Your a corner man what would you say?

[Andre]

We all saw the Mayweather/HAtton fight
So if you were in Ricky HAttons corner in about round five what would you have told him?

[Trainer Monkey]

Leaning on him isnt working,and tighten your hands becuase he's freaking murdering you with those elbows and uppercuts.
Try going away a little,and for the love of god,if your going to go behind his head stop doing it to Cortez's side,because he's seen every single one of those,but he isnt seeing Floyds elbows,because of those shots you keep throwing in his line of sight.
Every time you try to go behind the ear,Floyd counters with an elbow,so all Cortez is seeing is your shot behind the ear.

[Scrap]

Not a lot Ricky was doing what Ricky has always done, with success. He hadnt the ability to change to plan B because there wasnt one and He didnt have the ability for change, sad but true Floyd had the better script Ricky couldnt get passed the book cover.

[leftylee]

Keep your hands up when you go in and move your god damm head. Alos start working that body down like you said you would.

[ICB]

We all saw the Mayweather/HAtton fight
So if you were in Ricky HAttons corner in about round five what would you have told him?

Hit him on the arms and shoulders, use head movement, go to the body more, use angles on the inside.

[ThomasTabin]

Hit him on the arms and shoulders, use head movement, go to the body more, use angles on the inside.

Ricky is very lucky that the "fair but firm" Joe Cortez broke them up so often on the inside because Floyd would have chopped him up bad. Trying to bull him on the inside would have gotten Hatton killed. Floyd covers his entire body with his left arm and puts his left shoulder on your chest, unless, he has his elbow to your neck; either way you are not landing that right hand and that elbow on your neck is preventing your body from being able turn and find leverage. Your left hook is landing on glove and arm. There's nothing to hit over there. In between these punches youre missing all over the place you're being countered with a right uppercut to your face.

With a fighter like Floyd who is so tight defensively just trying to bang on him will not work. How could something like that work against something that is so based on exploiting that very thing? Floyd wants you to do that.

Fighters with tight defense hate one thing. Thats being forced open. And the act of punching leaves you open. Traditionally the goal of the swarmer has always been to bring the fight to their opponents forcing them to punch, and therefore, making them open as they are in the act of punching. The swarmer is giving you many punches to counter but the twist is try and counter and you might get hit. An interesting dilemma in boxing that many don't give enough thought to.

I think Floyd must understand this on some level as he very rarely will counterpunch. His style is centered around rendering his opponent's assault useless and hitting them with leads that are very hard to counter as he barely commits to them (his lead left hook and lead right hand). "Potshotting" the Mayweathers like to call it.Thats an extremely hard fighter to fight. When you lead you miss and he won't counter your punches meaning you can't punch him then either. So many opponents are forced into doing just what you outlined. That is, trying to just get inside and bull him. And thats when they get cut up and busted down.

The one counter that floyd does throw on the inside with some regularity - the counter right uppercut after he rolls your right hand off of his shoulder; a roll counter - leaves him exposed to a left hook though. Notice how his head is completely open and exposed during the window which he throws it. He was looking for the left hook in response to Hatton's lead left hook also. Something he had obviously been working on in training for him. The "check hook" like Steward says. Its funny cause I could have sworn the check hook only applied to right hands or at least thats always been my thinking. I call that counter left hook in response to a left hook something else.

Well anyway, Its something Floyd was trying to establish all through this fight. Something which Hatton could've have exploited but didn't. Trigger his counter "check hook" with your left hook and as he opens to throw his left hook in response to you hit him with a right hand. He circles away to his left as he throws his punch which is common to the check hook so its unlikely the right hand could reach his head. I would try to get his kidney underneath the arm. He would stop trying that counter on me after a few of those.

[Trainer Monkey]

Thats because Hattons head was too far tucked,and he was just throwing big hooks to the back of Floyds head,and throwing them blind because he was trying way too hard to lean on Floyd hoping to tire him out
Now while not exactly legal,it isnt a bad game plan,per se
Per se
But his corner should have seen by no later then the 3rd round that Ricky was getting eaten up by those uppercuts,and elbows nicely disguised as inside hooks,and adjusted accordingly,they just kept running him out there round after round,to do exactly the same thing,and get exactly the same results

[ThomasTabin]

Hatton wasn't going to be landing any left hook on Floyd on the inside. He is sideways to you on the inside and this means that he is presenting two sides to you. one side is his front and the other is his back - literally his back. The back is illegal to punch so already he cuts half of your offense in half through this. An interesting loop hole the clever ones in boxing have come to exploit. His other side is the one with all of his vitals on it. The only problem is this side is completely being covered with both of his arms. The body is inaccessible and so is the head. So long as he is covering himself in such a manner nothing is going to land. You must first find a way to get him out of this defense if you're goal is to land a punch.

