The thing about circling is that in order to be hit your opponent has to lunge in with the punch or else he will come up just short every time. So through this I accomplish one of my primary goals in that I have put Hopkins in range since whenever he wants to punch he has to lunge into me. From here things become complicated. I know hopkins wants to throw leads: either left hooks or right hands. He may jab a bit but ultimately he will be looking to jump in with these punches. I want to counter these punches but because Hopkins likes to feint I don't want to use slipping counters. Slipping counters are counters that are triggered by your opponent's tip offs (the movement he makes to tip the punch). Grey has a couple threads outlining these counters. The reason I dont want to use them is that because they rely on the tip off they make you vulnerable to being feinted out of position. Hopkins feints so much that I would end up hitting at air if not getting myself countered alot of the time. But i still want to counter him. There are two types of counters that are thrown, not at the tip off, but after the punch is blocked. To my mind they are actually the foundation to all counterpunching and they are very important punches to learn. One of them counters a right hand, the other counters a left hook, and because they are thrown after the block I don;t have to worry about getting feinted out of position by imaginary punches.

The counter to that left hook goes as follows. You take his left hook on your arm and as his punch lands you turn your body (if orthodox to your left) so as to roll away from the punch. By doing this you will simultaneously load up your left hook. All left hooks are counterable by the left hook. This is because by throwing the left hook the body will turn in such a way which causes a clear opening to the chin that a left hook can travel down. For simplicity I call this counter a 'block' counter.

The counter to the right hand is one you're probably familiar with. You roll it on your shoulder and and in so doing you load up on your right. Similar to the left hook, rights are naturally counterable by rights. If youve ever seen this counter thrown you will notice that the other guy always falls face first into it. You have the moore/marciano fight right? I call it the roll counter for obvious reasons.

These two counterpunches are like brother and sister. I've been meaning to make a thread about them for the longest but never got around to it.


To re-cap I want to make Hopkins jump into me so I can catch him with these two counters. To get a mental image of what I'm talking about watch Mike McCallum fight. He fights exactly like this. a lot of the futch fighters do actually. That is that their styles ultimately revolve around these two counters. They are that critical.


It sounds like I've detailed a great deal here but ultimately all I did was circle away and use these two counters in response to the punches I've forced Bernard to throw. He has to throw them because I wont let him have anything else.

Now (and here is the most important thing to understand) that this is established I cannot expect Bernard to just keep coming in so I can counter him. Bernard is not a dummy. He will see what I am doing and he will adapt, and he has a few options at his disposal. For one thing those two counter punches I was talking about are themselves counterable. The roll counter can be countered with a follow up left hook and the block counter can be counterd by a right hand after you block the left hook and begin to throw yours. Maybe Hopkins will stop coming in at all and just elect to stay outside and look busy with jabs and feints. Have you seen the Barrera/Marquez fight? I strongly recommend watching ti because verything I've just said here happened in that fight. Barrera came out circling and waiting for marquez to jump in with shots. He used the block counter almost every time he could. Marquez is a smart kid and in realizing this he started throwing that left hook to trigger Barrera's block counter and using this to land his right hand. This would cause Barrera to mostly jab and move for the rest of the fight. Watch it yourself and tell me what you think.

Well anyway the key point I hope people take from reading this is that boxing is cause and effect; move and counter move. It is precise and logical and therefore should be approached in a precise and logical way. Bernard Hopkins is a great fighter but ultimately he is just a man like me or you. If one man can become great then so can any other.