Old time fighters stances question

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People should try shadow boxing without glove for 10/12 rounds, and see if they can keep their hands up the whole time. Even in today's game boxers still don't keep their hands up the whole time.

 

Fundamental boxing says that you keep your gaurd up at all times. I can't think of any all time great who dose this.
I have a theory that says footwork, keeping and controling distance provides more protection than blocking punches. The hands and also arms provide a small arera, and leave a lot of gaps. It also takes more engery to keep the hands up than it dose to keep them a bit low.

 

After watching Charley Burley, this was my observation:

Burley was clearly from an earlier era. His hair was slicked down and parted in the middle, like the pictures of Greb and Mickey Walker. His stance could have come right off the cover of the Police Gazette -- palms facing him, not sideways, as we're used to seeing now. It had that John L. Sullivan look.

The only thing missing to complete the picture were those skin-tight, knee-length trunks with the tied silk sash hanging down. Burley was an anachronism.

He moved well and circled in the pocket, but his stance resembled Max Schmeling's against Joe Louis, with his head appearing to be forward but all his weight and body back on his right foot.

 

If you block a punch, you don't stop the combination.
Your opponent stays in balance because he expected his punch to be stopped by something (Be it a head or a glove, doesn't matter)
Dodging or parrying a punch means his punch doesn't get stopped, it goes further than he intented it to be, when you dodge or parry a punch you directly put your opponent off balance and open for a counter.

(And if an opponent puts so little weight behind his punch that he doesn't punch himself off balance when he misses a punch, his glove is still further from his face than when he wouldn't have missed the punch and is still more open for a counter)


I think your theory is right.

Ricardo Lopez always kept his guard up though, even 20 seconds before a new round started he would have his gloves up.
But he was 105 lbs, and smaller guys have relatively more stamina than bigger men.

 

I would say that most top fighters of the past would say, "you don't block punches, you slip them".

 

Slipping is better than blocking.

But when you can't slip, you block.

 

problem with this theory is that mma guys in 4 oz gloves
keep their hands super high

and often use a high guard, and to block punches
they lift the arm up higher because of the gloves

 

and MMA fighters are elite strikers.....:roll:

The most obvious reason is they aren't good strikers, alot of them are wrestlers or BJJ guys who have only been striking for a couple years yet are already top MMA fighters. Also in MMA you have to stand more square since you have to worry about take down defense and leg kicks. A high guard is the most simplistic defense requiring the least amount of skill which is why they use it. One could argue the same for alot of modern fighters. Slipping, rolling, parrying, using your shoulder requires alot more practice and skill

 

some of them are elite strikers yes
and rolling and using your shoulders wont work as well
when the guy will throw a kick or elbow after a punch


and ofcourse they are not wont be as good in boxing as boxers
because they learn other stuff as well


and just to defend them, and i know this has to do alot with the gloves
but still some of them have sick one punch power
and dont end hitting each other 400 times with no visible sign of damage

just when you said skilled?
they are very skilled, it is just not spefieic like boxing

since they train a mix of
wrestling
boxing
muay thai
bjj

 

anyways the point was that
you could do high guard with small gloves

 

In the early days, you didn't have that many guys fighting behind a jab. It's a lot easier to keep your hands where you want to when you don't have to worry about a jab constantly hitting you in the face. Furthermore, the gloves back then were much smaller, like 5 or 6 ounces, which made them less useful for defense up top.

 

Care to tell me what any of this **** has to do with the stance discussion. You brought MMA fighters and the use of a high guard seemingly trying to claim it as evidence of it being more effective or skillfull.

and no MMA fighters are not good strikers. JDS got clowned by a non elite brazilian MW amateur. Anderson Silva's boxing fight is pitiful, Overeem who won the K1 GP has shitty ****ing hands, defense and is a roided ****** with a glass jaw.

 

Most boxers don't have the footwork and reflexes necessary to keep their hands low and not get hit in the face, especially with jabs.

 

cause to slip punches takes allot of training.....you need to have really gotten used to seeing punches coming....most mma guys now a days tend to come from more of a grappling background...than when they do train mma....they are lucky if they spend half the time training stand up....hence most dont really get too enough to slip (a few exceptions, anderson silva)

beyond that..most the mma trainers I know have a very basic understanding of boxing (kind of like the guys i mentioned on the tysontalk website) and just assume that a high guard is how you have to do it no matter what..and that holding your hands down is a sign of lack of skill or laziness.