And Hatton surely never did and this ultimately did nothing but tire him as he repeated the same ineffective and frustrated attempts to land punches without first establishing a way to open floyd's defense. I give him at least some credit for being able to answer every bell in light of such demoralizing attempts.

[Trainer Monkey]

I agree to an extent
But theres an if,and its a big one
If those hooks looked like they were doing anything,Id have kept up,they werent legal,and they were blatant,so the judges were giving him no credit for them
But they werent even making Floyd blink
So Ricky HAD to go somewhere else to do his damage
He never did for the entire fight,Manfreddy was even able to make Floyd back off a bit with either a well timed jab or a big cross,he didnt have the reach to keep him off understood,but he could back him off. Hatton had one gear the entire fight.Come in and throw looping hooks that werent landing legally
I like Ricky he's a gutsy guy,and from what I gather a pretty decent one,I hope one of the things he learns from this,is that timing a guy out on occaision,and having a plan B will save your you know what out there.
Even the knockdown in to the post is a head first,head down charge that Floyd times out,by that late in the fight youd have thought someone would have noticed that stuff wasnt working

[Andre]

They obviously never trained for anything other than the way they thought the fight would go (their own way)!

What a blue to make ;over estimate your own fighter to the degree that you then underestimate the best there is in regards to how he will deal with your fighters one and only approach.

In hindsight I would have liked them to have Ricky breaking down distances with sparring partners.
Shifting back slightly so he could deal with Floyds arms at the range of arms only and then moving in on the reactions that occur at that distance first.
That would at least break it into segments so he may of been able to open up with some of the shorter punches as he finally moved in.
Instead they just expected to be let through that gap with no jab by a precision timer.

With what they had on the line in this massive fight I would have expected them to have had more boxes ticked than they did.

It reminded me of the way I felt when Barrera took Hamed apart that time and they just kept trying a single minded approach while getting fully schooled.

[Trainer Monkey]

They obviously never trained for anything other than the way they thought the fight would go (their own way)!

What a blue to make ;over estimate your own fighter to the degree that you then underestimate the best there is in regards to how he will deal with your fighters one and only approach.

In hindsight I would have liked them to have Ricky breaking down distances with sparring partners.
Shifting back slightly so he could deal with Floyds arms at the range of arms only and then moving in on the reactions that occur at that distance first.
That would at least break it into segments so he may of been able to open up with some of the shorter punches as he finally moved in.
Instead they just expected to be let through that gap with no jab by a precision timer.

With what they had on the line in this massive fight I would have expected them to have had more boxes ticked than they did.

It reminded me of the way I felt when Barrera took Hamed apart that time and they just kept trying a single minded approach while getting fully schooled.

I think they over bet on Ricky's power taking it,but at some point in the fight you have to tell your fighter to change gears
I think Barrera is a tape hound like me,and I suspect what Mayweathers becoming,I think he found a way to exploit Hameds jab,which frankly allways was an achilles heel for him,nobody was fast enough to exploit it before
And again,just like with Hatton,once that fell down,there wasnt a plan B
One of the things I like about Hopkins,is theres a plan C,D,E,and F,I think its Ali syndrome, where its just worked so well for so long,you get lost if it isnt.
It never really happened to Ali except for the last two fights, but fighters have to remember, you arent Ali
Another example is Tyson,he could he either blow your doors down,or close the gap fast enough,and keep his head on yours,and feel what you where doing,but when he couldnt close the gap fast enough anymore,there was nothing else to fall back on,and nobody there anymore who he trusted enough to give him something else to use.

[Andre]

Whats a tape hound?

[Trainer Monkey]

Whats a tape hound?

You sit down and watch every ounce of tape you can get your hands on
You rely on your trainer to give you the skills,but you watch the guy religously to figure out what plan B might be

[Andre]

Whats a tape hound?

You sit down and watch every ounce of tape you can get your hands on
You rely on your trainer to give you the skills,but you watch the guy religously to figure out what plan B might be

Oh I 'm one too then, just didnt know the term tape hound.

Reminds me, I must worm these dogs.

[ICB]

There is no *one way* of beating Mayweather.