FILMED examples of thumbing / eye gouging

**** off

 

You fail to comprehend my leverages young one.

 

There are a million ways that you can do it without being seen.
If you are leaning into me head first, I will get my left shoulder into your right shoulder, so I'm not giving you much to headbutt. Then I'll grab your left elbow with my left hand; you can't turn your body to throw a right hand and I am holding your left arm. Your head is trapped against my left shoulder and I can go to work on your left eye with the heel of my right hand, my laces, etc...
When we lean in I will get your right arm pinned between my left arm and my body, then grab your left elbow with my right hand. And then I just hold on and let you try and twist free, which will get tiring pretty fast and I am just holding on. When you stand up straight to try and pull away I will lean in and give you the top of my head, under your chin, across the nose, and maybe even convince the ref that you are causing me to butt you.
I f you fight inside like is the norm in this era- lean in, very front foot heavy- and think that clinching is wrapping your arms around the opponent....a guy with the old style gloves and a knowledge of infighting will break your nose, bust your eyes open and have you sucking air from wrestling with yourself , and never land a legal punch.

 

Wan't it part of his strategy that led to all those kayos? Thumb an eye, jab the other eye and then boom a right hand onto the blinded opponent...I think he called it the buckshot 1,2 or something. Someone will remember it better than I.

 

I read a quote from Jim Corbett in an old book and he was talking about Young Stribling's ability to feint.
In the context of that quote he referred to the buckshot 1-2 as a feinted jab, a real jab, circle left, feint a jab, shoot a right hand. I may have the sequence off a bit, and Corbett may have been full of it, but I read that once.

 

Larry Holmes was accused of using thumbs a lot. Scott Ledoux, Leroy Jones, Bonecrusher Smith and Scott Frank all accused Holmes of using his thumb.

 

And against the rest of his 118 opponents.

 

That would be the definitive place for rough to look. Larry is easily the most accused of my lifetime. He had the habit of throwing a lot of jabs with an open glove and given he utilized the jab often and well it led to a lot of incidents and complaints.

Shavers caught a thumb in their title fight, 3rd round from memory. He ended the fight with a detached retina, whether from the thumb or myriads of jabs he took who would know for sure.

Jones claimed he was thumbed many times so that would be a good one to look at.

Phillip Brown actually sued Holmes for allegedly thumbing him in sparring leading to a detached retina - https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-1998-05-19-3198976-story.html

Witherspoon also claimed he was thumbed.

Dundee also claimed Ali was thumbed tho Ali wouldn't put it to Holmes when asked. Dundee said he didn't think it was intentional saying "this is the way Larry fights". He was alluding to the open glove habit.

While you'd pick up the glove habit i'd say it would be awful hard to pick up thumbing from the 80's. A lot of the fight copies are of average quality and regardless nothing like it is today.

 

That sounds much more like it...thanks.

 

Me...watching Mayweather vs Pac live.

 

There was a photo long ago in one of the magazines of Willie Pep throwing a jab with his hand spread wide, thumb sticking out. The opponent had slipped the jab but the thumb caught him around the eye. That is a very risky thing to try and do on purpose; if you have ever bent your thumb backwards you will know what I am saying.
A lot of the guys that get accused of thumbing were guys that jabbed a lot. You can see in many of the old pictures that they are jabbing with an open hand. I believe that it is an attempt to extend the reach and that it relates to the controversy in the last Fury fight, about his gloves. He is often punching with an open hand and his fingers extended.
Fritzie Zivic once said that he never gave the thumb because he didn't want to be thumbed, and the thumb certainly contributed to the rate of blindness of boxers of certain eras. Some fighters were expert in wreaking havoc in close. As I recall, Sandy Saddler stopped Flash Elorde on cuts and I do not recall him landing many punches.

 

If I remember correctly, you can see Duran thumb Moore. However, it's FAR from clear whether it's intentional or not. Not all thumbs are deliberate.