Boxing – Froch might do well to read this

By Boxing News - 11/12/2009 - Comments

froch544532455By Joseph Aaron Forbes: Boxing is an interesting sport with many philosophies; to begin I will use the recent fight between Froch and Dirrell to illustrate.

I found this fight very interesting not to mention the decision but that’s for another time.

Here you had a champion in Froch that was completely out of his comfort zone. The reasons for this could be debated but I would like to offer my opinion on the subject.

You see in boxing, fighters after a few years in the gym begin to adopt a style, it is one that works for them, it works for their physical build, for their reflexes and there mind set. It is a style that they feel comfortable with and as they begin to fight they may even work on small things to adapt, for their ever changing opponents. But they generally keep this style for the most part of their career. Of course there is the old cliché styles make fights and of course it’s true as we could see with world champion Froch who was stuck for words after winning an uncomfortable fight against a much faster opponent in Dirrell.

As I listened to Foch say something along the lines of “all he could do was run run run”. My mind was brought back to the comments of Cus” D’Amato saying “boxing is about throwing the punch where you can’t get hit” and I started to think Froch doesn’t understand what boxing is really all about. He said he wanted to stand and fight, Am sure he did! That’s what he’s good at, but that night he was brought out of his comfort zone and some of his weakness’s exposed, speed and agility naming the two most noticeable ones.

I guess this got me thinking about styles and the fact that they can greatly limit a fighter. Now I won’t beat around the bush, you have to realize that most of the fighters to ever enter a ring were limited by their styles. As we look at these fighters you can see where they would fight some body that beat some body that they lost to and then they would win. It is obvious then that styles make fights; as we go back to that old cliché again.

But there are some fighters amongst these stylists, who really understand the sport.

These are such as Ali, Mayweather and maybe even Calzaghe. They are people who can adapt, who can problem solve in and out of fights and who can work on there weakness’s prior to a fight and infact probably through out most of their career.

These are attributes not often found among fighters; it is not the consistent training in a boxing gym that will get you to greatness but the consistent rumination of all aspects of boxing. The practicing of things, that in a public boxing gym would more then likely make you feel uncomfortable to do, because they would bring you out of your comfort zone and for a time you wouldn’t look cool, infact you may even look a little stupid.

Styles in general limit fighters, as Froch found out recently; hopefully to his learning.

Learning, should be the focus of fighters and is the focus (although they may not know it) of some of the greatest. This stylistic view unfortunately though, is found through out the world, not just limited to boxing but the mind sets of all but the conscientious.



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