."

The next day she called her mom and asked why she trimmed the ends off the ham before cooking, hoping to get some secret cooking answer. But her mom was no help at all. "Why, honey, that's just how your grandmother taught me. She always did it that way, and her ham was always delicious," she answered. "Why don't you ask her?"

Feeling like she was now on a quest for something very important, she indeed called her grandmother and asked the same question. Much to her dismay, she got the same answer. Grandma simply said, "Oh my dear, that's just way my mother taught me."

Now desperate for an answer, she called her great-grandmother and asked, "Why did you trim both ends off of a ham before cooking it? Does it cook better that way? Does it have something to do with the juices?"

The wise old lady replied, "Oh sweetie, cutting the ends off of a ham has absolutely nothing to do with any of those things."

"But then why did you cut the ends off?" the young lady asked, now very puzzled.

She answered, "I trimmed the ends off so it would fit into my pan!"

Tracing things back allowed me, for example, to find the connection between boxing and fencing - something that was a casualty of development with the rise of the gloved era of boxing. I have turned this knowledge into real results in the gym and in competition with my own fighters.

I recommend Monte Cox's website for historical/technical boxing research.

http://coxscorner.tripod.com/

I'm a little wiped out after training tonight, so I've glossed over a lot of points I wanted to make. I can respond more coherently to more specific topics.

One thing that is always forgotten in comparing karate to boxing is that boxing always assumes a level surface. Karate, though this is rarely recognized in training anyway, does not. This has a tremendous effect on stance and weight distribution and application.

[ezzthetic]

I'm going to channel Jeff Burger and just throw things out there haphazardly. Jeff gets a lot more stuff out there than I do. I sit on stuff far too much in fear of under-articulating.

Bare-knuckle boxing... you broke your hands easily if you hit a hard part of the body. Hardening was a necessity, not a virtue.

Slipping and weaving vs blocking... with gloves it was much easier to get conditioned to moving your head out of the way! Take that out and that leaves you with mostly blocking and parrying, but also stopping. Blocking is also useful for destroying the opponent's arms (even passively).

Bare-knuckle fights, in general, have the appearance of pawing with your lead hand - which is easy to injure for relatively low effect - to set up a right hand power punch. You lean back on your back foot to get out of the way of right hands and counter with your own. Leaning back is useful for getting the other guy to overreach with the right. Since left hooks were underdeveloped during this period, the biggest fault of leaning back went largely unpunished.

I love to show the following fight to demonstrate this principle: Vivian Harris vs Carlos Maussa. Harris is right hand crazy against a very awkward opponent who leans back a lot and takes the bite out of Harris' heavy right. He's obviously got PBF-itis and is trying to use the shoulder roll + right hand counter regardless of the fact that his opponent is not open to it. He's got his shiny new hammer and everything just looks like a nail to him! The opening is there for a left hook but he ignores his corner and keep trying to whack his clearly lower level opponent with the right. See what happens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCjSKCJIyOQ

Then see if you can find Ricky Hatton's fight against Maussa. Guess with which punch Ricky KO's Maussa!

[John Bennett]

Interesting commentary Dadi.

What is "PBF-itis" ?

[ezzthetic]

Interesting commentary Dadi.

What is "PBF-itis" ?

PBF-itis is the tendency of the current generation of young boxers to imitate the current boxing superman, Pretty Boy Floyd Mayweather Jr. This was preceded by RJJr-itis, SRL-itis, Tyson-itis and Ali-itis.

[John Bennett]

I get it now. Thanks.

[Tony Dismukes]

Slipping and weaving vs blocking... with gloves it was much easier to get conditioned to moving your head out of the way!

Why is this? It seems like moving your head out of the way would be just as desirable and just as easy/difficult bareknuckle as it would be with gloves.

I do get that destructive blocks would work a lot better against a bareknuckle opponent than against a gloved one. Is there any other reason why slipping and weaving would be less developed by bareknuckle fighters?

[ezzthetic]

Why is this? It seems like moving your head out of the way would be just as desirable and just as easy/difficult bareknuckle as it would be with gloves.

I do get that destructive blocks would work a lot better against a bareknuckle opponent than against a gloved one. Is there any other reason why slipping and weaving would be less developed by bareknuckle fighters?

It's just easier to TRAIN slipping technique with the gloves. If you mess up, after all, you just got hit with a glove. It's just something that happened naturally with the advent of gloved competition. It's not something that is likely to intuitively develop training with bare knuckles.

This phenomenon is the same thing as isolation technical training. Two of my guys for example have been drilling a double left hook (body-head). They take turns trying to land this combination. In between they both employ their jabs freely (this keeps up realism) and can throw straight right hands only if there is a direct opening. Once the double left hook is thrown, the receiver can throw an immediate counter-punch. This way you have to create an opening, dynamically position yourself to throw the combination and make sure you finish the technique in a good position. From this kind of training, they will learn to throw the combination with more authority than they would if they just trained it on the bag, pads or by throwing them statically at one another and then just try to land it in all out sparring. What I'm saying is that since bare-knuckle boxing had certain conditions that made it risky to employ slipping, bobbing and weaving at the low level (where inevitably we must all start) it never got to that higher level. This is basically the result of specialization in the same sense that BJJ, by virtue of focus, has a more developed ground-game than judo.

