For those who believe in "Lost Arts" from the Golden Age of Boxing: some resources

oh this is something i had never heard, are you able to tell me any more detail why?

 

He saw every champ from Corbett to Frazier in action, and a lot of his lists reflect biases towards the really old guys. I think most of the outrage stems from how low he ranked Ali and the exclusion of Smokin' Joe. Here is his top 10 of all-time at heavyweight, publicized in 1971:

1. Jack Johnson
2. Joe Louis
3. Jim Jeffries
4. Jack Dempsey
5. Muhammad Ali
6. Jim Corbett
7. Sam Langford
8. Gene Tunney
9. Max Schmeling
10. Rocky Marciano

 

I think Henry Cooper wrote a how-to manual that was popular in the UK. Can’t comment on the contents as I haven’t read it.

Champ Thomas, who was associated with Sean O’Grady and his father, advertised a pamphlet/book in boxing magazines back in the day: Boxing’s Dirty Tricks and Outlaw Killer Punches. Sort of a boxing’s dark arts how-to, I guess. I think you can still find it on Amazon and such.

Now I’m not aware of any book by Jesus Rivero, who trained Miguel Canto and, somewhat briefly, Oscar de la Hoya, but he taught boxing from a defensive perspective and had some really unique and different techniques. If anyone has a complete video of the HBO telecast of the first de la Hoya-Chavez fight, I think in the prefight build they did a profile of their relationship and Oscar demonstrated some of the things he learned … which we saw come out play in the fight. It was basically (how to say this?) creating a space between you and your opponent that allowed for superior defense but also how to counter by luring the opponent into that space. It was fascinating and I’d like to get ahold of that clip sometime.

(I didn’t read Oscar’s autobiography but I was told he discussed why he broke off with Rivero in it and said Rivero was kind of trying to recruit him into some kind of cult and gain control of his money or something like that, crazy stuff.)

Victor Valle, who trained Gerry Cooney and also Billy Costello, Alfredo Escalera and Esteban DeJesus, among others (including, for a time, Mickey Ward) taught a technique he called a reverse hook. It’s a rhythm thing and it takes a lot of work and knack to get the timing down, but it’s basically a tap left hook to the head to set up a hard left hook to the liver — you can see Cooney using it and if you watch round 9 of Ward-Gatti I, it’s what he uses to damned near kill Arturo with that body shot that made him take a knee (he used it in other fights, too; it was his best weapon). I don’t know that anyone else is teaching it today.

There’s all kinds of hidden goodies out there if you study guys.

Brian Mitchell, the splendid South African who defended his title on foreign soil when the WBA banned title fights in his home country, was keen on finishing combinations with a jab — it would reestablish his distance and balance to keep him from falling into exchanges (and is extremely effective in discouraging counter-punchers because it sets off their rhythm when they try to counter and get punched in the nose and suddenly find their guy just out of reach).

All the Georgie Benton guys (usually in duo with Lou Duva, who was more of the cheerleader than technician) were great at stepping around and creating angles. Watch Holyfield, Meldrick Taylor or Pernell Whitaker and how they half- and quarter-pivot.

There was a guy in Miami whose name escapes me who had a very specific bob-weave-counter style that also created angles with half- and quarter-pivots who had success. Taught it with a string tied from cornerpost to cornerpost IIRC. I think he worked with Glen Johnson for a time but I could be wrong on that.

Brendan Ingle (it was once written his fighters even walk to the gym backwards haha) taught a pattern of footwork and had diagrams on the floor of his gym to teach guys who to use it. Of course some like Naz improvised later in their careers but you can see some commonalities in Ingle’s guys in how they approached footwork. (If you google ‘Brendan Ingle gym’ and sort by images you’ll see photos of the odd markings on the floor, which look something like a basketball or volleyball court markings.)

That’s a few. Too bad they didn’t write books, but I think instructional videos are the best way to show how to teach various techniques.

Bottom line is there’s so many ways to teach boxing and so many approaches to it that if you dig around and pay attention to how guys fight, you can see some of the handiwork.

 

The Marciano one would be interesting.

 

Great post. About the 'reverse hook' set-up, Dmitry Bivol and Inoue use that with great success today. Also, here's an interesting article on Rivero:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-04-sp-11580-story.html

 

If they in manual existing now they are not lost.

 

Great post.

Thanks.

 

To be fair, that was just "Destory. Attack. Kill." repeated thousands of times. Actually won his an award as an outsider artist.

 

On a serious note there's this neat little video with Len Harvey.

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Since Tyson retired we’ve missed the lost art of ear biting