Favourite Technique Wells?

Good post.

Is there a man in all of boxing history who "missed" more jabs than Miguel Canto? I don't think so. Off this missed punch he would make every single punch depending upon the position of the opponent, the rate at which is was missing, or whatever. He would turn it into a right hook to the top of the head from a square stance. I guess the fight he did this in the most was his split decision win over Gonzales, and this is the point. It wasn't like journeymen were falling for these tricks - they were not capable to be fair - but world class fighters like Gonzales couldn't help it, he'd draw them in, use the "Feint" (like calling a mantrap a rabbit-hole) to land just jabs and by the end of the fight he'd be using it to land straight-rights instead. It's the consistently best unrepeated technique i've ever seen. I don't think anyone else really was able to do this (Ray Robinson closest though weirdly LaMotta was good at it too (IMO and harder to spot because he feinted with position)) at all, ever, which is why Canto is always my pick for most cultured best hand or cleverest left hand or whatever these days. He was so special with that left hand and so much of it was about trickery.

 

Well i'm a LaMotta-Robinson VI fanatic and in that fight Robinson, IMO, was coming up short with enough frequency to trick LaMotta into operating as though there was safety, not strategically, but tactically, I mean in seven second bursts, in corners of rounds, I won't go into detail here but I will say that watching that fight fills me with sorrow sometimes. Robinson worshipped Louis, wept at seeing him defeated, and this, for me, was the greatest gift ever exchanged between two fighters: Louis made Robinson see that offence was not enough, that you had to convince your opponent, that despite being a mobile rampart, it was sometimes safe to attack you. LaMotta, the most hopeful fighter ever to have boxed, a bastion of optimism within the ring, repeatedly, had his hope rekindled by the greatest offence machine to have lived. I went through a fifteen year period of obsessively watching the lions of the Serengeti (and to its east) duke it out over generations once the internet got up and running for real, and i saw more than a few die, and what struck me about them was that they never stop looking at the horizon until they're gone. LaMotta was like that in that fight. He never allowed himself to give up until his nervous system considered him slaughtered.

I might do this properly one day, but for now, and insisting upon none of this in discussion with anyone else:

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Robinson does two things with his jab in the opening rounds. He either doesn't fully extend it (see above) or he lands it lightly, without following through. There are many reasons why this is a good idea, for example, have you found your own range yet before over-committing against an opponent that's already coming up and under? But another reason, and it's lost to the world, is to fault your opponent's range. How many more inches do you think are on this jab than Robinson gives here? 4-6? A few, that's for sure, elbow crooked, punch is coming out to Robinson's right rather than through the target, it's an invitation to miscalibration. Remember, this is against an opponent Robinson knows cannot knock him out. Meanwhile, LaMotta knows his range, but of every single aspect of fighting between familiar opponents, whether it's men who have sparred or fought, calibration of the distance is the most untrustworthy and messy. It's so difficult, full of sound and fury, and even months ago is so long ago. Robinson is lying to LaMotta here about the distance, and he keeps it up for many rounds.

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T
This is a flat out missed punch and the key thing to remember is: I can't prove that Robinson "missed" (and quite often these are cuffing or scoring or glancing blows anyway) on purpose, he could just be missing and then taking advantage but that's not my opinion. This, specifically, is where Robinson wants LaMotta to think he is safe. Up and under, coming in from low, obtaining a stoop from Robinson which makes it hard for him to get onto the back foot - note the full weight of Robinson through the toes - to open up two further punches. 1) the big "solver" which is the right hand to the body. You can see, already, that LaMotta is ready to sell his body to Robinson in order to facilitate his own offence. Given that this punch was the total solution for Robinson to LaMotta's work inside the importance of achieving this cannot be overstated. The most important punch in LaMotta-Robinson VI is this right hand to the body and Robinson steers LaMotta from the first round into these channels to open it up. I can't be sure of course how much success or not Robinson had with this punch in earlier fights (it gets mentioned in reporting for one of the other fights) but it's definitely thee punch in this one.

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This is another example from a little later, and one thing to note is what a perfect punching position Robinson has adopted, he's got LaMotta leaning away, with no offence on the table, in what for a very tall fighter is basically the upper midriff on the left hand side, the literal easiest portion of an opponent for the orthodox fighter to hit and LaMotta has put his head there and Robinson doesn't hit it. He wants LaMotta up that pipe for, in the first instance, the right hand to the body, not a normal one though, a lashing one round the corner.

I was grabbing some pictures for the next little section but it's so instructive I made a gif instead. Probably won't publish but:


It's two thirds of the way there because you see Robinson NOT throw the jab against a wide open target, avoid the punch that LaMotta wants to throw to get inside, throw the "light" version of his dangerous jab but get caught on his heels and allows LaMotta to land the left hook. If only he'd landed his own punch! It would have been perfect, but there is no shortage of Robinson landing a gentle jab or a non-jab and opening up Robinson for the bodyshot or even an uppercut in the mid-late stages of that fight. He spent the whole fight setting him up for the fight to be contested exactly where Robinson wanted it to be contested on the outside even when on the inside. The longest punches Robinson threw in that fight were when they were head to head.

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Missed or nothing jab in the ninth.

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Less than a second later he's brought LaMotta up the channel that the weak jab makes seem safe and guts him like a fish to the body. Awww it's so good, so amazing good, this is what Arcel meant by "mental energy" I think, the never ending quest for the manner by which to deploy his athletic gifts and the specific reason why I sit at home laughing at people on here who want to say Leonard was better. Leonard didn't have a third, a quarter of the rounds you need to find this type of perfect solution to a problem your world-class opponent doesn't even know he has given you. Robinson's monstrous genius.