Do you consider Whitaker a technician or not?

You're a dope if you think otherwise. Either that or you haven't watched much of him. That is all.

 

Nobody's perfect. Whitaker's tendancy to cross his feet or perform certain technical no-no's was more down to his ego than anything else, in my opinion. He only ever got himself into trouble when he was doing this sort of thing, usually.

When he got down to business he boxed off the backfoot and utilised the ring as good as anyone I've ever seen. That was all down to supreme awareness and the ability to integrate offense, defense, and footwork properly.

 

It's almost like suggesting that Ray Robinson is disqualified from being a boxing master because he got hit too much (after all, boxing is the manly art of self-defense right?). You can find flaws in anyone's arsenal. Whitaker can cross his feet all he wants as long as it doesn't become a liability. To my recollection (which admittedly is as flawed as anyone's) it never did.

How would not crossing his feet have improved on his game? As far as boxing goes Whitaker was as close to pugilistic perfection as I've ever seen. The guy not only rarely lost a round, he rarely lost a MINUTE of a round. His shutouts were so thorough as to often render his fights boring.

 

Crossing his feet?

You don't think maybe that's nitpicking a little?

 

No swipe at you, Bokaj. Just stating my case :hi:

 

Some master the rules in order to know how to break them...

 

Fair enough. But when you're a technical master you're allowed to take certain liberties with the textbook, imo. In fact, doing so can oftentimes ruin your opponent's timing and disrupt his overall game (which PW did ALL the time and I practice doing in the gym quite a bit myself). I rarely saw Whitaker off balance, open to being hit or unable to punch effectively (if only he'd had more power). And I definitely never saw any opponent easily "exploit" anything he did. Ever.

This debate reminds me of one I heard from some guitar "technician" criticizing Jimi Hendrix because he made technical "mistakes" like "overbends" and "flubbed notes", etc. The guy he was debating with pointed out that this is why the technician himself would always be a technician and never an artist.

New ground is broken by people challenging the rules and accepted practices of any medium, artistic or athletic. If not then we'd still be "toeing the scratch" and twirling our fists like old time fighters, wouldn't we?