Lost arts in boxing

In-fighting for sure. It's not entirely lost or instinct, but it's been severely *******ised. I recently read Frank Klaus' 1915 book on it, and those mfers were way more purposeful and malicious with their work.

Punching the opponent's funny bone to "kill" the arm, targeting the bicep both to hurt and distract the opponent (before switching targets to the jaw), seeing their opponent's knees after landing shots to asses their damage (and oftentimes if they suspected an opponent would feign grogginess, they'd put all their weight on them after a nasty shot to see if they would crumble). All of these were deliberate tactics and skills that were taught and worked on in the gym. Clinch-work on the inside is especially lacklustre today, back then they might as well have been practising Greco-Roman wrestling but with punches instead of throws.

This type of fighting is too unsexy, mean and ugly for most modern day fighters. Now it's all about big 90 degree pivots, in and out movement, flashy combinations from long range, and trying to score points to win the round, rather than commit a live hate crime by altering your opponent's ulnar neurochemistry.

Also, active guards. Purposeful active guards, I should say. That might actually just be 100% dead. Most of today's guys either hold their hands in place, or just move them around a bit mindlessly in order to prevent arm stiffness, and maybe to provide a tiny distraction for the opponent. But they're not really setting anything up with it.

Archie Moore might be the best ever at having a purposeful active guard. He could disguise incoming shots with it, with the hand movement resembling the movement of a punch, and he'd get creative with it, sometimes he'd throw a jab or a hook, down or low, Mayweather vs Corrales style.

He'd also use a long guard to "feel the opponent" the moment a shot is blocked and immediately counter as a way of timing them perfectly, before proactively ducking and rolling while using the cross guard to prevent getting hit from potential uppercuts. He also often used "hand position sequences' where he would quickly switch from high-low, wide-narrow, extended-tucked arms and anything in-between (sometimes he'd have his left hand in a high guard position but his right hand in a long guard position) to create an obstacle that the opponent would want to overcome, and thus bait them into a counter.

My favourite though is when he would just pause for a brief moment, hold his hands in a wide high guard-esque position in order to bait a counter, gauge where the centre line is, and then immediately dip and hit the other guy with an overhand.

 

Nice.
I like to watch the older guys infighting. Nowadays you rarely see a prolonged period of proper infighting, it’s always getting back out of range for another flash combination like you say. I want to see more down in the trenches infighting

 

I really miss the crouching style of Marciano, Galento, Arturo Godoy and Paulino Uzcudun.

 

Boxing skills aren't really lost imo. They just become less popularised due to being less effective because of changes in equipment, reffing, fight lengths, or crowd demands. Plenty of modern fighters can still fight inside and plenty use long and/or active guards. If fights became 25 rounders again and everybody started using 4oz gloves then you'd see all of these supposedly lost skills almost immediately re-emerge. But when gloves have become so much bigger and less flexible, it just makes more sense to expend less energy by catching and parrying shots, and on focusing less on inside fighting when boxing gloves aren't as thin or flexible as Winter mitts anymore.

 

I just read a Ring Magazine article from 1937 talking about how feinting and infighting are lost arts.

 

Use of the Bolo - IMO it was something for flamboyant crowd appeal. When Gavilan used it it was whipping the crowd into a frenzy, if you ever watched his fights. It was less an effective punch than it was pizzaz. Luis Rodriguez and Gaspar Ortega used it from time to time and I should mention that I watched the first Ray Robinson-Gene Fullmer fight and Sugar Ray used it sparingly in that fight as well.

 

It works less if you aren't facing some slob right off the breadline or beet farm.

There are no lost arts. There are only gained arts. Boxing goes ever upward and is only shackled by the techniques of the past.

 

Not really that long ago, but the ‘Tyson combo’ of a left or right hook to the body followed immediately by an uppercut with the same hand.

 

Off the top of my head, I havent seen the lazy jab getting used much. Used to love Durans use of it.

Also, was watching a fight a re-run of a recent fight with 2 Asian boxers (ant remember thenames). Where he punched his opponets hand away and the clocked him with a hook after he punched it out the way - not sure if this is a lost art so to speak, or if it just doesnt get used.

 

And there's a thread here quoting Corbett in 1925, saying feinting was a lost art. That's been going on as long as the sport probably.

 

Interestingly, bare knuckle is back, but the guys aren’t feinting each other for twenty rounds at this point. Austin Trout is also the top fighter there—a guy who never had great power.

 

Trout's a really good example actually, since he's a guy who never fought on the inside in his boxing career but did so immediately in the very first round of his bare-knuckle debut and did so very well. The idea that inside fighting is a lost art is absurd, we still have plenty of the techniques on tape and greco-roman wrestling is still a popular sport, where most of boxing's "inside tricks" actually come from. It just doesn't make sense to fight on the inside for extended periods when the fans, judges, refs, and equipment make that a more difficult thing than just boxing at mid-range.