Why Didn't Ruddock Use His Jab Against Tyson?

I don’t think he tried much. He was pretty one dimensional by this point. Fell in love with his power. I remember early on a magazine describing him as someone with a good jab & solid movement.

 

Mike Tyson didn’t take it away. It was never there. As Wvboxer says, he fell in love with his power. Relied on the Smash as he called it.

 

He had abandoned the jab around the time of the Bonecrusher Smith fight. Fell in love with his own power.

 

This site is obsessed with jabs

 

Because it wouldn't have worked. Ruddocks jab skills isn't elite and that's kinda what you need if you want a jab to be effective against Tyson. I think Ruddock did the right thing by trying to fight fire with fire because Tyson by this point in his career let defense go out the window. He was hittable by the likes of Tillman and wanted to trade because he knew he could overpower the other guy.

If your greatest strength is KO power and your up against a guy who has shown in the last few fights he doesn't really care o be defensively responsible anymore, why not take advantage? Despite losing twice, to Ruddock's credit I don't think anyone has landed that many clean power shots on Tyson.

 

My theory is Ruddock shut down his own jab to prevent Tyson from ducking under and capitalizing on the opening which Tyson was really good at.

I also remember hearing that someone played "Fight Fire With Fire" from Metallica in his dressing room just moments before his ring walk and he got psyched out.

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Why should a boxer have to choose between only throwing jabs and concentrating on power shots? Really good boxers can use both types of punches. Based on what little I've seen of Ruddock, I would say it's because he's stupid.

 

Extremely high risk and very low reward potential, if Tyson slips and lands there's a good chance it's the end of the fight, he wouldn't win the fight by landing a jab

 

That's it, you and other several posters here have nailed it. Early in his career he used the jab and fairly well ,then he became more one dimensional .

 

Went silly with that smash thing he had.

 

This simply isn't true. Common opponents of Ruddock said that before he fell in love with his power, Ruddock's jab was the best they had ever encountered in the ring in "best I faced" interviews.

 

Lewis labelled it the best saying he had a "good jab before he hit the canvas" which was less than 4 minutes of fighting. I'll have to go back and see if he did much with it in that fight. It's coming off a bit weird. Weaver labelled it 2nd best and this fight is indeed the best example of Ruddock utilizing the jab and utilizing it good. It was mostly long gone by the time he fought Lewis which is why i am a bit suss on that one. Will recheck tho. He did have a good jab but often left it in the toolbox once he started knocking people out.

 

Tyson pressed the fight and made him punch with him....Ruddocks was a good boxer but not good enough to keep Tyson off and as it turned out didn't have the power to stop Tyson as often as he landed the smash

 

A jabs better for making someone do something then actually trying to land it - missing a jab even can be better. What you described is the opposite of exactly how Buster beat Tyson, Bus figured out where Tyson was going after every jab and met him there.