When Bruce Lee began adopting boxing techniques, he recognized the usefulness of slipping, etc. However, since he came from a tradition where you train with bare hands, he was never comfortable with it personally. He preferred parrying.

[Tony Dismukes]

Thanks, Dadi. That makes sense.

Your explanation also triggers a question I hadn't thought about previously. How did the boxers of the bare-knuckle era practice sparring? Did they have any gloves or other safety equipment just for training purposes?

By the way, I like the sound of that technical isolation exercise you described. I can see how that would be really helpful.

[ezzthetic]

Your explanation also triggers a question I hadn't thought about previously. How did the boxers of the bare-knuckle era practice sparring? Did they have any gloves or other safety equipment just for training purposes?

Sure, but I understand that they were much smaller than the eventual competition gloves.

Another development, which actually happened within the gloved era, is the use of stiffer gloves with a more fixed wrist. This severely limited the technique of stopping, which requires flexibility of the wrist. Hasim Rahman tried to employ a stopping technique in his rematch against Lennox Lewis. He got knocked out cold. It doesn't work today and as a result the surrounding knowledge has atrophied. The interesting thing there is that stopping didn't go extinct immediately with the introduction of gloves. It was still well employed by such notables as Jack Johnson in the the teens and Eddie Booker in the forties. When the impetus for making gloves became to protect the hands (and punctuate punching power) rather than to muffle the punches (and protect the opponent), the result was the inadvertent death of stopping techniques. Today, for example, the amateur boxing glove or "international" glove has increased flexibility in the wrist due to the focus on protecting the opponent.

A parallel development was the introduction of wrestling "belts" in Icelandic wrestling. It was developed to prevent wrestlers from showing up for competition wearing pants that it was impossible to grip or pants that tore easily. For the old time wrestlers this didn't matter, since they had trained in the traditional manner before and only had to make minor adjustments to the belt gripping. For the succeeding generations, however, the belt became the focus of training. It ruined what is still called the National Sport of Iceland.

[GodofGamblers]

I think it's like golf or shooting stances where "what works best" gets discovered and refined over time via trial and error in the crucible of competition.

I don't think I've seen a sport where the players got better by adopting older techniques than those currently in use.

I now have a dim view of "body hardening" because I'm now older and suffering from when I practiced it as a young man. In the long run it makes you weaker.

I've been mulling over your comment, john, and i'm not sure that's right. i'm sure it's right in most sports, but not in combat ones. since practicioners are so bound by the rules, they often lose sight of the reality of a combat system. the UFC, for example, shattered a lot of egos.

I remember a story on a military forum i log onto where a british marine recounted how they trained with russian special forces and the russian takedowns, defences, sentry elimination drills etc were all markedly superior. The reason? the russians had made a manual during ww2 of techniques that worked and stuck to them. meanwhile the brits had "improved" the techniques over time... but actually all they had done was to complicate them and make them unwieldy.

often times in combat you think you are moving forward when in fact you are not.

i often wonder how Jack Dempsey would do were he alive today....

[GodofGamblers]

Have you ever tried the old fashioned stance in sparring, Dadi? It actually works quite well. I wouldn't fight a whole round that way, but it can throw off an opponent if you suddenly slip into it. It limits mobility a bit, but defensively it is good adn the weight transfer for a straight right or straight left is very very dramatic. You can catch someone off guard quite easily if your timing is right.

[ezzthetic]

Have you ever tried the old fashioned stance in sparring, Dadi? It actually works quite well. I wouldn't fight a whole round that way, but it can throw off an opponent if you suddenly slip into it. It limits mobility a bit, but defensively it is good adn the weight transfer for a straight right or straight left is very very dramatic. You can catch someone off guard quite easily if your timing is right.

Sure I have played with it, but: Jab to the head (or a feint), right to the body, left hook to the head = good night, sweet prince!

Everything works if you train it right. Some Eastern European strains of boxing have made this style their own and modernized it. They are extremely awkward... but markedly have no real left hook. Just a left slap.

[GodofGamblers]

Doesn't this thread vindicate karate ? Bare knuckle boxing seems a lot like karate. Wider stance, weight to the back, hard hardening, blocks instead of slipping, bobbing and weaving etc.

The only characteristic they don't share is face hardening: i once read that the old school boxers used to sleep with their hands in turpentine and used to apply it to their faces too.... the skin would be leathery like a snake and would not cut easily!

[ezzthetic]

Well, I don't see that karate needs any vindication except to the MMA generation. It didn't ask for any comparison nor should it be perpetuated. Of course there are similarities, but they are not staggering.

The body hardening is simply a relic of competition.

Doesn't this thread vindicate karate ? Bare knuckle boxing seems a lot like karate. Wider stance, weight to the back, hard hardening, blocks instead of slipping, bobbing and weaving etc.

The only characteristic they don't share is face hardening: i once read that the old school boxers used to sleep with their hands in turpentine and used to apply it to their faces too.... the skin would be leathery like a snake and would not cut easily!