What are some examples, or fighters that have caught your eye on how they operate on the inside? Duran using footwork to gain an angle of attack. Armstrong bulldozing in from one side to uproot an opponent, pounding him while he attempts to regain balance. Surgical precision of a Chavez, while smothering an opponent. Punching accuracy from a dedicated body attack mind set in each fight...Mike McCallum. (Do any of you guys have details on Frank Klaus' book?)
Jack Dempsey used what he called "shovel uppercuts" inside. Tight short uppercut. On film jack frequently would allow a wide hook to pass behind his opponents head just to draw him close in with the inside of his arm. From there Dempsey would hit and hold alternating the arm he held with.
tell you one i found surprising at the time.....as he was tall and i would have expected him to be a rangy behind the jab from distance type boxer...just on his body type......rid**** bowe.
Good posting. Dempsey was an expert on infighting from his shovel hooks to right hands to the heart, he knew just how to dip his head inside the zone to do major damage chest to chest. Denny Moyer was another who was well schooled in the art, he didn't have Jack's power but he knew how to control the action in close and score points. Many great body punchers didn't have this learned skill.
Holyfield didn't have the height or reach to hit heavyweights from the outside, nor the reflexes to move his head or legs quickly inside, so would come in with his left arm crossed protecting his face from an uppercut - with his chin down and top of head pointing at opponents head, throwing short right hands or right hooks in a bull attack.
I was curious if it was a technical breakdown somewhat similar to Dempsey's book. Does it mention footwork/handwork to close distance. Does it mention being off angle to an opponent? I was just really wondering how Klaus broke down an opponent in his time, versus how a boxer who specializes in fighting inside does it in the modern eras...Does it mention shifting? I just think it would be a great read.
Fenech was great at bulling his way inside and making room for his shots where there was none. Not exactly text book stuff though, he was dirty and awkward but it worked brilliantly.
After an operation whereby ******'s glands were grafted into his body, Frank Klaus, former Middleweight Champion, will attempt to come back in the roped arena and regain his crown."I never was in better physical health in my life than I am right now and I believe my vitality is stronger every day" he says.Klaus kept the operation a secret at first, no-one but his wife knew that the operation was performed."I was advised by a friend who returned from France a few months ago to try the operation" said Klaus. "Through the aid of a prominent Pittsburgh doctor, who is at the head of one of the largest hospitals here, I had the job done."Klaus has had offers to fight in England and Belgium and will sail for the latter country next month.(The Milwaukee Journal - Feb 10, 1920)......................................"One of the most interesting chapters in the long history of the male hormone involves the medical career of Dr.Serge Voronoff, a Russian-French surgeon who earned an international reputationand a great deal of moneyback in the 1920s by transplanting slices of ****** testicles into aging men seeking a new physiological lease on life. Even today,many people who lived through the 1920s and 1930s will recall the term ****** glands and what it suggested about the men who sought to have them implanted on or near their own ***ual organs.The ****** gland operation played a very marginal and rather bizarre role in the sporting life of that period. A former middle-weight boxing champion of the world named Frank Klaus, clearly hoping for a comeback, publicly announced his own operation, but even the simian glands could not revive his career.Meanwhile, similar operations had been underway at San Quentin Prison in California. From time to time the testicles of executed criminals were transplanted into other inmates who were judged to be gland-deficient. At the prisons Thanksgiving Games in 1923, sports medical news was beingmade. As the medical historian David Hamilton reports: Gland transplanted inmates did well, and the seventy-year-old John Person, who was carrying an extra grafted testicle, came a good second in the fifty-yard dash, beating several younger inmates with only two testicles.
Infighting seems to be an area of boxing that has actually devolved over time. I see way more infighting from the eras of the past compared to the 2000s and up. Our athletes might get bigger with better PEDS and nutrition, but I think the martial art itself hasn't evolved.