Joshua Clottey does not have an effective defence

I'm bored of all of the comments regarding how good Joshua Clottey's defence is. I don't think it's an effective defence for a boxer to have at all, and I think it's a weakness in his game.

My reasoning here is twofold.

Boxing is not a sport based around avoiding being hit cleanly. Boxing is a sport built on hitting cleanly. Defence can never be the main part of a successful boxer's game, it should be merely a way to engineer opportunities to hit cleanly, and thereby win a fight.

If you look a truly great modern defensive fighters, like Pernell Whitaker, James Toney and Floyd Mayweather, their defences are built around parrying/slipping/dodging in order to set up a counter opportunity, and so hit cleanly and try to win the fight (not that Pea was always a counterpuncher like the other two, but his defence even when going forward was still geared towards maneouvering himself into a better position for attack). Joshua Clottey does not do that. His style of defence is to absorb punches, it is receptive/passive. This is not effective defence in boxing.

My second point is that Clottey is not even particularly good at utilizing that type of peek-a-boo defence. If you watch prime Winky Wright, Winky is far more adept at setting up his guard to block punches and stop them damaging him at all. Clottey simply holds his hands up in the same position time after time, meaning his body can be ripped at will, and to be honest I thought Pacquiao managed to fire straight shots through the middle of his apparently impenetrable guard pretty often and easily. It was only Clottey's chin and natural toughness that kept him in there.

By its very nature, the peek-a-boo guard will ensure that the opposing fighter would receive a low connect percentage from the pointless and inaccurate Compubox, but in reality it is not an advisable defence for a boxer, and Joshua Clottey is not really very good at implementing it anyway.

 

'No leg movement' - another reason why Clottey was nowhere near as good as Winky at that style of defence.

If you are not going to move a lot, you'd better have the natural gifts and skills of James Toney, or you're going to get in a hell of a lot of trouble, as Clottey has.

I would even say I prefer defensive styles based purely on movement, like prime Roy Jones, than I do to the passive Clottey guard.

 

76.169% of statistics are bull****.

 

A good defense is only good when you can actually put some points on the boards. Just like any other sport, defense wins only if the offense contribute

 

Hopkins and Mayweather are the best defensive fighters around today. No-one else comes close.

Clottey's defensive style failed spectacularly against Pacquiao. He was hardly ever in an effective position to return fire, and he was basically a sitting duck for the entire fight.

 

Exactly.

 

Is success in boxing determined by keeping away from damage?

Also, Compubox is a pile of shite. It's two fat guys in suits clicking PlayStation control pads whenever they think a punch is blocked or landed. It's a gimmick that the TV stations like, it's completely pointless and inaccurate. Clottey took punishment.

 

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