‎'You win not by chance, but by preparation, faith without work is dead, success occurs when opportunity breeds preparation' [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMlzA7ot7_4&feature=related[/ame]
@DrMo. The hip clinch is basically aligning and getting your hips as close to your opponent as possible. Positioning yourself on the inside by getting your lead leg between his two legs. Slicing the target and then dropping your weight on him. You're invading his space with your hips. It keeps from them landing explosive power shots on you and if they have poor balance and poor footwork it will get shown and give you a real advantage. Mayweather and Ward are the best at doing this that i've seen in todays game. Bute does it well too at times. l'll try and get some footage and pics for a better illustration. Although i don't know how to do gifs and how to get steal shots of utube vids.
I love watching Andre Ward doing ANYTHING boxing related. I always say give me a fighter over an athlete any day and Ward is the prime example of that. Here we have a kid in Andre Ward who is on top of the world because he has learned his craft. The guy is not really a hard puncher, he doesn't have super reflexes, his hands are not really THAT fast and he is not the strongest fighter at 168lbs. He is able to do what he does because he learned his craft. He values loose change and doesn't always have to carry and rely on a 5 dollar bill.
I swear some of the phrases you come out with are gold, Slip. There are things about Ward that leave me cold, but I admire his quality. He's very calculating in the ring - plus I love guys that punch coming out of a clinch.
Gifsoup is what I use for that slip. http://www.gifsoup.com/ Sign up to a free account and it's an easy interface to use. Simply copy youtube address onto page and you can crop the footage you need into a gif. For capturing still images from youtube you can pause the vid, press "prt scr" and then paste image into MS Paint and crop to size. (Alternatively post up a vid, note the times of footage you want and I or someone else can Gif em up for ya, this thread has become a daily read so plenty of us to do it). :good
@ Evian McGirt. If you don't mind. The footage i would like you to get some still images of are: Mayweather vs. Mosley. Round 5. 1: 12 Round 10. 1: 10 Ward vs Froch. Almost the whole of round 4. It starts at 2:43 and goes all the way to the end. Stopping with about 10 seconds to go. If you can get a still at any point it'd be great. The best would probabily be at the 0.48 secs left stage when he has him on the ropes. [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ8j318K_Fo&feature=related[/ame]
there is a book called a fighters heart by sam sheridan where he goes to lots of different styles of fighting across the world, eg thai boxing, mma, kung fu etc etc for the boxing chapter he goes to andre wards gym in america when he is a 3-0 newbie pro. very interesting chapter. the gist is ward practised all the fundamentals religiously until they were perfect from footwork to defence to combos to head movement etc. does lots of shadowboxing too. eg 15-20 rounds everyday, again making sure everything is technically perfect. the author is there for a month or two. all virgil hill has him working on is throwing a good 1-2 whilst moving forwards or backwards until he gets it mastered...... there is something to be gleaned from that.
^ I read that book way before I got into boxing and didnt know who Ward was. Im gonna have to find that book and read over that part again.
Could you post that, mate? Virgil Hunter is truly one of the best trainers in the game. He studies EVERYTHING. His relationship with Andre is also the best Trainer/fighter partnership in boxing.
they certainly seem to have a clear vision and a lot of belief in each other but I would wait until I see them in a situation of adversity or difficulty. Its all been very comfortable - oweing in combination to fighting guys who cant live with Ward technically and the fact that ward is a (almost) total fighter
You hit the nail on the head, mate and answered your own question. He's a complete fighter and that's a lot to do with Virgil Hunter. Ward is the fruits of his work. From what i've heard of Hunter in interviews, in terms of who he studies and what his philosophies are and seen of him doing, he's top notch. People who's boxing eyes i respect have also seen him work behind the scenes and say what a brillient teacher he is. Ward hasn't shown anything to suggest he wouldn't behave like a fighter in adversity. In fact he already has behaved like a fighter in plenty of situations. Hunter gets him to make great adjustments. He understands he is his fighters eyes in there and he acts accordingly. They have a really good understanding. What makes Ward special is, he's not overwhelming people with athleticism or punching power and so the 'wait for adversity' tag can't be applied to him in the same way.