If you are an orthodox fighter, how can you land left hooks on a southpaw? Its hard to hook off the jab since your jab is essentially being blocked by their lead hand. How do you safely unleash a left hook on them? Also southpaws are known to be vulnerable to the orthodox straight right but my question is, why aren't they vulnerable to the orthodox left hook? After all, the left hook has less distance to travel vs a southpaw than vs another right hander. And yet neither Fury nor Joshua were able to do much with the left hook vs Usyk in any of their fights. Whatever success they had was with the right.
Land your lead right hand first, to the body or the head. And then turn that hook over on him. I was always sparring with Bronco McCart, a former world champion and one tough *** guy. Try feinting and drawing him out, then throw it. It's tough to land lead hooks on a good south paw.
Today, the 'rule' for fighting southpaws is to step to your left, keeping your lead foot outside of his, and throwing right hands. Way back when the rule was to step inside his lead foot, make him throw his left hand and hit him with left hand counters; your left hand is closer to his chin than his is to yours. If you watch Jose Napoles vs Billy Backus, the second fight, Napoles mixes both approaches. He also takes the inside foot position and then pivots to his right, getting outside the line of Backus's left shoulder. From there he can punch with both hands freely.
The only advantage a southpaw has over a right handed fighter is that the southpaw spars/fights a lot of right handed fighters, the right handed fighter doesn't see as many southpaws (I think 85-90% of people are right handed). Fighting a southpaw is like fighting a "mirror image." Your lead feet are going to get tangled, your jabs are going to get together, etc. Sometimes a right handed fighter who has little/no experience with southpaws will try to parry the southpaw's jab with his right hand because he's used to parrying a jab with his right. When that happens he leaves his face in front of the southpaw's left hand. That is a worst case scenario! Maybe the idea of trying to keep the lead foot outside of the other guy's lead foot became popular from hearing boxing commentators talk about it when a southpaw and conventional fighter are fighting. We had a trainer who taught us to go to our right when fighting a southpaw and use the right hand a lot. He said the southpaw sparred right handed fighters all of the time who moved to their left and jabbed so show them something they hadn't seen...At different times we have had a lot of southpaws around the gym and when we did our right handed fighters got comfortable fighting southpaws, when there weren't many southpaws they wouldn't be as comfortable. It's just something different, if you don't see it much it's tough to deal with, if you see it regularly, you at least get better at dealing with it.
I don't know why. You see a lot now where guys, both orthodox and southpaw, believe that the jab is useless when they box; they stand there tapping their lead hands and try to step around each other. Doesn't leave you with many options. But you can use your jab, you just have to move your feet and you have to let the other guy jab. That gives you something to work off of, more opportunities to land punches, etc...
Feint the jab and throw the hook (prob my fav method), hook off the jab (speed jab power hook), or throw a 1-2-3, or a 3-2 (power cross set up). Just really make sure to have your feet beating theirs, where they are not able to stifle your left with their right hand forearm. I think rather than eliminating the guard or punching through it, feints and angles were my best method of getting a left in on a southpaw. edit didnt see the prior post about feints, that is correct
Putting my left foot inside his right foot isn't helping me land my left hook against a southpaw. It still feels exactly the same.
To me the easiest way to approach it is to take a big step in with your lead left foot outside of his lead right foot … but a bit farther as in maybe heel to heel rather than heel to toe … and throw the left hook to the body. Do that for a while and you should get the distance and be able to duplicate it to the head.
It feels like even if my front foot is inside or outside of his foot I can't land my left hook unless I'm super close and even then it still feels really weird
Another part of the 'book' on how to fight southpaws from the old days was that southpaws are primarily counter punchers. So a lot of the methods they used were based on making him lead. So you don't want to smother his jab with your left hand, you want him to throw it. When he does, regardless of where your lead foot happens to be, you have an opening to land a hook to his body and his liver is right there. The thing about stepping inside his left foot, you can practically make him throw his left whenever you want him to. Because, especially now, guys are taught that, once they get the outside foot position, the left 'can't miss.' But if you stepped there deliberately to make him throw it all you have to do is slip the left- the motion that you make to slip that punch so that it goes over your left shoulder is exactly how you throw a left hook- and you will land a hook, you don't even need to extend your arm. Are you uncomfortable at that short distance?
It sorta sounds like you're talking about how to get him to run into it but not how to land it like a lead punch which is what I was straggling with because unless I get close it feels really weird to land it or I just can't which sucks because I have to always keep trying to get closer and closer and if I do he just moves back some more
It is hard to hit a guy who is away from you, standing there with his hands up and his elbows in. He doesn't want to get hit, right? You make him punch, then you can slide through the opening created. You stop him from moving back by getting him to plant his feet to punch.
I don't know if this makes sense but it feels like I have to work a lot harder to land my left hook against a southpaw than a southpaw has to work to make it miss. Thanks anyway though
