Would You Rather Be A Skilled Counter-Puncher or Skilled Taking The Lead?

Would you rather be Manny Pacquiao or Marquez? But seriously. At the end of the day it's how good you are overall that matters. Any style can be successful.

 

Probably, yeah. Whittaker looked like **** vs Diosbelys Hurtado. He ended up winning cause Diosbelys was packing glass. Yes, I know he was past it but he was a much higher level fighter and gave Oscar hell right after that.

 

Any Boxer worth a damn is a good counter-puncher. The likes of Duran, Ray Robinson, Ray Leonard, Louis, Usyk, Chocolatito etc were every bit the counter punchers the likes of Marquez, Canelo etc were. But they weren't just passively waiting to counter-punch when the opponent threw, they forced them to throw.

Duran is arguably the best feinter ever for example, and would also constantly bait his opponents to throw shots to counter, but he always had the initiative, thus he was fighting at his own pace, and as a result took control of the fight. That made him look like a more agressive brawler, but he was every bit as skilled, well schooled and had as much finesse as anybody.

There was a moment in his first fight with Leonard where he was baiting Leonard to attack him, and it wasn't working, thus Duran proceeded to send him to the ropes and he pounded his body, meaning that if Leonard wouldn't throw, he'd get punished for it. Leonard then took the bait, and got nailed even harder than when he didn't. The initiative is what separates a guy like Duran from Canelo or Marquez.

 

IMO 9/10 times a counter-puncher will triumph over a pressure fighter. High level counter-punchers like using lateral movement and do not generally instigate exchanges, which often leads to pressure fighters just throwing caution out of the ring when they see the counter-puncher not budging, leading to them getting punished for their mistakes. Make em miss, make em pay type of stuff.

 

But you can get aggressively minded counter punchers too. Guys like Tyson and Benn were basically counter punchers. They would press and use head and upper body movement to draw a lead then smash you with a counter, it's in part why they were such devastating punchers. Same with Hamed, at least when he was with Ingle, once he left him, he abandoned his counter punching style and would just rely on speed to launch big shots at opponents, which is why in part guys started taking him the distance.

But overall I'd prefer to be a good counter puncher, it's a much harder skill to master than simply being fast and getting off first. I'd much rather be a Danny Garcia than an Amir Khan.

 

An aggressive counter-puncher that wants you to or is comfortable when you lead, and threatens with consequences of an alternative action if you don't.

Napoles, Tyson, Duran.