Does someone feel like explaining boxing to me?

While I don’t claim that it’s an authoritative film about boxing, if you watch Million Dollar Baby, Morgan Freeman’s character goes into some detail about the science behind boxing in his narration.

Not quite. You can do any of those punches with any hand.

When you take your stance you generally have your dominant hand held back, because that is where the power is. Right handed fighters would stand with their left foot and shoulder forward. That way you can wind up with your strongest arm. When you jab with your left, the only power is coming from your arm. When you hit with your right hand, you can put your entire body into it.

So basically you use your weaker arm to pepper the other guy, and power punch him with your stronger arm. The really good guys can power punch with either hand.

This isn’t like a martial arts movie. If you are a boxer, you are going to get hit. Even with two arms you can’t properly defend yourself. If you carefully watch you can see better fighters pick-apart an opponent. The guy starts getting hit in the head, so he lifts his arms around his head. The better fighter starts going downstairs, because now that is undefended

Even if a guy is punching you in the head you can’t completely turtle up. If you are getting hooks to the ears and put your arms to the side of your head, he’ll punch you in the face with a straight or uppercut. If you move your arms in front of you, the hooks will start hitting you on the sides.

So at times be best way of not getting punched is to get the other guy worrying about getting punched

You might want to pick up the video game Fight Night: Round 2. I think it’s the first boxing game I’ve ever played where you have to jab to be effective.

Yes. A southpaw throws a right jab, right hook, and straight left. A righty throws a left jab, left hook, and straight right.

Well, now you’re really breaking it down.

Hold your fists up so that one is on either side of your chin with your elbows pointing down. Your face and body are somewhat protected. Now, extend your left arm as if you jabbed. Your face and body are exposed on the left side. If I’m PERFECTLY FAST I identify your jab, and punch you before you can get back to the starting protected position while trying to avoid your jab.

That’s me counterpunching you.

If I’m faster than you (like Floyd Mayweather is faster than everyone) then I will win this. They teach you in the gym to get the jab back to your face quick: “bring it back as fast as you threw it”. It’s an amateur mistake to let the jab lay out there. “Don’t leave it on the bag” they’ll say in a gym.

But, typically, we’re close together in speed and the fact that you attacked first MAY give you an advantage, especially in the judge’s eyes since you’re the aggressor. What you lack is a good target. You’re just punching into my defense. Like all sports, there’s a trade-off between aggression and over-aggression.

But also, we often throw punches at the same time. It’s also important not to fall into patterns or rhythms since that makes it easier for a counterpuncher.

If there are two counterpunchers in the ring, sometimes they’ll just stand there.

Not really in boxing.

Sometimes there are technical differences. For example, if we butt heads and I’m cut: they’ll go to the cards to find a winner if the fight has gone 3 rounds, but inside of 3 rounds, it’s a draw.

Also, sometimes 3 knock downs in a round stops a fight, sometimes not.

Number of rounds differs fight to fight, but most championship fights are 12.

But, punches go from belt to head in all fights. As someone else said, you’re not allowed to backhand, or slap. . .those things never change.

Don’t cloud the issue. You can do those punches with any hand, but not from any stance. E.g. there’s no “right jab” from an orthodox stance.

Some orthodox fighters will switch to southpaw in a fight and then they’ll employ a right jab.

  1. Hit the other guy.

  2. Repeat.

Anaamika, you might like to check out this link for some details on tonight’s Friday Night Fights.

To add to Trunk’s excellent explanations: a right handed fighter can throw a right hook, there’s not any rule against it, it’s just that the opponent can usually see it coming a mile away, which is exactly what you don’t want. There are a very few instances where you can throw a hard right hook from all the way downtown and the opponent can’t do a damn thing about it, such as when he’s made the mistake of backing up repeatedly in a straight line from you instead of slipping to the side. However, as a general rule you only want to throw a hook with the same hand you’re throwing your jab with.

One small exception to this: some good fighters will leave a jab out on the opponent’s gloves or face for just a second to hide what you’re up to or direct the opponent. One trainer I know refers to this as the “blinding jab,” not because it’s blindingly fast, but because it blinds the opponent temporarily. You can see Ali use this to good effect in his old fight films, and I’m told Robinson and Dempsey did as well. Re: Mayweather…man, ain’t that the friggin’ truth. The man is fast.

From this link:

Unfortunately, I don’t have cable. So I am limited to books/movies. Which is cool.

11th round? Do things often go to 11th round? Is this specifically meant to knockout, and not for points, as it says TKO?

What’s a 10-round welterweight? All right, i looked it up:
Welterweight.

Well as Warren Zevon said

The name of the game is to be hit and hit back.
I’m not a big fan of boxing Anaamika but,

On one of the sports channels they sometimes show classic fights. If you can, watch Ali fight. You have to see him to understand. He wasn’t an athlete, he was an artist. You can tell that he was thinking the entire time.

The only other boxer I ever liked was Sugar Ray Lenord. I remember seeing him in the Olympics and he was a very exciting boxer to watch.

But you have to watch Ali fight.