When I got up this morning I started thinking about when I might need to use the covering-up guard. When you are nose to nose with your opponent things become very different. You could say it's like the traffic and fast pace that you'd experience when entering a busy expressway. You have to be so much more aware when close to your opponent. You'd have to relearn a lot of things all over again. In honesty right now I don't have the experience to be brave enough to stay on the inside. It'd be easier for me to just take advantage of the opportunities that come right off the slip, fighting right off the outside of their lead arm, and occasionally going on the inside right off the counter. Now unless you have the experience on how to deal with your opponent's arms, how to feint and draw punches on the inside, the natural counters and so forth you should not get in close to your opponent.

Getting back to when I'd use bring my hands up high let's say that in my lack of experience I'm expecting that my opponent is going to throw a left hook, instead he throws a left uppercut that I have no time to react against it. It nails me, and I'm staggered a little and he's not letting me clinch, instead I have to break ground fast bringing my guard up for a several seconds to block. I know that just taking a step back isn't going to keep me safe, I have to get back to controlling the outside circle so that I can clear my head recompose myself. I'd be stupid to try a rope-a-dope and try to weather the storm, and I wouldn't be any better off doing what Jeff Lacy did against Joe Calzaghe. My survival mode would be to get out of range and to get back onto the big circle that goes around the ring. For an example of this watch Delahoya vs. Vargas, Delahoya get's hurt but he goes into the circle clearing his head and scoring with his jabs at the same time. I think it was Archie Moore that said that controlling the circle meant controlling the fight.

Another thing that every boxer needs to do is for the most part keep their elbows in close to their sides. You can't do this when your hands are up past your chin. This allows your body to respond much quicker, and on the inside this allows your arms to guard against body blows. If they're too far forward then you end up leaving your liver open for a counter. As I said before most guys will throw their punches like they're trying to close a door, they also may overcommit to their punches exposing their liver and kidneys. Knowing this I think that a boxer should first make a strong habit of keeping the elbows in close. Under most circumstances you should not square up as this would make your guard easier to manipulate and give your opponent an easy way to knock the wind out of you. With the elbows where they are supposed to be one should practice rolling inside of their opponent's wide hooks taking the blows on the their shoulders and arms. When rolling inside your opponent's wide swings/hooks make sure you don't turn your body too much as to expose your vulnerable spots.

You will have to tell me what you think the cross arm defense is. Just a little word of advice, when you're talking to a fighter if you bring up most of the names that fan's have created to name the different guards/stances, most of them won't know what you're talking about. My point is if you have a question about something in particular, just spend a little time describing it so that whoever you're asking the question to will know what you're talking about.

Anyways right now I just started thinking about Gene Tunney. You see he was once almost an exclusive outside fighter, as he got more experienced and his understanding for fighting improved he became a very well rounded boxer who could fight well on both on the outside, as well as close to his opponent. He would master a lot of the smart counters to his opponents weak spots, and this also added to his effectiveness as a fighter. I think that by sparring as much as you can from fighters that you can learn volumes from it. The first step is that you have to desensitize yourself to fighting, don't look at it as two guys trying to do each other in, but instead see how both fighters work off of each other. Look at it as a challenge in which you are always looking for new things and fine tuning what you've learned. Try to see how your opponent tips off their punches, what their usual responses are and you'll discover a lot of your own tendencies and mistakes as well. It can become fun as you get better and more confident in your abilities. Excellent sparring is perhaps the best parts in your skill development, on top of that these skills will help you make the most out of the rest of your training, and the observation skills will allow you to learn volumes by watching tapes fights on TV, or where ever you may be.