Boxing is a sport that is much more than just two people punching at each other. In fact, boxing is one of the sports that require a ton of mental strength and intelligence. It is often said that it is a thinking man’s sport and not a tough man’s sport. Mike Tyson was quoted saying that a “tough man would get seriously hurt in this sport.”
This is because of the chess-like nature of boxing. It may look brutal to the casual observer, but it is in fact a battle of the mind. Both fighters are in a constant mental tug of war, trying to impose their will and game plan on the other.
When you’re stuck in this tug of over, that’s when the experience and knowledge of different boxing techniques can help you win a fight. You have to master the art of setting up punches and be able to win a fight in every which way.
In this article we’re going to teach different techniques to help set up shots, and how to implement your offense in different boxing styles.
Boxing Techniques to Set up Shots
You don’t want to be a fighter that just sits there and waits for counterpunches all day. Not only will this be unlikely to win you a fight (well not all the time), but it will also make you lack excitement and worse, make you predictable to your opponent.
You also want to go on the offensive but you need to know how to do it right. You don’t want to throw random punches and hope they land, this is what most fighters do and most fighters don’t get anywhere in their careers. The only way to be offensive is to set up shots. This is where boxing begins to relate to chess more than ever. Because you will be doing things that create opportunities for you in advance while making your opponent believe that you’re after another strategy.
Feints and Observation
First and foremost, you’re going to want to feint and throw test shots to see how your opponent reacts to everything. If you throw a jab are the opening up for a left hook by parrying. If you throw a jab to the body are they lowering their guard or are they trying to counter over the top? These are all the things you want to pay attention to. If you’re in an amateur bout you probably don’t have a lot of time for this so you want to observe while doing an effective offense. However, you will be surprised what you can learn in just 1 short minute. As a pro, you’ll have more time to watch your opponent’s quirks.
Be Unorthodox
I once went to an amateur contest and while watching two women fight, my friend Azea pointed out that one of the girls fighting from our squad has a combo that she never misses. I was skeptical because there’s no such thing in boxing as “never miss.” I was wrong though. She stepped inside and threw a short jab which was blocked, but it was a setup shot, then she followed it up with a short, quick right hook that landed, and then followed it up with a heavier right hook that landed flush. She continued landing this the entire fight and I had to break down why.
Here is why: most people are not expecting a second right hook, without at least a lean or bend of the knee. In her case, she fired off two right hooks the way she would fire off a double jab and her opponent was not expecting it because it’s not a normal thing that most fighters do. The reason she kept landing it is that it’s hard to break those habits during the fight. You have to build habits in the gym and in the fight everything becomes intuitive. The opponent couldn’t retrain herself to not react after one hook was thrown to either try to counter or try to defend against the next punch coming from the other hand, as is standard after throwing a right hook in most cases.
This is what you want to focus on creating that fits your fight style. Think of combinations or punches that are unorthodox. Maidana was able to knockdown Broner by feinting throwing a jab to the body and turning it into a left hook to the face. These unorthodox moves can help you throw your opponent off guard and help you set up shots. For guys like Roy Jones, it was the lead left hook, which very few fighters throw, so no one expects a left hook to come first.
Find your combo or punch that breaks the basics of boxing and shock your opponent with it.
Patterns
The human brain is built to look for patterns. That is both what helped us survive up to this point in our evolution, but it is also what can work against us sometimes. When you and your opponent are in the ring, you’re both looking for patterns, but if you’re a smart fighter, you will put out patterns out there that are not the reality, and even give them no real pattern to look at.
Here is a good example of setting up a perfect shot:
Start by jabbing your opponent to the head and then immediately to the body.
Reset, walk around, and then do this again.
Reset, walk around, and then do this again.
Try to space out the timing about the same as the combo previous to this and watch how they start reacting to the body jab. Make sure you make an effort to land the first jab and make them feel it to the body. This will make them focus on blocking the second jab to the body. Once they block one or two, they will be overcome with pride that they figured you out. That’s when you shoot the jab to the head, immediately change position to go for the jab to the body, and instead, fire off with a left hook to the head.
Do this one more time and they will then feel like they will know when the left hook is coming (if they’re still on their feet after the first one), except they will be so fixated on trying to figure that out, that they will forget about their offense, and not be ready for you to shift. You can even use that same combo but follow with a hook to the liver instead as they go high to block the one to the head.
Once they start thinking they figured one pattern out because you’ve hit them so many times, change it up and turn to something else. There are many creative ways to set up a shot.
This will be more of a speed thing than a patience thing and is done excellently by Manny Pacqiou. What you’re going to do is shoot the jab to the head, right (power straight) to the body and then immediately come up with the left hook to the head, throwing it in an extended angle to be able to reach a retreating opponent. This is how Manny knocked Keith Thurman down in the first round.
