Controlling the Tempo

Air conditioning.

 

I'd say footwork and the ability to feint.... plus accurate punching that can deter the opponent from launching attacks until you are ready for them to.

Pretty much any Hopkins fight is a good example, as is Marquez vs Pacquiao II & III.

 

Hopkins is a great example - he's very good at making his opponents fight at his pace, arguably one of the strongest reasons as to why he's been so successful late on in his career.

 

Controlling the tempo can be either forcing the fight into a slower pace, or forcing your opponent to fight at a higher rate than they want to.

The former (reducing the pace) is achieved with a number of strategies - accurate counter punching can dissuade a normally high work-rate fighter from throwing as much, and a good control of distance and timing with footwork can prevent a fighter from planting his feet and throwing when he wants. Once you have cemented in your opponents mind that you counters are something to be respected, then feinting can bring the rate down even more.

The later (increasing the pace) is achieved by a number of strategies too. For some fighters the key is to be able to avoid the counters (sometimes by purposefully drawing the counter with a deliberately weak jab and landing your own shots over their counter - though that style is more often associated with lower output boxers), for others it is just enough to have a good enough punch resistance that you can take a few to land more of your own. To nullify the footwork that your opponent might employ to try and lower the tempo you need to be able to cut off the ring well, rather than just follow them around.

 

A very boring fight, but good example of two fighters that are normally very good at controlling the tempo, but at the two different ends of the scale, is Hopkins v Calzaghe. Joe's output was down from 900+ to ~700 (still very high), due to Hopkins crafty counters, leading with the right, following with the head and falling into the clinch, but punches landed on him were still way higher than Hopkins would be used to (regardless of what you think of Joe's punch style, he landed nearly as many as Tarver, Taylor 1 and Pascal combined!). The rate of the fight was high enough that Bernard resorted to faking low blows to get time to recover. Since then he has gone on to beat Pavlik, Pascal and Cloud - so Joe's ability to force the pace in that fight should not be undervalued.

 

Jabbing, feinting, footwork, positioning and picking accurate punches (Leads & counters) is the way to control the pace of a fight, particularly to slow it down, to control the tempo at a high pace would include all the above and more forward/sideward movement, speed and jabbing.

When i used to box as a kid my main attribute was controlling the pace, i hated fighting so whenever an opponent engaged id just curl into a ball, bury my head into my chest and start flailing away with both arms instinctively, my gym mates called me the swimmer because that's what i looked like.

So i figured out the only way to get through a fight without engaging in any toe to toe exchanges was by keeping it at range and use my hand/foot speed to dart in get some shots off and dart back out before the counters came. I did this by using lots of lateral movement, constant feints of the head/shoulder an lots of stiff snappy jabbing, especially to the body, also tying up whenever they get close. It upsets the rythm of the opponent and forces them to constantly have to reset their feet and also makes them hesitant to attack.Its these moments of hesitation and resetting that's the perfect time to strike.

That's how i used to do it anyway, this should work for most counter punchers who want to slow the pace down.

 

Edwin Valero is perfect example of how to do this.

He often pressured his opponents, stepping just into range were they felt the distance was right for them to throw but once they did he'd either slip/block/parry then return a vicious straight right or left hook. He did this over and over again until finally when he stepped into range guys would just cover up, then he unleashed flurry's of power shots usually leading to knockouts.