The Nuances Of Setting A Trap

Roach was talking recently about how difficult it is to teach this. He claimed it had taken six years for him to teach Pacquiao to bait an opponent to the ropes and trap him.

Gavilan was expert at this, countering-counters. Ali did this too, but I think he was taking advantage personally, I don't think he was setting traps...just an opinion though. Anyway, the kid!

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c6CQkjj0AM[/ame]


At around 45 seconds of the vid, Gavilan nearly gets countered with the right hand off the jab. After this, he throws some lazy jabs, with a view to countering the expected counter. Check out 1:10. Gavilan throws out a couple of weird, lazy looking jabs; at first, Cartier doesn't bite. Then he does. He shoots out a really hard right hand, which Kid is expecting, so he ditches it and then lands the "trap-punch", the uppercut. Beautiful, beautiful punch. Just great. This is the trap.

1 - Sees the counter right hand intention early in the fight.

2 - Tosses out lazy jabs to try to bring on the right-hand.

3 - Counters the expected punch with a prepared punch.

It's lovely. But there's actually something else worth pointing out here. At 1:48, KG sets the same trap again but misses. I think at this point the penny drops for Cartier that he is being trapped. At 2:15 on the video, KG sets the trap again, but the counter doesn't come and he checks his punch. Now he knows that Cartier knows, I think. And there the game ends! KG is looking for a new caper and Cartier has to be more careful about countering with the right hand - this actually makes him less careful overall as he leads with the right more without using it as a counter-punch and employs rushes.

 

No bother and nice thread.

One thing. This is just a little trap, right? But I think it takes an already open fight and turns it into a bit of a barn-burner. Cartier looks to counter-punch less and lead more, and also looks to rush more to reduce that "feint-affect", the "knots" Robinson seems to have been tied up in against KG...so these things can be more important than they at first appear.

Sometimes I think, when fights suddenly take off, it's not for reasons unknown, but rather because of some subtle thing that we miss. And fighters feel and see things in there that we just don't pick up on...

 

I like this one even better than your "best of all time" pick. It's almost hypnotic, and to be fair, Louis was ripe for this kind of trap, but it shouldn't take away from the genius involved. Bringing him on and on and on and looking at the jab and then making the absolutley perfect read and dropping the absolutley perfect punch for the occasion. Really, really great.

EDIT: This was the top video in SQ's post I was taking about.