I have been practicing for a while now, and studying Floyd and James toney videos...do any of yall have any videos or any tips??
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I have been practicing for a while now, and studying Floyd and James toney videos...do any of yall have any videos or any tips??
if you plan on learning this guard plan on taking literally thousands of clean and hard shots over the next few years...its not easy to pull off and the only reason they look good doing it is because they have YEARS of experience, not weeks or months. i've been working on it for about 2 years and i still get hit a lot, but its all a process i guess. if you wanna see a high profile pro thats not very good at it, but insists upon using it for one reason or another, watch joan guzman. now that he is training with mayweather sr. it will get better, however.
two pointers: dont even bother trying this defense if a-you dont have a good chin, or b- you dont have an excellent radar.
It takes some serious balls to learn this style because you're going to have accept the fact that when you're starting out with it you're going to get hit more than you do now. Even a guy like James Toney got roughed up when he was developing it. I guess it is a process as it can be developed.
It's more than fighting out of that particular stance, it has to feel natural to you, and you need to understand what comes with this stance. You can't be a 1-track minded fighter when using this style. Watch some of the older fighters like Archie Moore, Jersey Joe Walcott. They throw a rising jab that often from the hip. This jab has to be fast and crisp This is big part of this type of defense and has to be developed before this stance becomes your mainstay.
With your left hand low you become more alert of your opponent's right hand. How are you going to deal with it? Are you going to slip it, block/deflect it with your shoulder, etc... With defense you have to look at yourself and see what's open or has the potential of becoming open. Here's a quote by Thomas Tabin that'll explain what I'm talking about:
"What you first need to know is that every guard has openings. Every single one. it is up to you to find those openings. you want to first get a good understanding of the target areas of the body and the angles that lead to them. for every opening there is an invisible plane that your fist travels along like a pipeline which leads to the opening. in order to land you must put yourself in sync with the angle which leads into the opening you see. It’s very important to use dynamic punches. You will have to adjust your punches slightly shortening them or lengthening them so that you are in sync with the appropriate angle or pipeline into the body. you will also have to adjust where you are in relation to your opponent with footwork i.e. you may have to move more so to your left in order to land a left hook or moreso to your right to land a right uppercut. So its important that you be able to adapt to the changes your opponent will present with his movements around the ring and with his body in general. you want to punch with the idea to get past his guard. Don’t punch just to punch. I see alot of kids just punching for the sake of punching and they will never get past a guard doing this."
While you're practicing with this stance that's the kind of stuff that you have to consider. What angles are you more vulnerable? How are you going to protect those angles. On the other hand use this wave of thinking on your opponent. Weigh the advantages and disadvantages of their style. When Schmelling fought Joe Louis he fought on the outside of Joe's jab and had a big bag of tricks to draw upon for that situation. Yeah it's complicated but this has to worked into your training so that you can use this insight while you're fighting. I think it work wonders if you had a very alert sparring partner that is very familiar with the ins-and-outs of this particular style, because then it's more like a chess game as you'll be fighting for an opening and trying to protect your own angles. There's a lot that goes into it, and frankly there's not enough time to put it all in one post. Maybe I'll come up with a post with deals with ring generalship which will cover angles, footwork, fighting off the ropes, etc...
Knowing some of the advantages/disadvantages of this stance you should be very adept with a regular conventional stance as well. Just like when Mayweather had to assume a more conventional stance to better amount an offense in the later part in his fight with Zab Judah.
One last thing I'll go over in this post is what spaceballwon brought up. Radar. You'll need to become very aware of what's coming if you're going to use this stance. One way is to shadowbox with an opponent which can help you practice feinting and moving while trying to get them to open up an angle. Another thing is from one of Andre's posts from 'Different/Alternative Training Ideas':
Also for another fight to watch, check out round 12 in James Toney's fight with Jirov. Take a look on what he does when he has his back on the ropes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Andre
This has alot of defensive work from toney in this vid ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfT1wU1Gmik
Made by yours truely ;) :)
CC for yall
hey spaceballon, why would the person trying to do the philly shell defense have to be prepared to take punishments, alot of punishment for 2 years?
