Quote Originally Posted by Von Milash
of course, for beginners, nothing beats having two dukes up.
You're right there, it's not perfect but it's good insurrance. I see fighters that drop their left for no reason and Boom-- what do ya know they eat a big right hand.

When you start paying close attention to what you are doing and the reasons why then you can experiment with new things that seem to break the rules. If you know what to expect, and what to do then you can prepare for it. Say you drop your left hand, or maybe your right hand, if you know what you are doing then you can provoke certain punches that you can counter them. That is a big part of what a lot of good fighters do, you may think you see an opening and when you go for it you can't see why you're getting hit. Of course when you put two really good fighters together and one of them trys to draw the other in with a gap in his defense and the other opponent is going to see how they can set him up using that.

Also I think reading you opponent's rhythm and other details is as close to mind reading as you're going to get.