Functional strength in boxing?

****ing hell...:rofl

I'm sorry...damn. What the hell happened there?

 

It was the military press and he was just plain weak. Sorry, there is no candy coating you can put on this. In training or out of training, any decent weekend athlete could have done a better job than Frazier.

Which is the point, great boxers are often not great "athletes" in the silly understanding which that word has attained in modern times. (Of course guys like Frazier are great athletes being that they are great in the athletic endeavor of boxing). I'm sure that a Michael Grant, Shannon Briggs or Tommy Morrison would have cleaned up in that event.

 

Max Baer and Joe Frazier hoisted slabs of meat in slaughterhouses. Earnie Shavers lifted bales of hay on an Ohio farm while growing up. Roberto Duran scrambled up Carlos Eleta's coconut trees to steal the food while a street urchin. These movements require the use of the entire body, everything working together in concert to perform the task. Leverage is necessarily applied. Actions like this cannot be performed for long using only the muscles of the arms alone.

Ali was a dedicated wood chopper, an activity which develops tremendous tensile strength and muscular endurance.

Joe and Marvis Frazier have a well-known disagreement about the use of weight training as a conditioning tool for boxing. Joe doesn't like it. The muscle isolation involved in weight traning contradicts the principle of establishing the use of leverage and development of quickness in the minds of many traditionalists. Angelo Dundee, Marvin Hagler and Jerry Quarry also disdained the idea of using weights to develop functional strength. Hagler was known for an impressive physique, and Jerry had tremendous physical strength to complement his quickness and punching power.

Impressive biceps are developed through diligent punching of the heavy bag.

Frazier looked weak in the Superstars Competition, and against Foreman, but he did force the bull strong Bonavena into retreat, and made Chuvalo give ground as well. At one point in the FOTC, he grabbed Ali's forearms with both gloves and yanked him off the ropes into ring center.

Muscular endurance can be crucial in boxing. Vito Antuofermo had it in spades. Only in their bloody rematch did Alan Minter finally manage to manhandle him around the ring. Mustafa Hamsho defeated Bobby Czyz because of his superior physical strength (as Bobby acknowledged immediately after the decision was announced).

Dwight Davison had been a competitive wrestler as well as middleweight contender. I would favor him in either sport over a weightlifter or bodybuilder.

It would be interesting to review how other boxers did in the Superstars. Jerry Quarry, Vito Antuofermo, Earnie Shavers and Ken Norton also participated in different installments of it. (Shavers and Norton were better all around athletes than Frazier. Vito was simply too small to do much in the events he competed in, and I'm currently drawing a blank on how Quarry did. My chief memory of Floyd Patterson was that he was the only retired athlete competing shirtless in his installment. Like some of the other retirees, Ingo was wearing a sweatshirt in a futile attempt to hide his belly. Floyd looked to have better abdominal definition than when he was competing, quite the six pack.)

 

Chris, it was illegal back then too, and Joe complained about it to no avail. As to how long George could keep it up, check out the 12 rounds of Foreman/Morrison. (Where the commentators do mention the illegality of his tactic.) In Frazier's rematch with Quarry, we also see him shove Jerry back quickly with his arms twice, setting him up for that tremendous double hook with 45 seconds left in round four

In Arthur Mercante's autobiography, he makes mention of what a dirty fighter Ali was for his style, and what a clean one Frazier was for his. Ali's yanking down on the head and backhanding on his double jabs was just as illegal as George's shoving and kidney punching. Hey, whatever it takes, if they're allowed to get away with it.

 

He did poorly because he had probably never done the events.

He was an incredibly strong man, and could probably clean out the others in more primal displays of strength like sumo wrestling or lifting bags of sand.

Its that he had probably never done a military press in his life, and it looked exactly like that. I doubt he had done much swimming either,

He looked weak against Foreman because everybody looks weak against Foreman, he is a freak.

Foreman was able to carry a full grown cow on his shoulders.

 

The bench-press relies on one foundation and isolates a group of muscles. In boxing, a fighters foundation is always changing with every movement, thus so too are the muscle groups.

'Balance' is the key word. Frazier probed his bulk forward, at his opponent, and marched them down. With solid legs and a low centre of gravity, Frazier always sported great balance. He had one range of engagement, so he was not prone to 'over-shoot' a shot or bother himself with a range-finding jab.

It's pretty simple why weight training does not always equate into strength, especially into something as variable as boxing.

 

I agree, strength in boxing is about clean technique and speed, which brings me to a question: How much is speed directly related to mental quickness? Is it more about nerve signals than it is athleticism?

 

Chris, going back, it may not have been Joe specifically, but Eddie Futch who raised those objections to George's shoving prior to their rematch. I recall much more of a fuss being made about Ali's pulling down on Joe's head during Manila. I do not remember seeing Joe himself complaining about that tactic, but rather Howard Cosell commenting on the Frazier camp's concerns about this. Cosell made mention of this in praising Carlos Padilla for repeatedly slapping Muhammad's gloves off the back of Joe's head.

And it's for reason's such as this that I'd rate young George and mature George as two different competitors on an all time listing.

There were instances where Greg Peralta made Foreman give ground momentarily, and a few other occasions when George was starting out where somebody managed to make him back up in order to obtain punching room, but we almost never see him take a backwards step from Chuvalo onwards.

