Quote Originally Posted by Grand


In my own humble opinion .. i beleive the right hand should be held on your cheek just under your eye as to protect you from left hooks and also acts as a parry. it can easily be held up to cover teh side of yoru head from hooks and brought down to parry the jab and your left hand should be held out infront of you not touching your face ( it acts as a block ) so you can just see over the glove aswell. notice if you bring your elbow out your hand lowers hence leavign a bigger target. the reason you dont hold your jab hand really close to yoru face is cause this gives your jab less distance to reach your opponent then if you had it touching your face. also when your opponent throws a punch you can just block it rather than holding your hands against your face and let him hit you that way ( i find it still hurts the face even if yoru hands are there ). i beleive your body should be facing diagonally to your right ( or left if yoru a southpaw ) as to leaving not as much target as you would give your opponent facing him square on. but your head should be facing your opponent kind of tucked down into your shoulder. kind of like bernard hopkins.

all in my own opinion of course
I agree with everything you said there.

I once held my right hand up around my cheek for the same reasons. Like you say it allows you to parry the jab or block the left hook in least amount of time possible as the hand only needs to travel a couple inches for either maneuver. One problem I encountered with this tactic (and I imagine that you also have) was that to throw a right hand - a real right hand with full weight and leverage - I had to cock back my hand. I would have to do this because the right hand was not placed in a natural position to punch. Simply put; you can't punch from your cheek. Not with any real force anyway. The right hand naturally wants to be thrown with the hand at around chest level (right side) just under the neck.

That scares a lot of people to think about holding the right hand down there because they depend on blocking and not on slipping/rolling and controlling distance. The great irony of it is that by depending on blocking as your main means of defense you get you hit much more than you should. Slipping/rolling and controlling distance is the superior way to defend yourself from punches. Thus a proper stance would be one that best allows the body to slip/roll and control distance. I can't say that holding the hands up to the head does this.

I agree with your point about making the body a smaller target by standing 'diagonal'. This flows back the underpinnings of smart boxing in that you should show your opponent the least amount of targets to hit as possible. This way you can control where he will try to punch to with greater predictability. If you give him many options he will act unpredictably; if you give him only some options you take away the bulk of his punches and leave him in a predictable state.

Anyhow thanks for the response Grand. Its obvious to me that you approach boxing in very well thought out way.