I know that this following quote comes from a thread that is already on this board, but it's so good that I had to include it here:

Quote Originally Posted by ThomasTabin View Post
I think whats so interesting about Burley is his upper body movement in combination with his footwork. He moves around the ring, but not so fast that he isn't always set. This means that, through this, he can use the ring while still maintaining an ability to move his upper body. Something you won't see Ray Robinson or Ali doing because they're moving too fast to be set enough to preform these movements.

Well that makes him infuriatingly hard to hit. Smith misses essentially all of his punches and not only just that, he misses them big. Sometimes by a few feet.

This is something that is only accomplishble with a stance like Burley's. There are fighters like Ricardo Lopez or Barrera who use the ring and are incredible defensively but are unable to preform the upperbody movement that Burley can. Thus they can't make an opponent miss as badly as Burley can.


and because of that, they can't make an opponent reach as hard as Burley can.


Thats because the harder you are to reach the more an opponent will commit into his punches. You can see the way Burley is "pulling" Smith into him. That is something a squared up fighter can never do.

The general idea behind Burley's strategy and stance seems to me that - and correct me if you see something else - to pull your opponent into you and thus force him to reach with his punches, making him vulnerable.



There is an episode of The Way We Were with Joe Walcott and Joe Louis. They show on the screen the Knock down Walcott gave Louis in their second fight and Walcott says that he was leaning away knowing that he would pull Louis' jab enough to able to throw his right hand over it.

Schmeling did the same thing to him.

Not surprsing that all of these fighters share the same type of stance and, with that, the ability to "pull" fighters into them.
Recently I was going over some interesting things that I pulled off of the internet which kind of reminded me of Thomas's thoughts:

Walcott, Bivins said, had a frustrating technique he employed to get you to step forward as he connected with his right. Joe somehow moved his body in a manner that gave the appearance to his opponent that he was starting to back up, when all he was really doing was shifting his weight...Bivins stated that when you would begin to take that initial step forward upon seeing this, Walcott would crack you with the right. It was unexpected, and walking into the punch made it hurt even worse.