To me, intelligence is the ability to learn, and Foreman certainly demonstrated this capacity during his second career. However, his pacing did not seem faulty in the first ten rounder with Peralta. I think he may have actually devolved somewhat once he became champion the first time around. Even then, he showed good patience in round one with Norton.

Even in his mid 40s, George would run up steep mountain trails for two hours at a time without stopping (albeit with short steps and a slow steady gait). When combining physical strength with cardiovascular endurance, he really does rank with Jim Jeffries as one of the most amazing athletes of the last century and a half.


Stamina sometimes has an awful lot to do with mentality. Jerry Quarry took out Thad Spencer at the tail end of the 12 round distance with a tremendous barrage. Prior to that, he'd been using his legs a great deal, sticking and moving, outboxing in mid ring as well as countering off the ropes. At his best, he was a stereotypical laid-back Californian.

Jerry's rematch with Ali was an entirely different story however. Muhammad got inside his head, then he watched Bob Foster nearly decapitate his kid brother. At the end of the rest period following round six, Jerry was virtually hyperventilating in his corner. The finish came just after round seven began. I'm not sure I ever saw Ali more relaxed for a match. He could play it cool or whip himself into a frenzy as the situation demanded.

Gerrie Coetzee is another one whose stamina problems were primarily mental, thanks in large part to his negaholic father Philip.

 

Being born with fast twitch muscle fibers doesn't hurt. But there's a well known anecdote about the mental quickness of Joe Louis.

Louis and Jack Blackburn were at a party when a reporter asked Blackburn about this. Blackburn called Louis over to where the record player was spinning a tune. Now, this of course was back when all turntables spun at 78 rpm. First, he had Joe read the large print on the record label, then the smaller print, right on down to the fine print copywrite information. When the record stopped playing, the reporter saw that Joe had read it with complete accuracy.

After Joe came back out of retirement, he complained that where he previously could cut loose his right hand reflexively, "Now I have to think about throwing it." Perceptually, the sport had speeded up, and the faster the action appeared to him, the less time he seemed to have to act, and the slower he was to respond.


The ability to perceptually distort time, slowing it down enough so that it seems as though one has ample opportunity to react to a developing situation, is a skill which is frequently developed. Typists progress from typing one letter at a time, to whole words, then sentences and so forth. The more one progresses in this respect, the faster one becomes. The trick is to let go and let the fingers fly. The same principle can be applied to speed reading, athletics, and countless other endeavors.

More than once Ali and SRL were asked immediately after a fight to describe what they had done. They'd say, "I'd have to see the replay to tell you that."

When Joe Louis came back, he had devolved from the equivalent of typing whole sentences to typing letter by letter. Boxing experts were able to tell that he was no longer punching in combinations. (This was made mention of during the live television broadcast of his rematch with Cesar Brion, his next to last career win.)


Larry Bird was not a fast basketball player, but he could perceive things unfolding in slow motion, and anticipate accurately. Wayne Gretzsky did the same thing in hockey, understanding angles and carooms, enabling him to outperform faster skaters.

In boxing, being able to perceive things correctly by mentally slowing down the action offers tremendous defensive advantages. Jimmy Young was a remarkable talent in this respect.



Normally, this is the sort of stream of consciousness post I would erase into oblivion upon dissatisfied review, but I've decided to release this one as is, and let others have the opportunity to comment, critique and elaborate as they choose. (For every post I submit, I erase about 50 or more.)

 

Frazier was not weak in the event. He used NO TECHNIQUE WHATSOEVER! It's a timed leg drive and press. He didn't know what
he was doing. If he knew the proper technique, he probably would have won.

 

After reading your post I find myself wondering what you've erased that we would have benefited from; In the martial arts training I've had and in other sports I've been involved in over the years, I found out if I could speed up my thoughts I would speed up my movement; my shot is there and back before it's even launched. Also as you allude to above, I believed I could effect the speed of actions around me, like focusing on a fastball to the extent that I could actually slow it down. Perception may not be everything, but when tilting at windmills, you'll take any edge you can get, tangible or not.

 

Chris, the entire Spencer fight is currently on youtube in six parts. (And in color!) By all means, try to catch it from beginning to end as soon as you can!

For further context, I first watched the complete youtube footage of Spencer/Terrell. (Of course I realize that most don't have the luxury of time for doing this.) Ernie was much more impressive in this one than he was for Ali, but Spencer was better still against a more modern sized heavyweight. Once it can be seen how good Thad Spencer could be, it makes Quarry's masterful deconstruction of Spencer all that more remarkable. Check it out! (Before those cretins running youtube flex their muscles and get it removed.)

In Ali's ghostwritten 1975 autobiography, a little side story is told about how the two of them were standing together talking conversationally about their upcoming rematch, when Ali mentions that he's wearing heavy brogans on his feet to lighten them up when he's in the ring, and that Jerry isn't wearing the sort of footwear which would encourage that. Muhammad claimed that when he caught Jerry looking down at his own feet, that's when he knew he'd gotten inside Jerry's head. Whether this happening took place or not, it's a superb depiction of the subtleties of psyching out an opponent. (Personally, I would have scoffed, knowing what I know now. Once upon a time, I used to jog wearing five pound ankle weights, as well as wearing them throughout the day, and all they did was make me step more heavily. Years later, I read some literature on the benefits of hiking and running barefoot, and that did much more towards conditioning me to step lightly. The human heel is not designed to strike the ground like most running shoes are.)