Boxing Like the Champs: Lessons from Boxing's Greatest Fighters
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Boxing Like the Champs - Mark Hatmaker
planet.
1. Building a fist like Jack Dempsey
Let’s start our first lesson with what should be a given by now — building a fist. But before we do that, let’s talk tough. Tough with a capital T — Jack Dempsey Tough.
How tough is Jack Dempsey Tough?
He racked up a tally of 50 knockouts in 81 bouts. If we add his exhibition bouts, the win tally becomes well-nigh uncountable and that KO record goes up as well. The renowned boxing historian Bert Randolph Sugar discovered a truly astonishing Dempsey knockout total. According to Mr. Sugar, Dempsey scored 60 knockouts in the first round alone. Yeah, I’d call that tough.
On September 14, 1923, Jack Dempsey fought Luis Angel Firpo, El Toro de las Pampas
or The Bull of the Pampas. Firpo was the bigger man at 227 pounds. The Champ weighed in at 192. The opening round is legend. Almost immediately Firpo caught Jack with a right that dropped him to his knee. He recovered, swarmed El Toro and dropped him not once, not twice, not thrice, but a total of seven times in that first round (no three-knockdown rule to get in Jack’s way back then).
Just when ringsiders thought it couldn’t get any wilder, El Toro caught Dempsey with a good right hand. Jack does not hit the canvas, but goes through the ropes and completely out of the ring. We are talking big fall here — an ass-over-head dive. Dempsey crashed and cut the back of his head on a sportswriter’s typewriter (or writing machine
in some accounts.) The referee started the count while sportswriters scrambled to get Jack back into the ring. The count hit four and the battle raged on. Round two was relatively mild in comparison — Dempsey dropped El Toro twice before Firpo simply could not get up.
Jack Dempsey was a tough, relentless fighter who knew how to maximize his power. But that power had to be delivered through his fists, and he felt that there was a bit of science that goes into building that fist. Notice, I said building the fist and not making a fist. A fist to Dempsey was something to be engineered and not a mere clinching of the fingers.
A note from the Deep South
You will notice in these photos that I box southpaw. I’m a natural righty who retrained southpaw to put coordinated/power-side forward and to beef up my weak
hand. In other words, I sincerely see power-side forward as not losing a power hand, but putting power into both hands.
Nowhere in these pages will you find me preaching to you to make the switch. I just bring up my obvious southpaw stance for the question that usually follows: I’m an orthodox fighter, will this book work for me?
Yep. No worries, boxing is boxing. Southpaws, follow my lead, literally. Orthodox fighters, flip the photos in your mind and we’re all on the same page.
Engineering the Dempsey fist
With your hand open wide, begin curling the fingers into the upper portion of your palm.
You’ll want to curl the little finger first, followed by the ring finger, then middle and, finally, the index finger.
It is vital that you pack
the fist tight by tucking the fingertips as close to the base of the fingers as you can manage.
Finally, fold the thumb over the curled knuckles of the index and middle fingers.
Think that’s all there is to it? Not hardly.
Striking surface
Mr. Dempsey was very particular about the striking surface of the fist. There are some who will tell you to strike with the top face of the knuckles, or the prominent knuckles of the index and middle fingers or the flat of the index and middle fingers.
The champ would say that the correct striking surface is the flat surface of the bottom three fingers — the little, ring and middle fingers. The Champ found that this striking surface seemed to line up naturally with skeletal support from the radius and ulna of the forearm, creating in essence one fused piece of bone from shoulder to striking surface. He felt that all other striking surface variations called for a bit of adjustment in the wrist to make the striking surface work.
And that making it work often led to injuring the wrist or the fist itself.
Wall test
There’s a simple way to test the stability of the Champ’s built fist and the other variations. Stand in front of a wall and build your fist. Place the tested striking surface against the wall and push HARD. Don’t punch, just push. Run this test through each of the striking surfaces mentioned. You will feel for yourself that the Champ’s fist is the only one that naturally lines up with no need of tweak to correct alignment that could lead to injury down the road.
Jack Dempsey was a powerful puncher. He felt that a hard puncher needed a good weapon to punch with, and his built fist was that weapon.
Crafty tactics from the Champs
The next several lessons will allow us to adopt and adapt powerful and crafty tactics from some of the best fighters to have ever stepped into the ring.
2. Little Chocolate and the clinch jab
George Dixon, aka Little Chocolate,
was one of the scrappiest bantam and featherweights the early era produced. Often tipping the scales at no more than 87 pounds, Dixon began his boxing career almost exclusively as a left-handed fighter. He had the speed, the evasive footwork and the gas in the tank to keep him out of harm’s way while not seeming to look for the knockout. And by gas in the tank, I’m talking world-class stamina. He engaged in many long battles, one of which was a 70-round draw versus the American
bantamweight title holder, Cal McCarthy. Dixon might have coasted along on his left-handed laurels just fine, but he was fortunate enough to come under the tutelage of manager Tom O’Rourke.
O’Rourke was a crafty welterweight at one time and recognized the natural ability in Dixon, but saw that the fighter would need to develop a right hand to go further. With that in mind, he set out working almost exclusively on Dixon’s right, developing stiff straight arms and chopping hooks to the body.
In this lesson I want to focus on what Dixon started doing with his left hand once he found his right. Pre-O’Rourke, Dixon had, according to all accounts, a very quick left jab. Once Dixon became confident with his right hand he used his left less and opted to find ways to do maximum damage with only his right.
He engaged in many long battles, one of which was a 70-round draw …
Yes, he would still use his left, but it was primarily to get to a head clinch where he would then go to work with stiff rights to the head and hooks to the body while keeping the head under control. Often the way Dixon would apply punching inside the clinch blurred the lines in the boxing rule set, but it is perfectly legal inside MMA.
What we’ll do here is show how Dixon used his jab as a clinch jab and