Losing with dignity. Thoughts?

I hate when fighters go into survival mode and shell up/do whatever they can to make it to the end of the fight just to save face (like smith did on saturday night)

 

Can you tell me how Floyd Mayweather Jr. never got a bicep injury similar to Smith? With the shoulder roll that he utilized I thought he would be taking many hits to the arms and shoulders but I can only ever remember him having once torn a rotator cuff (against Castillo). He still had blinding hand-speed in his fights and in his later career in his late 30's.

Please share your thoughts.

 

Angles. Most men trying to hit Floyd were trying to hit him in his head and so the trajectory was a little different. He’d deflect with his shoulders, not so much absorb them fully/block. That’s what made him so good.

Watch Berto try it. Dude would just get leveled. Floyd could essentially parry you with his forarm/elbow and shoulder or angle his arm so it’s almost slide/deflect upwards, not being hit with the top knuckles.

I remember I think it was Duran or Chavez who said what they would do against Floyd is actually deliberately target his arms and shoulders and make him take actual punishment there.

There is a difference between being specifically hit in the arm and blocking a punch with your arm not meant for it.

You can see that Callum thought he was blocking but Canelo was hitting him full on top of the knuckles to the biceps, etc. Similar to thinking you’re checking a leg kick but it was a calf kick

 

Good point.

 

I am tending to hark on about GGG at the moment but he targets your shoulders and forearms with his big right hand.

Without asking him directly but I'm sure part of his early round tactics (once the jab is established) is to double jab to make them shell up then throw a huge right into the guard.

I've started to watch caleb plant and one thing I've noticed is that he shoulder rolls, rather than parrys, the jab. This leaves him with no more shoulder to roll the incoming right hand. If I was going to fight him I'd be looking to get him to shoulder roll my jab so I can rail a solid right straight into his arm.

 

bicep targeting is known method from old times.
However more as defensive measure if other defense methods is not possible to do. This is like if he is punching you hit his biceps during time when his hand exectute punching movement. With time this might have enough effect to slow opponent's hand, also ofc weakens punch power even if he landed a bit.

 

Fighters making crazy excuses after a loss is nothing new. Foreman said he was drugged, Duran quit and had some weird excuse where he blamed Leonard, Hagler blamed the ring size, Tyson blamed having sexual encounter before Douglas etc.. It’s nothing new there’s just social media and websites like this to continuously publicize it..

 

It would be a *very* ineffective thing to try against Floyd; Floyd would just do the shoulder roll movement and the punch would deflect off of his humerus bone instead of hitting his bicep, thus causing no damage and in fact creating a counter opportunity for Floyd. There is a video of Floyd Sr. demonstrating that. Duran and Leonard are just talking sh*t, the strategy of hitting the shoulder or arm to wear out a roll-based defensive fighter does NOT work. The way to get past a shell defense or shoulder roll is to hook off the jab and get your right shoulder inside their left shoulder so that your straight right ends up going inside their left shoulder and thus cannot be rolled their left shoulder or left forearm (their left shoulder/forearm can roll your right hand away if and only if your right shoulder is inline with or on the outside of their left shoulder).

 

There's a little clip on youtube of Duran and some boxing channel dude I think asking him how he'd fight Mayweather. Duran would pulverise him regardless

 

well, I agree, but in a way , we enable fighters to cast doubt on decisions by always shaming the judges or claiming that certain fighters will always get hometown decisions.

I'm also in my 40s, and growing up reading Ring and KO mag the consensus was that American fighters could not get fair judging overseas, particularly in Russia. now in 2020 that belief seems to have reversed itself.

also, whether it was Pacquia, Alvarez, or Floyd, the boxing elites have always set forth a narrative that these fighters can not lose decisions on judges scorecards in Las Vegas.

I have never seen things this way, and to me fight judging is completely subjective, that's one of the things i love about boxing. I don't know who these elitist boxing journalists, or self proclaimed super fans think they are, that they are the gate keepers of boxing scoring or something.

that's precisely why theres three judges, so that you can have three different perspectives and points of view.

I will always favor a Floyd Mayweather or B-Hop type of style, an intelligent fighter who can smother his opponents and avoid punches and time his opponents and land those one or two highly precise punches per round.
others might prefer the Ruslan Provodnokov type fighters (which I can not stand tbh) that simply plod forward face first, swinging their arms and eating punches all along the way.

who's to say who's wrong or who's right?

going back to the judging however, in my nearly 35 years of following the sport, I have never walked away from a fight feeling that some great injustice had occurred. that's not to say I've never disagreed with a decision, but I never have felt it was something where I needed to stomp my feet, cry robbery and pout like a 12 year old girl (Hagler, GGG, Juanma Marquez all come to mind).

not in even in Chavez vs Whitaker. I've watched that fight 3 or 4 times and scored it at least twice. yeah, I agree Whitaker probably should have one, but I never thought that a draw was so far out of the question, or that it was the biggest injustice of the century...

really, the only time I can honestly ever say WTF was the judge looking at was the 5th round of Holyfield vs Lewis when that black lady scored it for Holyfield...but even then, I give her some degree of benefit of the doubt because I've sat ringside at fights before and it's a completely different viewpoint then what you get watching from home on TV.

I'm not saying corrupt judging doesnt happen, I just dont think it's as wide spread as boxing elites claim it to be, and seem to give judges far more benefit of doubt than your typical boxing elitist who think they know everything.

so I guess what I'm saying is, if the boxing know it alls are constantly questioning decisions and throwing doubt on the scoring system, how can you expect fighters to take their losses with dignity when it's just so much more convenient to cry robbery

 

Smith said that Canelo targeted that arm from the opening bell. He said that Canelo caused the injury, and likely knowingly.
He also said that if it were not the case, he would likely have lost anyways.

So I don´t really get why you are shitting on Smith here.

 

So I don´t really get why you are ****ting on Smith here.[/QUOTE]

because Smith sucks