Michael Wright

Great thread.

As ever Mike, that’s a storming first post, I’ll be absorbing those gold nuggets for a while I’m sure. Thank you for your invitation to contribute, in truth I have nowhere near your experience and consider myself very much to be a novice in this game, but for what its worth I’ll pitch in.

I’m going to take the detail back up a level, focus specifically on my personal experiences, and cover just three “basic truths”. The specific focus of my points will be about someone who has moved from many years in the martial arts into the wonderful world of Boxing, that’s my angle for this post.

As a premise its important for me to stress that the boxing game I have been taught and employ is specific to my natural attributes. At 6ft 1in I am unusually tall for a middleweight, just under 75kg, so my whole game based on range, movement, on the back foot, stick and move. Just think of a white Tommy Hearns, with 0.0001% of his talent and ability, and no afro.

Anyway, here are my three basic truths in this game so far:

1. MOVE!! If there is one word that I have had screamed in my face more than any other inside the boxing ring, it is the word “move”. Like many martial artists I trained for years as a world champion......in a one man fight. Put me in front of a set of focus mitts or a heavy bag and I’d hammer away all day long with monster shots, but in between those shots – nothing happened. One of the biggest lessons from boxing is that throwing your shots is only half of your job, you must always be in a constant state of movement. Always. This doesn’t mean dancing around the ring like a fairy, you’ll just burn energy doing that, instead it can be very subtle. In order for your opponent to land his best shots on you he needs three things: Base, Balance, and Position. If after you have thrown your shots you alter your position very slightly, and keep altering it constantly, it is so much harder for your opponent to become set and to unload. After you throw every shot, every combination, every attack – move! This movement can be very slight; it just needs to take your head off the line it was on, your feet slightly off the angle they were on, and to always keep the opponent guessing.

I have some footage of me training with my coach Spencer Oliver, I’m happy to post it if people would like to watch it, just so you can count how many times he says the word MOVE!

2. FOOTWORK FOOTWORK FOOTWORK. I heard it so many times in martial arts, and I thought I had good footwork, but I didn’t. The ability for your feet to operate as the transportation system to put your body in the right place, at the right time, to do the right thing – is an art form. This is so crucial for me. The guys that I get in the ring with tend to be 5ft 6in pitbulls who seem to have a sole aim of breaking my ribs or making me piss blood. You can only do so much ab work, you can only tuck your elbows in so tight – you just have to not be there. But in this constant cycle of evasion, you also have to throw your attacks and counters, you have to move but also be set to hit, and this is an art. Weight distribution, changing angles, switching directions, stepping in and out, and often most important of all – never being flat footed. As Bodhi rightly said, it is imperative that the rear heel never goes down, this is your launch pad. You know I never understood why boxers used to place so much emphasis on roadwork, I mean come on – its a punching art! But oh lord, when you are six rounds in and your calves are on fire and your quads feel like cement.....you understand.

3. LET YOUR SHOTS GO. I never believed, after 15 years of training in the martial arts, that someone would ever tell me I didn’t hit hard. The truth is I did hit hard, I just didn’t hit boxing hard. The first time my coach saw me shadow box he said “great, good form, looks lovely – but there is nothing in those shots. Let them go”. Let them go?? I was letting them go! “Why are you doing that stupid snap thing, why are you only stretching your arm ¾ of the length, LET THEM GO!” In martial arts, I trained to hit the pads, and people, in a range that made me look good. One of the first things I noticed when my coach taught me to shadow box properly...it didn’t look anywhere near as neat. But he was teaching me how to punch a person, using all of the range and mechanics my body had to offer....to knock them out. After about six months of training I was hitting twice as hard as I used to, and after a year I’d say three times as hard. I never used to have to wrap my hands, now I wrap them every time I hit anything – because I have to. I used to watch boxers fight and think “oh, he’s over committing”, until I was on the end of the shots. Boxers don’t over commit, because go back to points 1 and 2 – they move, and they have the transportation system. When they throw their shots its 100%. Everything is 100%. Everything is 100% - and that is why they are so good.

I hope this has been a useful angle as a starter for ten, thanks to Mike for the thread.