i've been sudying this style for quite a few months, Toney is a Grandmaster at it, its the king of all styles in boxing. guzman can do it pretty good too. but only recently i started practising it, and yes i was getting his alittle more than usual. but then one day it just clicked and now i am really good at it.
you said a person should have a good radar and a good chin to use this style. i say the radar bit is true, but the chin bit isnt, this is a counterpunching style, for u to fight like a tua or a tyson/frazier u will definetly need to ave a good chin. if you can do this style properly then you wont be gettin caught clean. how often do you see mayweather jr or toney get tagged like u see miranda did against pavlik (flush, moving towards a punch etc).
you must know the basics good and proper to practise this imo. just for all your info, if you wanna fight like a toney, its not just the shoulder roll, there are other great moves to go with it, but u gotta watch the fights.
hey ice man, go on google and type in 'sherdog philly shell defense' and theres a great topic on that forum, a guy explains this style properly, gives rare tips. ;)
King Kabuki, one of my favorite posters on sherdogs. He really knows his stuff. :coolclick for bringing it up. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Lionheart Lacy
I am not sure what you mean by that term... I assume you mean the left low, right high, roll the shoulder defense made popular by Toney and Mayweather?
Look, this is not rocket science. Back in the day, EVERYBODY did it that way. Check the old college boxing manuals-they did it that way in the 1940s and 1950s.
Do not ever reach out with your right hand to parry or block punches. Angle your left foot so you are not squared up- turn your left hip. You cannot roll your shoulder if you are squared up.
The hardest parts are picking off body blows with your left arm and catching the left hook.
i will tell you exactly why you have to prepare to take punishment. because if you are actually doing a style like that with people that are better than you (as sparring should be anyways), then they will be hitting you until you start to get used to the variety of movements that come along with that as opposed to a standard guard. not to toot my own horn, but i probably do it a lot better than you simply because i have felt it work and felt it not work against pros that have fought for world titles, as well as people less experienced than me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lionheart Lacy
and just because you watch fights doesnt mean you can execute what these people (toney, mayweather, walcott, locche) do...if that was the case then we would all be defensive wizards and pound for pound kings. that is why you have people going into gyms trying to be roy jones and never coming back after getting their asses beat all over the place. there is a natural ability to detect things, something of an extra perception involved, thats why i said what i said, because if you dont have a good chin, you are going to find out the hard way if you indeed dont have that extra perception skill
and for the record, "the philly shell" is about the most horribly named thing ever, where did this crap name come from? the best practitioners i have ever seen with this werent from anywhere near philly.
and by the way, you spelled my name wrong, its WON not ON...
I've noticed that its difficult for some guys to roll not because of the actual movement it takes to do it but because they arent in a stance suited for doing it best in the first place. For me it always worked smoothly when had my hip in front almost totally sideways like burley (the only guy ive ever seen stand so sideways) and so that i wwas leaning just a bit on my back foot so that my front (left) shoulder was slightly higher than then my right. Very old school stance you'll see it alot in the 20's, 30's fighters. This makes me naturally hard to hit with rights which was always nice. Its very natural to just roll away from them since, from that stance, you are already very hard to reach with a right (literally they have to REACH) and because im so sideways the shoulder can be turned in front of the face almost instantly. Also the right uppercut counter after rolling comes off extremely smooth from this stance. Its the most natural thing to see that counter after rolling the shoulder in such a fashion.
But you see the real sceret to the shoulder roll is not in blocking punches with your shoulder. See its really preformed more like a slip than a block. where youre rolling away from the right hand and not just eating it on your shoulder. The shoulder coming in front of the face is actually just a sort of a side effect of the rolling away movement and not the primary thing.
I'm starting to see more fighters trying to use the shoulder roll. andre berto and jean pascal spring to mind. They're pretty ineffective to me though because they stand straight up in the air like a stick and try to forcibly push their shoulder up to cover the head. They end up just eating the punch because this forces them to block and dissallows the rolling away motion so critical to the shoulder roll. because they have no rolling away motion, the right uppercut which comes off of the shoulder roll becomes difficult for them to throw and thus pretty ineffective.