Very often you'll hear people say of a fighter who moves and uses the ring that he is "boxing" with the assumption that just because you move around youre a smart thinking boxer. This is false.
To start the ring is square shaped which means that to move around in it without stopping ( i.e back touches ropes or corner) you must be moving in a circle. Thus by circling you ensure that you can maintain movement constantly without having to stop and reset because your back touched the ropes or because you got stuck in a corner. As I said earlier just because you do circle it doesn't automatically mean that youre a good boxer and that youre fighting smart. The first thing you need to ask yourself is just why is it that youre circling in the first place. Very often fighters will do it just to do it not realizing the effects that doing this creates.
The first question would be why do I need to move in the first place. Why not just stand in front of my opponent where we are both perfectly in range of each others punches. By circling you are constantly keeping yourself just out of range, thereby forcing your opponent to come forward in an attempt to maintain his punching distance. This accomplishes a couple things:
1. It forces your opponent to reach with his punches. Because you are out of range you force your opponent to compensate for this distance by over extending himself to reach you. By making him reach with his punches you make him vulnerbale to counters. Remember that it takes less than an inch to miss a punch which means that its wasteful to be several feet away from your opponent. When circling its not required that you run like mad just to make a guy reach: watch Joe Walcott.
2. By being out of range you reduce the number of punches your opponent can throw. This is because you are too far to be reached with a jab, too far to be hit with uppercuts which are ultimately inside punches, and you take away the possibility of combination punching. This limits the punches your opponent can lead with down to left hooks and right hands. In other words he becomes very predictable.
Ultimately your opponent is forced to come towards you with overextended punches -- predictable overextended punches. The dinner table is set for accurate counterpunching.
Think about that for a second and you'll realize why bernard hopkins can still fight at 40+ and why he has never been cut in his career and probably why he will retire without brain damage. Then ask yourself just how you would fight Hopkins knowing that he is going to circle away and walk you into traps. How would you beat him?
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