Try to think of creative ways you can trick your opponents’ subconscious mind and create patterns for them that don’t exist, only to change it once they feel they are used to it. This will not only help set up shots but make them frustrated and lose confidence in their ability to compete mentally with you. A fighter’s biggest fear isn’t fighting a stronger or faster guy, its fighting a smarter guy.
It’s Chess Not Checkers
Boxing is truly a game of high speed, high consequence, chess. Its a smart man’s game and a majority of the time the smarter fighter wins. You have to set traps and constantly trick your opponent, even if you’re the pressure fighter coming forward. Being a pressure fighter is no excuse to fight stupid. Always focus on winning the fight strategically, even if you plan to end them in the early stages of the fight.
Boxing Techniques for a Versatile Offense
We’ve talked about different styles of defense and counter punching, now let’s dive into different styles of offense, how to execute them properly and what skills you will need to develop in order to do it right.
How to Pressure Fight
Some guys start off as pressure fighters because of nerves, others just prefer that style of the fighting because it fits their personality. Whatever your reasons there is a right and wrong way to do it.
Stay in Punching Range
When you’re pressure fighting, you don’t want to be too far or too close from your opponent because they are both opportunities for mental breaks. The point of pressure fighting is to wear your opponent down physically and mentally by making them fight at your pace and not theirs. Many fighters get tired much quicker and their focus begins to wane when someone makes them throw when they want to throw or defend when they are not ready to defend. The hardest pressure comes not in explosive spurts, but instead with consistent forward pressure with no breaks.
This is the very reason why Lomachenko is known as “Nomaschenko.” Many of his opponents quit because they simply can’t handle the level of pressure that he puts on them.
When you smother them for too long you give them gaps to take breaks in between while resting on the inside. If you get out of punching range, you give them time to think and maneuver without getting busy.
As the pressure fighter, it’s your job to never let them think or ever let them set up their punches. You want to force them into making mistakes and capitalizing on them. You can use any of the tips above to counter punch or set up shots but it will be much more fast-paced and has to be pulled off with a lot more confidence. Because you’re constantly pressuring, they will try to throw to force you off of them because they will feel the wear and tear on their stamina. This will be something you need to pay attention because it will determine which shots you can land or counter to end the fight.
The best way to do this is to make sure you can reach them at any time and that they can reach you at any time. Stay busy with feints and punches constantly.
Don’t Spend too Much Time Inside
A lot of pressure fighters make the mistake of letting their opponents get on the ropes and slowly picking at them. This is only a good strategy if you’re going to be explosive when they are on the ropes. The second you just sit there and potshot, you’re evening out the fight because they can do the same to you. They are able to take a break and think about your punches or their punches. IF you get them on the ropes you need to go all out, in the way that Maidana did to Mayweather in their first fight and the way Shawn Porter did to Errol Spence in their fight.
Shawn Porter is an excellent fighter to watch to see how to successfully treat your opponent on the ropes. He doesn’t relax for a bit when he is on those ropes. He explodes on shi opponents and goes to work, trying to win every exchange and punish the opponent.
Prioritize Defense
Another mistake that pressure fighters make is to come forward with reckless abandon. When you think of pressure fighting, think of Mike Tyson, Shawn Porter, and Lomachenko. They all have different styles of pressure, but they all keep the defense at the forefront. Neither fighter gets hit cleanly on the way in. In fact, they usually only get hit clean when they are on the outside.
Step one to do this right is to move your head, but not in a random manner, or worse, in a rhythm. What you want to do is slip the punches according to the punches that are being thrown. You’re going to have to master doing this while moving forward.
Workout to Practice Forward Fighting Defense
A lot of fighters aren’t good at moving forward at enough speed when they are being defensive. The best way to do this is to get on a treadmill and start at a small speed like1.5 to 2. Get into your boxing stance and keep the pace of the treadmill and practice moving your head while moving forward and throwing punches. Once you get comfortable at that speed, put it up a few notches and practice your defense and counters while forward fighting.
Go Where Your Opponent is Going, Not Where He Is
Mistake number 3 is chasing your opponent around the ring, that is not what pressure fighting is. What you’re going to have to learn to do is to cut off the ring rather than follow your opponent, because just following won’t put the necessary pressure on them and will allow them to pick you off from the outside.
Cutting Off
If you want to pressure your opponent you will have to cut off the ring and trap them on the ropes. When your foe is circling away from you, a lot of fighters make the mistake of just following their opponent and trying to speed up to catch them. This is a fatal mistake. Not only are you expending unnecessary energy but also leaving yourself open to a shot. No matter how fast you go, all your opponent has to do is turn the pivot and you’re back to chasing. The better and more simple way is to cut them off.
