Advanced Jabbing - Intent

All of these techniques assume that you're controlling the fight with your jab. All of this analysis assumes your opponent is orthodox. The jab is the Trojan Horse in all the techniques I will describe to marshal in the heavier troops, getting behind his wall of defense.

1. Setting up the right hand. The first one is noticing his left hand is kept low. If you cross first, he will likely react and avoid the punch. If you jab low and retreat, you will notice the low left hand get lower on the jab. Set him up for the feint. Feint to the body and cross to the chin.

(When you notice a chink in the armor of your opponent's defense - a low right hand, a low left hand or whatever, never exploit it directly. First, make a move to open him up further, THEN attack the weakness)

2. Setting up the right hand. After jabbing him up and down, because you've thrown a thousand per day and it's a staple of your fighting life, you feint the body low and shoot the jab for his forehead. Striking his forehead will lift the chin. You cross after lifting his chin.

3. Setting up the left hook. Get him used to blocking the jab with his right hand. Feint the jab and throw a wicked hook instead of the jab. The jab becomes doppleganger or chamelion, emerging as a hook. His right hand has been conditioned to slap down the jab and relinquishes your prize, his chin.

4. Entropy Rhythm. Your intent is to make your jab unpredictable. Pop-pop...then get your rhythm, them pepper him with the jab. Make your intent to do nothing but tell him that he can throw what he wants, but the jabbing game is yours. You've thrown the thousand jabs a day, and baby, that punch is yours. Infect him with your unpredictable rhythm. He will be forced to attack, from which you will counter. The unpredictability of you jab will give you the control to anticipate his attack, and setup yours. Never be predictable, or he will effectively counter you.

5. Muscling the fight. Pressure fighters will enjoy a stiff jab to keep the runner squandering far more energy. The physical presence of pushing the fight is given deadly accent by pumping an extra stiff jab into your opponent’s face. It doesn’t matter if four of the five are caught with gloves, it’s the pressure that’s your aim, and the pressure will cause your opponent to spend more energy than you. After he’s run around and avoided you for awhile, you’ll begin to hear the magnificent sound of victory – the huffing and puffing of a tired fighter. Now you move in for the kill and pour on the energy, because you've conserved yours.

6. Distance fighters. A strategy distance fighters can find is to jab, throw two punches and tie up. The jab sets the opponent momentarily on the defensive. The one or two punches are thrown with intent. After the bodies collide, the opponent is tied up.

(The proper way to do this is not hugging the man, it is scooping inside his forarms, outside his bicepts, grasping his triceps, tucking his forearms against your body with your elbows. When you cinch in his arms like that, he can no longer punch, and that’s the point. If you just hug his torso, he has two fists to slug away at the back and side of your head. Always, when you clench, walk into him and push him back. A fighter can’t hit hard when he’s backing up...unless he's Sugar Ray Robinson)

7. Jab before lateral movement. Look at a fighter with his guard up. Pretty solid, huh? Now step 45 degrees to the side along a circle and you’ll see openings for punches you never saw before. The right cross slices between his extended left hand and his jaw, formerly impregnable. With the angle opportunities open up, because you’ve upset his rhythm and you have a new, fresh and fertile angle, if only for a split second. Need I remind you that a split second is all it takes to exact a victory?
So, jab hard, step to the right with your right foot, shoot in the cross, then a left hook to the chin.


8. Punch his guard. For god’s sake, hit him. His guard is supposed to be protecting him. Get into his head. Punch his arms, and hard. If he’s tight, jab at his face and slug with a right cross his forearms with all you’ve got. Rocky Marciano found this technique quite a favorite. It hits him, it hurts him. It gets in his head. His very guard begins to be damaged, and it feels like a target. It’s numbing and fatiguing and disconcerting. The jab sets up a punch to his blocking arms, and you hit those mutha****a’s as hard and you can cross. And then you cross right through his weakened fists and follow it up with a combination, because his defense has been injured.

9. Jab with a step to the left. He’s covered up, and you have the angle. You first blast the right to the body, then hook to the head. There are other combinations, but this one is good. Remember, lateral movement is critical to the finesse of a boxer. Why? Because you’re seeing openings the straight on presentation couldn’t hope to attain. Imagine your right cross – it’s not a straight punch, it’s delivered on a twenty degree angle his left hand is poised to defend. If you shift 20 degrees, your right hand is a true, straight punch., and it’s harder to defend. That’s why the jab, step to the left is so important. It gives you the deadly angle. I say a punch to the stomach first because the most likely place you will land is between his separated elbows. After landing that punch you begin your deadly combination from an angle he is not facing and from an angle he will take a second to shift to defend. Remember, it’s in the span of a second that knock-outs happen. Make them yours.

The best punch after the right to the body is a solid left hook to the chin, because the jarring body shot may cause him to open up his guarded chin.

10. Nonsense jabs – taunting the opponent. Mixing effective jabs with piston-popping nowhere jabs can get in the head of your opponent, especially when circling him and moving in.
If it’s a popping, taunting spear, you’re telling your opponent that it’s just a matter of time. This is the psyche-jab, it’s not intended to hit his body, it’s a non-verbal message you’re sending to his mind. It’s a statement that he is yours for the Pickens. It’s an arrogant statement, and should be used sparingly. I find arrogant fighters annoying, as a general rule.
I prefer fighters who fight, not showboat; however, an occasional popping arm for seemingly no intent will adumbrate a vision that we can convince our opponent that it’s a matter of time, and he is yours. Your jab is uncontainable, it is natural and it is deadly. It’s a statement of control. And I could enumerate more vista’s of victory, whose scout is the jab, whose vanguard is the jab.

The point of this post is control, and the jab is the skeleton key to the door of victory. I can’t emphasize enough how important the jab is to your success in the fight game…it’s like the salesman to a company. It’s the first feeler. It makes or breaks the sale, and the sell is unanticipated sleep…but for ten seconds, your hands raised in sudden