Quote Originally Posted by Trainer Monkey
Quote Originally Posted by spaceballwon
ehh...i think thats a bit overstated and worthlessly dramatic. i see the point, and am a proponent of film study to a degree, but some fighters just dont need to do it and there are two good reasons why it is often an unneccesary tool
-talent that is so above and beyond averaged that you dont really give a rats a** what gets put in front of you.
-the argument pernell whitaker and floyd mayweather (^^^^^see 1st point) proposed, was that at the top level, people are always adjusting to them, so they can't even bother watching film because they are going to be facing a different opponent than the one they will see in the films. whitaker said that he figures as long as he fights his fight, he can't be beat...and guess what, he never got beat when he fought his fight, only when he tried to sit in and trade bombs with tito did he actually lose a fight for real.

i have a fight collection in the thousands, from many generations, and my television is exclusively used for boxing, but to some degree, film study doesnt work in the fight game as well as in other sports. in boxing the collision of style a and style b is what determines the ebb and flow of the fight a whole lot more than who watched who on tape. it goes beyond that though, fighters are all unique. people say sluggers are sluggers and boxers are boxers and so forth...thing is, in the words of virginia woolf, "nothing can be just one thing." everyone will bring their own thing to the table come fight time, and more than any other sport, fights fluctuate from matchup to matchup
Could not disagree any more strongly
One of my fighters has a fight,I want to know every single thing about their opponent
Including what they had for freaking breakfast
A trainers job is to formulate a gameplan
If your going blind,your game plan is reduced to "Just do your thing"
thats good, a debate, i love debates. i couldnt disagree with you anymore strongly either so it works out fine. fighters get taught from day one what to do when x or y happens...the way they approach certain scenarios is dictated by who they are as a fighter. beyond knowing stance(even that can change), height, experience, reach, things that get addressed from the standard tale of the tape, i really dont see how knowing "what they had for breakfast" (i will use that as a blanket statement on all esoteric information that can be acquired from studying fighters) helps at all. if you study 10 fights on a guy to get ready, and tell your fighter a billion times in training camp something like, "his left slips down an inch when he returns from a jab, come over the top with your right", for example, and then he gets in the fight and notices "oh shit, that hand dropping an inch doesnt do a damn thing to help my right land because he knows what his hand is doing"...or even better, "oh shit, he corrected the error in training camp and now the 'secret weapon' has been entirely debunked"...fighters change over time and while it serves a purpose to an extent, film study isn't always the best way to do things. most recently, when kelly pavlik studied tape on edison miranda and noticed "he cant fight going backwards so we are going to keep him on his heels all night"...well yeah, he can't fight going backwards, but i've seen a lot of kelly pavlik fights, and as far as i've seen he keeps all his opponents on their heels because thats just who he is as a fighter, he's an incredible talent and he had exactly what it took to beat miranda. there is something to be said for developing a game plan through film study, im not denying that one bit, one of the greatest developmental tools i have found is watching my sparring sessions on video. but as far as i am concerned, every fighter is constantly in flux enough that letting prior knowledge dictate everything you are going to do in the ring is a quick way to get smashed in the face with a series of question marks, followed by exclamation points, and more question marks.