Because the “Ring” is actually a Square, cutting off your opponent is an effective way to trap them in a corner or on the ropes.
Here is the best and most simple explanation of how to do this.
Pretend you’re facing your opponent is always north.
In that case, to cut off the ring, you don’t want to go north, south, east or west. What you want to do is go NE, SE, NW, or SW.
This way you are coming forward, but at an angle, which will give your opponent limited escape routes.
Inside Fighting Tips
While I did mention you want to stay away from the inside, I only mean to stay away if you’re resting. If you’re pressuring your opponent and they can’t run from you, they will at some point try to adjust and either hold you in the center or fight you on the inside. When this happens you need to be prepared.
Here are some tips for fighting on the inside.
Stay on the “Outside” With Feet and Hands
You want to do the opposite of a rollercoaster, and keep your feet and hands on the outside of your opponent. You want your lead foot to be on the outside of their feet, so that when they try to escape, they will have to get past you to do so, and you can catch them with a hook on the way out.
With your gloves, you want to keep your gloves on top of theirs, rather than the other way around. What this will do is tell you which hand they are about to strike with and help you defend against it. It’s also telling you which side is about to be open for a counter punch.
Stay Busy, Explosively
When I stay busy, I don’t mean the kind of busy that you do for the judges. I mean get explosive and really try to inflict hurt on them. As a pressure fighter, your one and only goal should be to break your opponent’s body and will. You have to keep the pressure turned up even higher once you’re up close and make them regret being on the ropes. Once they start to wear, they will want to avoid the ropes and it will be easier to pick them apart as they retreat in the center of the ring as their footwork and counters will begin to be sloppy.
What You Will Need to Have
Being a high-pressure fighter can work against you real fast if you’re not in tip-top tape shape. Here are a few things that should be a high focus for you as a pressure fighter.
Great Stamina
First and foremost, you will need to have amazing endurance in your body and mind. There is nothing more disastrous than watching a pressure fighter that is tired. To see a great example of this watch Ricky Hatton vs Floyd Mayweather in the 8-10th round. His exhaustion was largely due to taking punishment from Floyd but nonetheless, it was a big reason he was knocked out the way he was.
His movements to the inside became slow and predictable, and Floyd was able to time the perfect left hook. You want to avoid this at all costs. If you’re getting ready for a 6 round fight, spar either 12 rounds or 9 rounds, 4 minutes 30 seconds breaks. If you want to see how hard you can go for 6 rounds, then spar 6 rounds with no breaks.
You need to be in the kind of shape to go in there and pressure fight successfully. You will need to expend more energy in order to wear down your opponent and not be worn yourself, so you will need to be in much better shape..
Great Reflexes
Reflexes have to be fast both mentally and physically. Not only does your mind have to respond fast, but you also have to be able to physically respond as fast as your mind does. The only way this is achieved is through consistent drilling daily of defensive maneuvers. Make sure to practice head movement, blocks, and parry’s while going forward in sparring. In fact, take entire sparring sessions off when you just walk forward pressuring working only defense.
Foot Speed
You can’t be much of a pressure fighter if your opponent is able to stay out of punching range at will. You will have to constantly work on getting faster with your feet and learning how to cut off the ring efficiently. The best way to increase foot speed is to jump rope, use ankle weights in training, and the treadmill technique we discussed earlier.
Fight Off Your Back Foot, Getting “On Your Bicycle”, Backing Up
There are a few different names for this style, and casual fans, people that only watch super fights but otherwise don’t know much about boxing, like to call it “running.” Some famous fighters who were accused of running include Muhammad Ali, Floyd Mayweather, Pernell Whitaker, and even the great Roy Jones Jr. My belief is that if you don’t know how to fight to go backward you are not a complete fighter. You won’t always be in a position to stay in the center or move a guy back. Eventually, you’ll run into a guy that’s a brick wall and have to adjust.
Or, maybe you’re the type of fighter that prefers fighting this way. Early on in boxing, this is the style I adopted naturally until I learned how to fight in different ways.
Let’s get into how to fight off your back foot.
Give Different Looks
Fighters that take up this style often make the mistake of simply keeping a set distance between them and their opponent and waiting for openings. They keep circling and continue a very repetitive, consistent backward step that becomes predictable. This is a good way to get put on your ass.
What you want to do instead is to constantly change up your rhythms and stances to make the opponent see a different fighter. Sometimes you want to back up in your boxing stance straight back, then you want to start circling wildly, only to stop short instantly and feint at them, or simply circle to your left, feint, cycle to your right, feint again and circle back to your left. You want to make sure the guy stalking you doesn’t get into a specific momentum. Make them fight at your pace, not theirs, as it will exhaust them more.
