A great understanding of distance, timing, rhythm and foot positinioning. Distance is probably the most important aspect, because you have to defend yourself accordingly, you can't just avoid shots in the pocket the same way you do at long range or at middle range. Timing and rhythm allow for the natural flow of defensive maneuvers, same way you do when chaining a combination together. It's extremely hard, if not near impossible, to actually defend multiple shots just by reacting to every single blow without a sense of rhythm and timing. Positioning is also key. You'd be surprised by how much a simple step to the right with the lead foot can benefit you defensively.
It’s about experience, courage, attentiveness and getting to the point you can learn to think for yourself. At some point Gil Clancy likely couldn’t tell Emile Griffith anything about boxing he probably went to the grave with some private inventions. Boxers of all kinds have been evasive but none were unobservant or lacking for the brazen to think. "I did six years of planning to win the title from Jack Dempsey." - Gene Tunney
Anyone can dazzle the crowd with fancy defense making a guy miss, blocking, etc. That doesn't matter if you end up getting drug into a mud fight because you gassed out or eventually get caught by something big and you're holding for dear life, running, etc. At the same time, a defensive wizard isn't someone who never gets hit. For starters that's not realistic, everyone gets hit. You also don't need to use flamboyant, exaggerated upper body movement or flashy footwork, but if you can do that then great. My criteria is the following: -Effective guard. Blocking 1 punch at a time is cool, but can you block a 4 punch combination? Stopping the lead punch doesn't mean much if the remainder of the combination lands anyways. But it bears repeating that this doesn't mean getting hit by combinations means someone has terrible defense. People are going to get hit. But it shouldn't be common for a guy to get clocked by 4-5-6 punch combinations. That means you have a leaky guard. -Punishing mistakes. If someone has a tight guard but is unable to return fire effectively, they're missing a huge part of effective defense. This is the difference between an extremely cautious fighter like Jimmy Young who simply fights to survive, as opposed to Floyd Mayweather who was a sharp counter puncher that punished mistakes. If the opponent doesn't fear anything coming back at him, you're setting yourself up to lose a lopsided decision since they're busier and winning rounds on work rate. Make them miss, make them pay is the best philosophy for a defensive wizard. -Good accuracy and timing: Similar to the point above, when a defensive fighter is switching to offense he needs to have good accuracy and timing. If a fighter is missing a lot, he's failing to impress the judges despite his strong defense. If he is throwing a bunch of cute flurries and flashy jabs but only lands 16% (5 solids shots out of 30), this is honestly a pretty bad statistic if it becomes a pattern throughout the fight. The more aggressive fighter may connect with 8/20 which is 40% and significantly better. Even though the latter fighter only landed 3 more punches, he was more effective and evidently applying smarter shots whilst being more selective and careful with what he threw. These numbers are loosely based on an amateur fight I saw. There was a "slick" lanky guy vs an aggressive swarmer. The slick guy was throwing flicking jabs and flurries, but missed A LOT of them or they were glancing pitter pat punches without much on them. Ironically, the swarmer threw and landed less but he landed more every single rounded and they were very clear solid punches. The swarmer ended up getting the decision 3 rounds to 1 and the "slick" guy was very confused with his smirk disappearing when the fight was over. -Range/Pace/Style: Above all, the defensive fighter should try to maintain these 3 things. He should be able to maintain his preferred range, fight at a pace he's comfortable with, and can stick to hand style fighting his kind of fight. Obviously no one can always do these things perfectly ever minute of every round, but it's a sign of a great defensive fighter when they can do these 3 things on a regular basis. If the defensive fighter loses control of the pace, gets smothered, and is frequently forced to go outside his comfort zone, that usually either means he's fighting an incredibly good fighter, or he's simply not a particularly great defensive fighter. Fighters who were great at this were Pep, Locche, etc sticking to their style and rarely getting forced outside their preferred pace.
Top post and excellent contrasting of Mayweather as compared to Young. While he didn’t do it every fight or fully for any one fight, when Young did happen to let his hands go, in tandem with his literal defence, he was that much more effective and impressive. He will be forever labelled a pillow puncher - but guys like Lyle, Foreman, Norton and even Ali felt some of his punches - Jimmy simply wasn’t committed to throw anything real hard for the most part. Being a defensive whiz is as much a mental accent and dedicated application as being an elite puncher, and, at either extreme and throughout the spectrum, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Say, for his accent and style, intended for technical punching prowess - with an unavoidable inherent risk factor, Joe Louis had very acceptable defence imo - but it could only be so good given his stylistic accent. But yeah, playing full defence without adequate offence - understanding that offence can (and perhaps must) = defence in part, may see a net outcome of a purely defensive fighter not being totally immune to ultimately receiving more than a few punches. Swarmers are poison for purely defensive fighters or, at least, fighters who don’t include some respectable offence in their armoury. I guess that’s why most of us calculate that a Joe Frazier would be far too much for a Jimmy Young. Jimmy being besieged and eaten up by Joe might be an apt description as to the likely complexion of such a fight.
The way you gague it statistically(opposed to the eye test) is someone who rarely scores KOs, KDs or vice e versa and who wins most of their rounds.
Boxing brains is extremely important and crucial. The most important factor----and the ability to think literally like a computer in fractions of a second. And then making the right decision in those nanoseconds. This really becomes evident when guys are fatigued. At that time the brains factor is magnified. Also radar. Like guys like Duran and Benetiz and Vitali---the ability to roll with punches landed to take the full impact off them. That's one of the reasons why you just don't see the top defensive guys hit on the button. First off they do not put themselves in that position. When they do---you never see too much sweat fly when they do get hit from that great flexibilty to take the impact away.
