Who were some fighters who were obsessed with perfecting their skills and conditioning? Kostya Tsyu seemed like a kind of mix between a fighting monk and a mad scientist with the way he would talk about his weird conditioning routines and inventing new punches and combinations. Bernard Hopkins still spends hours shadow boxing, focusing on eliminating all the flaws from his game. Andre Ward seems similar, trying to hone every aspect of his abilities, from boxing at range to infighting, to mauling or jabbing. I'm just interested in learning about more guys who were committed to their own fistic evolution.
Tommy Loughran. This is from Mike Casey's article on him: My good friend and fellow historian, Mike Hunnicut, was all too eager to talk about Tommy Loughran. Mike owns an extensive film collection of the great fighters and has studied Tommy many times. Here’s what the good Mr H says “Tommy was a phenomenon, who remained so due to his utter obsession to his craft. He truly did train as much as any fighter in history, with wall-to-wall mirrors to study himself, various diagrams for footwork, and analysing every single move and punch in constant preparation for his opponents and their styles, strengths and weaknesses. His trainer Joe Smith would throw fast punches at Tommy’s face, while Loughran stood near a wall, to master slipping and rolling." In the early 1970s, Loughran described his painstaking pursuit of perfection to author Peter Heller. While Tommy was never one to be hindered by modesty, there is great truth in what he said: “I think that nobody has ever put in the time and effort and practising and studying boxing, doing different things, like I did. I was so meticulous about everything I did insofar as my training was concerned, my movements, my balance, my sense of co-ordination and my footwork was tied in with all the movements. Of course, I was fortunate too in having a manager who had been a fighter himself. Joe Smith had had 300 fights and he didn’t have a mark on him. Very good looking. “I worked in the basement of my home. I had a little gym fixed up there and I had mirrors and I studied myself in the mirrors, punch the bag, skip rope, shadow box, and I studied my movements in these mirrors in such a way hat I knew exactly how I appeared to every fellow that I was boxing.”
Interesting stuff. I know Hearns would practice throwing a single punch hundreds of times in front of a mirror to hone and perfect the fluid motion.