Use Momentum to Your Advantage
One thing that your opponent will do wonderfully for you is to eliminate a step in the attack. Normally when you have to attack, you first have to get into punching range and then try to hit your opponent. In some cases you even have to account for any distance they will try to retreat once you throw.
Here, your opponent will actually be eliminating the first step for you as they are coming head-on. All you have to do is throw the punch. Make sure to feint a few first to see where they are vulnerable and how they react to your punches. Sometimes feinting often without throwing can be good to make them assume nothing is coming and as soon as you see them reacting less, use that opportunity to throw a punch where they are open. You will have an easier time landing because they will be within striking distance while stepping closer to you, which creates a perfect impact of them walking right into your punch.
You have to be clever to learn their timing and not get caught with something in return, but you want to use this to your advantage.
How to Fight a Pressure Fighter
We talked about how to be the pressure fighter and how to fight off your back foot, now let’s combine the two. These should be used in addition to the back foot tips above.
Turns and Angles
What you don’t want to do is just to step in left, right, and back directions. As mentioned before, you want to avoid predictability and give lots of angles. In my first fight amateur bout, I had Azea Augustma in my corner. What he noticed in the first round was when we break from the clinch, I get hit on the way out. In the second round, he told me to turn him when we break from the clinch, every punch after that in the second round would miss because I would turn him. In the third round, he told me to turn him and pop the one, two, which ended up leading to the TKO win just two turns in.
The turn is a super important aspect of back fighting as it forces the fighter to constantly adjust and they never get into a state of flow. One of the things that help keep your energy levels stable is being at the pace you want to fight in, constantly having to adjust to your opponents’ pace is exhausting.
Get Their Respect Early
Pressure fighters move forward so bravely because they feel what they can give, is better than what you got. However, if you change their mind early and give them something to worry about, this will shift the dynamic of the fight in your favor.
You can see this being implemented in Ali vs Foreman in the first round when Ali came out blasting with lead right hands, and the same with Mayweather vs Pacquiao.
You want to come out and shock them with a violent and aggressive attack. Whether it’s a hard counter or a looping overhand, hook combination. You want to catch them quickly and catch them flush. This will make them second guess their efforts even if they continue to press forward by habit, they will not attack with the same confidence. Make sure to continue touching them hard throughout to avoid them building any confidence.
Switch Up Rhythms
This is basically the same thing as giving different looks from the above example. You want to make sure you’re never moving at the same pace or direction through the ring as that creates a flow for your opponent and rhythm they can get into to beat your ass. The best guy to watch doing this is Floyd Mayweather. You will see him dance around, then switch to a more robotic backward movement to dodging a punch, turning, and then moving forward at the opponent, only to bait them into a pull counter. Watch the way he fought Canelo Alvarez for a study on how it’s done.
Use Their Strength Against Them
This is similar to the backfoot tip of using the momentum. Basically, their face and your fist are on a collision course when they step in.
What you want to do is continue to build their momentum, then freeze in your tracks while popping a check hook, straight right, or overhand, and get off the centerline as soon as you make contact. These shots will crack hard as they will be running into your shots and you will be able to sit down on your punches more because you don’t have to step in to punch, but instead just plant yourself.
Back Them Up
If you find that you are not successful on the back foot no matter what you try, then it’s time to try what is personally my favorite technique, and one I try immediately against pressure fighters. Pressure fighters are experienced in forward fighting. They are heavy on the front foot and stalk their opponents in just about every fight. This is how they are wired to fight, so everything from their offense to their defense is wired around moving forward or fighting in the center.
What you want to do is to fight hard to take that away from them. Instead of taking a step back, take a step forward and crash into them head-on, fight on the inside and keep pushing them back with hard shots to the head and body. They will fight hard to gain the real estate back but you must persist, make them waiver once and you’ve won the mental battle.
You will get a lot of resistance but you must stay put and stay explosive on the inside, no matter how many hard shots you take, bite down, and shoot them back.
What’s Done in the Dark Will Come to the Light
One thing you always want to keep in mind is that everything you’ve ever seen your favorite fighter do was something that they practiced a million times in training. What you want to do is take these techniques, internalize them mentally, but then practice them and drill them every day at the gym so that they become second nature to you. When you’re in a real fight, everything becomes autopilot, so you want to make sure your autopilot has all the information it needs to perform.
It doesn’t matter if it’s your defense, your offense, your footwork, or flashy moves you want to do when you’re showing off, it all needs to be drilled to perfection in the gym.
Remember, it all works if you work!