Duran's Defense

I always thought his defense was pretty textbook. Not sure about your comment on him pulling back; he moved his upper body pretty fluidly, especially angling his body and ducking his head rightwards to slip (and later counter) a left jab. His parrying skills on top of that made him very hard to hit at range, let alone on the inside where he'd weave and turn the angle out of a tight guard.

 

Well not everything he did was textbook, but yeah most of it was more very advanced than incorrect.Duran's not exactly the fighter you would show to a young boxer and tell him to copy right away, but any experienced textbook fighter would benefit from watching him.Most fighters just will never be able to slip and roll punches that well.

Going straight back to avoid a punch is incorrect in a textbook sense if you are walking straight backwards leading with the feet outside of your boxing stance and swaying away with the upperbody ie Ali.


Whipping your upperbody straight back a few inches while still in your boxing stance or sliding straight back with half-steps are advanced techniques that still allow you to utilise all of your textbook skills in an instant if properly executed.You'll see few fighters who could be labelled great technicians not utilising them at some point.

Duran usually did the latter.With his right often high to protect from a hook and would blend it with a few more angles and slips or maybe instantly come back with a right hand counter(philly pull counter yo')

I find Duran more often does a slight circular backwards shifting of the shoulders for the counter right though(a trademark move of Napoles and others as well), rather than the more reflexive Mayweather approach of pushing a right over the top after a directly backwards shift.That's even more advanced and requires less speed and reflexes, but a consummate judging of distance to be comfortable with.

More suitable for the less athletic fighter to learn even it it's tougher initually.You see too many Floyd influenced fighters nowadays with lesser ability than the man himself looking more like Hamed pulling back far too much and not being able to put the right counter over properly as a result.Should be mastering the basics of punch slipping and range-control before trying this sort of stuff.

 

Informative insight on this post...great observations.:good

 

Solid analysis. Covered everything I was going to point out and more.

I'm with the idea that you wouldn't expect a novice to be able to execute most of Duran's defensive techniques, but his parrying could probably be taught in an elementary way.

I would add that his feinting is an important part of setting up his offense, but it also puts his opponent in a defensive, reactionary posture which aids his defense.

 

He did some things textbook correct & other things in his natural way, it all blended in perfect for his own style. He was a phenomenal fighter, one of the very, very best that ever did it.

 

He was a natural fighter. He wasn't textbook at all. I'm not sure if anyone ever taught him how to box.

 

Duran paid almost no attention to defence. He was a face-first brawler, much like Hagler, throughout his career. The sole reason anyone pays attention to him is his "win" over "Leonard" but in actuality, the real Leonard, a typically negative slickster, fought Duran's fight, aka zero boxing, all brawling. That fight was basically a flat-footed slugfest, whereas the typical Leonard, as seen in the second fight, was a fleet-footed boxing master with constant movement and almost no punching, the way a master like Jimmy Young would do it.

That fight saw Duran's impotent, no-defence, crude brawling unable to penetrate the invisible wall in front of Leonard. Anytime anyone boxed Duran, he lost. As seen in Leonard 2, Hearns and Benitez. A terribly overrated fighter. All he had was his chin, his punch and his intimidation tactics. And boxrec will show you his kayo ratio isn't even that good and he could be stopped, so maybe he should've paid more attention to learning to box. Then MAYBE he'd have won more than one of his biggest fights. ODLH 1.0, if anything.

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:yep

 

Only trained by arguably the greatest trainer of all time.

 

If you a refering to Ray Arcel, he never claimed to have taught Duran much if anything.
Arcel said Duran was a natural fighter.

 

Is this a joke or are you being serious?

 

I for one agree worth every single thing in that post. And would like too add that Duran couldn't beat a mover. Any mover. All you had to do was get on your bike and move and he was helpless. Like an overgrown stone handed baby. He would quit.

Eat cake.

 

He's joking. He's copying the the posting style of MAG1965, who always runs down Duran and pumps Hearns, among others. Hence the reference to MAG in black at the end of the post.