Dissecting Roberto Duran

[Chris Nagel]

Nice find, Lito. Thanks!

The in-fighting analysis is fascinating. How many trainers today can teach a guy how to cope in close quarters? Checking the opponent's arms, especially the further arm, using your shoulder and arm to wedge an opening, it's become rare boxing lesson, or at least an incomplete one. Recently I keyed in on Sam Soliman's pet right-uppercut that he loves to throw out of a clinch. He 'negotiates' those couple inches and then WHOP, gets his uppercut in. He does it all the time.

Duran had a much better scope for in-fighting, very good touch-and-feel awareness. For instance it's remarkable how he senses a left hook coming, something that most of us would eat.

I believe that fighters today would benefit from developing touch-and-feel awareness in a controlled exercise similar in a sense to Wing Chun's 'Chi Sao' (i.e. Sticky-hands: ). More specific to boxing would be a starting-position of having both guys press their head against each others lead shoulder. The focus should be feeling where your opponents arms are, and then sensing the pressure that precipitates a certain punch. It can be further broken down into drills in that you'd feel the direction of their pressure, and then check/stop a specific punch. As the participants gain competence with the specific drills, they can graduate into doing a free exercise in where they can mix up their punches. Afterward you can add some variation such as stepping to change the angle.
@Andre @StrictlySP