What happened to the Armstrongs, Fraziers and Qawis?

I have to strongly disagree that Joe was very hittable. Joe had great head movement. He reduced the impact by sliding and rolling with shots

 

Not a total match but Issac Cruz is a current fighter that is short for his weight class and fights with a similar style. He's a blast too watch and pure hell for everyone he fights.

 

Mcgrain's had enough of this bs

 

He’s not the only one.

 

Boxers learn styles and techniques from who is teaching. I don’t think there are as many people teaching the bob and weave style anymore.

There was a coach in Florida, I want to say his first name was Pat but searching my brain I’m not coming up with a last name, who had a VHS series who taught this style. I think he had a lot of amateur success and I’m pretty sure at some point he was Glen Johnson’s trainer (maybe not start to finish but somewhere along the way). May have been associated with Police Athletic League.

I watched his videos and I think maybe talked to him on the phone once for pointers. I didn’t agree with him on everything — like some of his footwork iirc had the boxer stepping forward with the back foot coming ahead of the front foot when moving forward — but his style was good for infighting and created some good punch angles (think Mike Tyson pivoting sometimes so he was essentially 45 degrees from the opponent and momentarily southpaw).

I incorporated a string/rope drill of his in some of our workouts (string from corner to corner, boxer moves forward bobbing under the string. Trained at least one amateur who seemed suited for it to fight in a similar style, but mostly it was maybe take one move here for this boxer, one move there for another.

Wish I could remember his name. Maybe it will come to me.

EDIT: Google came through for me, I think, after a dozen or so combinations of search terms. Pretty sure the guy I am referring to is Pat Burns.

 

Surprised no one brought up Roman Gonzalez probably best example of that style in the modern day

 

Many of the issues have been touched on above but another one is career longevity... Swarmers don't typically don't have long shelf lives. They tend to be smaller for their weight class, and especially at heavy take undo damage, not just in headshots but in back injuries from the relentless movement from the hips upward. And as a style it's really a tightrope of timing. Once you lose a just half a beat, you become imminently hittable. See: Tyson, Frazier. With the Floyd-era of safety first combat, this style now seems sadly antiquated.

 

Totally agreed, thank you for posting this and laying it out much better than I ever could have!

This is indeed a rare style, and I think that Henry Armstrong is the perfect example if I had to pick only one.

I wonder if Jack Dempsey and Aaron Pryor would be considered this type of fighter, although I've never really seen Pryor as a swarmer?

 

The closest we ever get to those styles recently were from Barrera and Marquez,both gone.

 

As far as heavies go, the Chisora pick works.

Several high volume guys of varying quality, but not many who bob, weave, and use something approximating a cross-arm guard.