Check Hook Question

When did all hooks become check hooks? Now days, everytime a fighter throws a hook. The commentators in all their wisdom refer to it as a check hook. WTF. I thought that a check hook was a punch thrown to check the forward progress of an advancing opponent. Enlighten me.

 

I don't think you need to be enlightened, the announcers do.

 

July 25,2023, we will see a monster KO by Monster Inoue.

 

You are correct, but the check hook differs from a regular hook because you pivot around the aggressive opponent when throwing the hook.

 

The first time I see it mentioned was when Mayweather knocked out Hatton.

Seems to have become quite a popular thing to say now since that fight.

 

Exactly what I was going to post. That KO is what popularized the term.

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Emanuel Steward!

 

It's overused, but now and then like a broken clock twice a day some of the calls are correct. Fighters do use them, just not as often as you'd think by listening to careless analysts on TV who just want to sound "hip" by sprinkling in jargon that makes casuals feel like insiders.

It's a counter hook, and moreover not just any old counter hook but specifically one thrown while moving backwards and on a pivot. (think of a matador yanking the red cloth from a bull's path at the last moment and twisting away, except in this analogy he's using the same hand that's clutching the bandera roja is also now punching the poor animal in the mush)

It's like a judo move, using a charging opponent's momentum against them. It takes quite a bit more skill, balance, timing and speed to execute than a plain left hook (or a run of the mill counter hook, which can be thrown flat-footed in an exchange and still technically be a counter but a far cry from a check). Despite the phrase being popularized by Floyd Mayweather, it's been used long before him and by a fair number of fighters since - but yeah, most of those broadcaster calls are off-base. It's become largely an empty buzzword.

 

It's very annoying. Delahoya put Carr on his face with a checkhook a decade before Hatton was laid out. I think anoouncers use it just to sound hip because Floyd TBE did it a few times.

 

I can't wait for the commentary teams 15 years from now...

"Look out for the check hook, oh he just hit him with a check jab, and another check jab. Here comes that check uppercut"

 

I blame Sergio Mora. He has an obsession with calling every hook a “check hook”.

 

No idea, always thought it meant a perfectly timed counter hook and rolled with that

 

This is how you throw a check hook.

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