Great fighters with obvious tells

good picks so far. like the roy sliding his leg sample and the MANY taylor examples

oscar would hop when he was about to throw combos (george pointed it out against chavez)

micky ward would tap your head with a left hook before throwing a body shot

george foreman himself would throw two lazy lefts before a right in his second career

duran would sneer before lacing your eyes

 

Marquez ticks his left hand twice in the same motion when he's looking to feint someone out and throw the right. This is very evident in his fights with Pacquiao.

 

The Mickey Ward thing with the tap hook to the head and grenade shot hook to the body isn't so much a tell as it is a strategic combination. Victor Valle taught it to all his guys -- Cooney most notably, but others including Randall Yonker, a fairly average guy who got ranked mostly because he used it effectively -- and called it a reverse hook.

The idea is that the tap left is going to trigger a reflex reaction to draw the guy's right hand up just enough to create an open target for the liver shot. Even if you have studied him and expect it, you still react reflexively to the first hook. And then it's too late.

The thing about tells is they are useless if the guy doesn't do it every time. If RJJ doesn't throw the left hook every time he slide-steps in that direction, all the opponent ends up doing is watching for it and planning to counter something that may or may not happen. Even if he slide-steps every time before he throws the hook, it isn't too helpful if he also slide-steps sometimes and doesn't throw the hook.

The other factor is speed -- if a guy does someting and it's too fast for the opponent to react to, it doesn't matter if he sends the guy a postcard that says "right hand is coming next."

I'd have to look at some video to verify this, but I remember Livingstone Bramble doing this thing where he would reach out a bit with one hand or the other and parry an opponent's punch, kind of meet it halfway with his open glove, then throw the same hand over the punch he parried as a counter. His opponent would jab, for instance, and he'd reach his right glove out to parry it, stopping the progress of the punch, and then throw a right hand over the jab off the parry. It was kind of a tap-punch, but usually a very accurate scoring punch, and he'd do it with either hand over and over.

Tommy Hearns sometimes used a false tell to set up his right. He kept his left hand low, down by his thigh, as we all know. But because he was so tall and his hands were so far apart, he would kind of wiggle the left hand, shaking his fist sort of, until he saw the opponent's eyes look down at the left -- drawn to it by the motion. As soon as the eyes shifted, he's drop the right. I think he did that with Eddie Gazo and a couple of other pre-championship opponents, and I'm pressure sure he did it to Cuevas.