Usyk vs Ken Norton

Hand fighting is kind of a joke- why stop him from jabbing when you can work off his jab?
What I was referring to was something else. When Usyk gets his right foot outside of Norton's left foot, that is the line he wants for his left hand, isn't it? In that case Norton's jab is the counter to the Usyk left; think about the mechanics of those two punches being thrown simultaneously. The jab will beat the straight left every time.

 

Usyk will move around him all day. But what happens when Usyk gets that position? The natural thing, and what all southpaws are drilled to do, is to shoot your straight left. For the orthodox fighter in that situation the natural counters to the southpaw left would be the jab or the left hook, if you can throw it short enough. Norton fought rather square so his best option would be the jab.
The right uppercut to the body also works well, if you can get under the left hand, but I expect that Usyk would be moving to his right as soon as Norton slipped his left and would be moving away from the uppercut.

 

A stoppage, seriously? Norton went 39 rounds in 3 fights with the greatest heavyweight who ever lived Ali, a fighter who was a MUCH better puncher than Usyk and in my opinion beat him twice. He also went toe to toe with Larry Holmes for 15 rounds, a much better fighter than Usyk as well. Usyk as a heavyweight is 7-0 with 2 ko's . One when a club fighter Witherspoon stayed on his stool and the other was an eye injury to Dubois. He ain't stopping Ken Norton, he don't have the wallop to hurt him, Crap! he couldn't hurt the China chinned Joshua in 24 rounds .Norton has the better jab and he'll walk Usyk down and land the right,

 

Maybe Usyk wins, but Norton was shot for Cooney and Shavers. Their styles were dramatically different also.

 

Wow amazing everything you said was completely wrong you make a habit of that? So SHWs who were way bigger then Norton and would easily knock him out couldn't walk Usyk down but magically Norton could?

 

I disagree on this point, a lot of good southpaws in pretty much every combat sport rely on it including Usyk (see the Joshua fight). Breaks up your opponents rhythm and makes it hard for them to set up their punches especially if their reliant on the jab (MMA example but its why Hendricks gave GSP so much trouble). Its why its hard to use the jab against a good southpaw unless you know how to hand fight.

Any example of a fighter using this in a match? Feel like Norton is too slow and rudimentary to be able to do something like that against Usyk especially if he doesn't have any experience with southpaws but I can definitely see the logic behind it.

 

I don't know if Norton could do it, and I tend to think that you may be correct in your assessment. But that was 'the book' on how to beat southpaws for a very long time; draw them into throwing their left and break them apart with left hand counters. The left hook works even better but you have to have a more angled stance- it makes you a more narrow target and then the rotation of the body as you throw the hook gets your head out of the way. Ironically the best recent examples of this that I can think of come from Pac doing it to orthodox fighters- it works both ways.
Hand fighting is, in my opinion, kind of a curse of the modern interpretation of how fighters of opposite stances should fight one another. What I am referring to is the over reliance on the straight left and straight right respectively. If you and I are playing those games with our lead hands, what else is there to land? And we are keeping such a distance- basically lead foot toe to toe with the other lead foot- that it is difficult to close. One of the basic truths of boxing is to never give up the inside punching position and the whole foundation of the modern idea of opposite stances goes against this.

 

Pretty much how I see it but I see Ken going one step further and winning this one. By around two/three points.

 

You two are having a good discussion, I don't want to interfere but here are some thoughts on southpaws and orthodox fighters that come to mind. I'm also interested in your opinions of "framing."

If I'm a southpaw fighting a Larry Holmes and I can get him interested in "hand fighting" and not hitting me with that jab I've won that battle. At least as long as he wants to "hand fight."

A southpaw is having to overcome the exact same thing as the orthodox fighter, his only advantage is that he spars more orthodox fighters, than the orthodox fighter spars southpaws. If an orthodox fighter doesn't have a southpaw to spar and wants to get a feel for fighting a southpaw, shadow box while facing a mirror, the guy in the mirror will be a southpaw.

Another thing that is popular now on Youtube is "framing" which I understand is holding your arms half extended away from the body for defense? Seems like it leaves the body unprotected and takes the power off of your punch if you're using it? Some of the "boxing analysts" that put highlight videos to music seem to think it is a good idea. It doesn't make sense to me, maybe one of you can point out why it's a good thing?

 

I can see Norton doing the silly “fist bump” routine people mistaken for hand fighting and Usyk fighting in an age where people are used to fighting southpaws picking him apart for it.

 

@themaster458 @greynotsoold good discussion lads, lots to learn from there I think this is one of the best discussions I’ve seen of recent times in a thread - thank you.

 

@cross_trainer - Grey and TM had a really good discussion on southpaws I think you’d like thought I’d tag you in this one.

 

Any specific fight? I was thinking maybe Ricardo Lopez you always said he was great at fighting southpaws.

There is some truth to it for sure but there are some other options some fighters are great at hand fighting to land the lead hand when fighting the opposite stance (Wlad and Usky are both pretty good at this) But you are correct it leads to a longer range of fighting because of how much more distance an open stance matchup creates leading to a more, dare I say, amateur style of fighting that ik you aren't the biggest fan of. However one interesting thing to point out is that in other combat sports like Muay Thai and kickboxing they love doing handfighting to set up things like kicks, knees and elbows (I could be wrong but I feel like a lot of the best kickers in Muay Thai are southpaws for this reason). So I guess only in punching does it somewhat limit your offense when you add in other things the options seem to expand. Just an interesting tibit this discussion made me think about.