Benny Leonard 1920 interview (Robert Edgreen)

& no one cares. Sad, honestly.

 

Interested article. I do honestly believe the old timers had better punch placement and so many of there techniques seem to be forgotten. The one thing that really stands out immediately for me watching him is how his chin seems to be up in the air just waiting to get hammered but that obviously wasn't happening.

 

Thanks for posting. Love seeing articles like this.

 

Very interesting read...............the first boxing "scientist" perhaps?

Him going into depth re: the usage of the body blow is very interesting

 

There's absolutely no footage anywhere of Leonard vs. Welsh III, right? Nary a GIF?

I'd love to see that "lifting twist" intestines-slammed-into-the-heart punch he was talking about.

 

I read that many years ago in some magazine- a reprint, of course, I'm not that old- and it was huge. The knowledge in his words in insane. I dug up everything that I could find that Benny Leonard ever said. Just that bit about the angle of those body punches is gold.

 

That's awesome, man. Mind sharing some of your favourite little tactical or technical tidbits of his ?

 

The whole idea of studying and making your powers of observation and your intelligence into weapons.
The importance of where you place a punch. In discussion of modern fights, when a guy gets stopped by a body shot, you will hear that it didn't look like a hard punch. It doesn't have to be. It matters where you place it, and when. I have seen many guys stopped by punches to various parts of the body that didn't hurt, but froze them. For example, if you have baited a guy into throwing a right hand ( which come from studying and using your IQ) you slip and hit a left uppercut to the solar plexus, that is a damaging blow and it doesn't have to be hard. But you caught him in a vital spot when he was unprepared to receive it.
Throwing punches with an upward twist...When you are throwing uppercuts, this is turning the punch over- that is the old boxing terminology. What that means is that you are engaging the shoulder more fully and you are landing the punch on the correct knuckles. Charly Goldman taught this to Marciano by hanging a towel over the back rest of a barstool chair and then throwing an uppercut where he flicked the towel off without touching the chair. If you get on a bag or the mitts, throw some uppercuts with the 'upward twist' and without and you will feel it. But as it applies to body punches- the ribs are designed to protect the organs. You can hit the ribs to affect an organ- Davis did it to Garcia not long ago- but when you start digging up under those ribs, that's money.
I think that the biggest thing was that you do everything on purpose. Read the section where he talks about feinting. Everything you do is for a reason- you are patterning how your opponent reacts, and you are trying to teach him what to expect next. You are doing that with feints, with punches that you throw but aren't turning on fully. Once you have taught him to act predictably, have set up your attack, then you sit down and punch hard.
The last thing is when he talks about practicing the same move over and over again and how punching correctly moves your head out of the way. Head movement has come to be a defensive tool removed from other things- that is a symptom of people watching those old Tyson videos from the mid 80s and having no basis to understand them. You don't stand there right in front of a target, throw five punches and then 'move your head.' Every punch, if you punch correctly, moves your head.

 

I've noticed that last bit myself when I throw my right straight and left hook. When I really put the twist into my pivot when punching, my hips spin violently and my torso ends up basically going sideways, and so does my head, since it shouldn't have independent action of its own. Joe Louis would also have his head off center when throwing the right. I'll try that thing with the towel, sounds brilliant.

 

I love this kind of talk and insight into the sport. It truly is the sweet science. Go look at the training forum and you get a lot of ‘what shortcut can I take to get better.’ Not a lot of success stories that way. How about going to the gym every single day, doing all your exercise and roadwork and working your fanny off to get better instead of looking for a quick payoff?

I especially like the discussion of feints. We always taught to throw your jab and see how the guy defends it — does he move his head the same way every time … well then feint the jab and throw the right where that head is going to be. Pay attention to your opponent’s hand placement when he throws — does he bring the jab back quick and straight … if not, look for your counter right. Does he back straight up when you come forward … if so, back him up to the ropes and go to work.

We also played on something I believe — people react to sound. It’s instinct and it’s almost impossible to overcome because it’s hard-wired into peoples’ brains. So a jab feint with a foot stomp is something a guy will almost always react to. And he can hear my corner instructions, so why not use that? Sometimes as part of the game plan it would be ‘When I yell 1-2, feint the 1-2 and load up on the hook’ and we could run a guy right into it at least a couple of times before he caught on (if he ever did) … because when he hears me say ‘1-2’ he is expecting the jab-right … and as soon as my guy feints it he’s going to react.

There’s so many layers to it. The deeper you dive into it, the more you understand when people say ‘boxing is 90% mental.’ (Except for Tyson Fury … he’s 100% mental, haha.)

 

Great post!

 

It is really that isn't it? You do the work and you do it over and over and that repetition build knowledge. What good does the cheat code do when you don't have the insight as to when to use it. So many guys want to know how to block or slip punches like the favorite fighter of the day and don't understand that it isn't in the mechanics of blocking; it is in the process of making him throw a certain punch at a certain time.
That foot stomp feint is gold. It is so simple and so basic. None of it has to be complicated.