So far..I can only name 3 who just made their own style,crafted and carved the techniques and used em in their own tactics too. Manuel Medina Jack Kid Berg Koichi Wajima Some fighters who build their craft from 0,but then got improvised by a coach might count too,like Duran with his grappling he learnt on the streets,and Gavilan with the bolo punch he took inspiration from farmers.
Lary Holmes maybe? He clearly had some training, but was mostly self taught through working as a sparring partner and taking every spar as a chance to learn and try things.
John L Sullivan said he never took a boxing lesson Jack Dempsey learned the rudiments of the sport from his older brother, but learned through his fights and travels rather than from, one coach as a contender
Well Muhammad Ali was originally a pretty textbook solid guy and just started doing what he wanted? Is that an example that counts?
The answer depending on how strictly we want to interpret things is that almost every figther gets taught something along the way, especially when they walk into a gym for the first time. I’m sure some of the pioneers were just street ruffians who got steered toward the ring after making their reputation in unregulated street fights, then learned things on their own by trial and error, but the ones who succeeded probably got some coaching/refinement along the way. So we’re really talking about, imo, fighters who got minimal coaching and learned pretty much everything on the job. I’d nominate Dwight Muhammad Qawi as one of the more developed guys in my lifetime who fit that mold. He learned to box in prison and I’m sure got some rudimentary schooling at the onset but probably most of those guys got thrown into the deep end for sparring and had to figure it out. But I’m sure along the way after he was out and turned pro, he got more traditional training.
Wasnt Bernard Hopkins self taught? Also, interesting fact: Wlfredo Gomez studied one year of medicine in order to know where to hurt his opponents...lol!
I think Jung Koo Chang might be self taught too,never did much of boxing until he hit the gym,while also had no amateur experience at all. Yet his style was...something,even his successor Myung Woo Yuh is more fundamental.
