Would the Soviet sports machine have taken over boxing had they allowed their Boxers to turn pro?

The only ones who can compare are Byrd and Moorer neither I would say is on Usyks level

 

What sort of examples are you looking for? I don’t really want to do a deep breakdown on this opinion but I’ll try to give you something? don’t accuse me of ducking a question though lol I’m the Toney > Foreman guy I’ll do it all day.

 

I mean the available Southpaws at HW is very, very scant it’s what three good not great fighters? We are comparing Usyk to an elite 147lber here - the smaller guys are apples and oranges, much better. HWs aside from Tyson and Louis likely get gutted at the lower weights with there style (not fair as they usually don’t have mobility and they adjust to there size… but it still stands for pure skills) Usyk could beat Holyfield, I think Holyfield is more of a pro - don’t think it’s a discouraging comment to his H2H ability as a HW but his “skills” are good but his style is Olympic in nature and limited in some ways (So was Muhammad Ali) I think not even for just a Southpaw in his bracket of 210lbs+ fighters he’s one of the best and most skilled fighters at the open weight but comparing him to say Toney? Louis? Mayweather? Starling? Moore? NAH.

 

Did the Russians advocate the bouncing from front to back style (do they call it the pendulum style?) and then jabbing off the bounce? I prefer just sliding the feet and pushing off the back foot and sliding the front foot to jab (push/pull). Of course everything else works off of that and it doesn't seem that Russian style would make the rear hand harder to see or better. The first fighter I ever saw who seemed to intentionally throw his right hand wide was Kovalev (I assume he learned the Russian style?). I suppose it gave him a little more power, but when a punch comes from outside the body, the opponent should be able to pick it up and defend or counter. Now I see a lot of people on YT throwing a wide rear hand like Kovalev.

Of course before the Tyson - Paul "fight" everybody on YT was mimicking Tyson and the D'Amato style because of the 5 second clips of Tyson hitting the mitts. I especially don't like the D'Amato style, and I have gained extra respect for MT for being as successful as he was while using it. I think MT would have been much better if he had learned a more conventional style of boxing and worked at it as much and with the intensity he worked with the D'Amato style.

As you've mentioned in the past, everybody wants to invent something. I can't remember who said it, but he said something like "being in better condition than your opponent is the best technique." If the opponent gets tired, almost anything will work and if the opponent has better conditioning, even if his technique is terrible, it's going to be tough. I'm guessing that if the Soviets/Eastern Europeans had an advantage it was in conditioning over most of their opposition.

 

How am I not giving him credit? Example? I have said many times he’s a genuine great, I said he’d pull an “upset” on Ali, Holyfield and Foreman. I think he’s a top 10 HW.

 

Imagine if Bill Miller, Eddie Futch or Charlie Goldman got Tyson under the same circumstances… he could’ve got lazy like Toney did later but with his attributes it’d be a long time before he lost.

 

You can it’s been done before - accuracy > power.

 

That bouncing style is very prominent in Mexican gyms, which is where I started and have spent most of my time. I never liked it and agree with you about how to move the feet.
Great post.

 

Doesn't say much about the current state of the game.

 

Yep the purpose of that was to master distance and rhythm. Their logic was that the constant motion allows a fighter to move in and out of range much quicker than from a static stance. It also serves to disguise intentions, the rhythmic bouncing makes it difficult for an opponent to tell when a feint will become a real attack which is pretty much the basis of how both Usyk and Bivol fight today and as we can see its pretty effective when used well.

I think the point of the style is to use deception to set it up. The punch is almost never thrown cold, it's set up by the jab, constant movement, and feints, all of which are designed to disrupt the opponent's timing and vision. The goal is to make the opponent react to the jab, creating an opening for the right hand they don't see coming. They throw it wider to compensate and generate power, the style emphasizes full arm extension and rotation, often with a "rising up" motion on the legs rather than "sitting down" on the punch least that's my understanding.

 

Really? Don't see it much in the pro leagues how similar is the Mexican bouncing style to the Soviet style and the style of boxers like Usyk and Bivol?

 

The competition would be much bigger but still the dominance would belong to American boxers, especially in the heavyweight. Perhaps in the lower categories the people from the USSR would have started a fierce fight. Popenko, Lagutin, Pozniak. In HW the Soviet boxers did not have outstanding boxers as outstanding as Ali. Cepulis was crushed by the green Foreman, Yemelyanov by the injured Frazier. Soczikas, Mukhin, Abramov, Zaev also lost. The USSR never had an Olympic champion in the heaviest weight, never a really big star. The legendary Nico Korolev is probably more of a legend than a great champion. I would prefer to see what the Cuban Stevenson, Milian, Savon, Balado, even Rubalcaba would do.

 

I'm not a fan of the peek a boo style either,it can limit your view and often necessitates standing square on,and forgoing the jab.