luck

[Fenster]

Hmmm... the accumulator analogy makes sense, however, I'm still not sure it fits with the quote. You might as well excuse any loss as bad luck.

The Cormac McCarthy quote to me means - Pacquiao being knocked unconscious, at that exact moment in time, could have saved him from far worse "luck" - It changed his plans/life from that moment onwards - from showering, press conference, media, after show party, hospital, car rides, plane journey's etc.

[Memphis]

Generally speaking no. If the target is there and you can get close enough to whack it there's no luck in that. Fortuitous maybe, clumsy on the part of the opponent for allowing you to get close, drop his guard, back out in a straight line etc etc when for X amount of rounds he had been careful not to. But lucky, that's a bit unfair. Boxing is often compared to a game of chess. But in chess at any kind of decent standard you have to prepare your finish from a long way back, in boxing you don't have to. You don't have to manoeuvre your opponent into the perfect position to strike, you can just walk up and plant one on the fucker.

A 'lucky punch' tends to have further chapters to the story. Rahman and McCall are prime examples. Chinned a guy once who came back to 'prove' that he was by far the better fighter and that they were the beneficiary of his poor judgement on the night, they got lucky. Again unfair. The target was there and they twatted it one.

Luck is something you have no control over. To truly land a lucky punch you'd have to never move out of your corner, blindly windmill punches and hope your opponent walked into one. Even then it's still only fortuitous You were hoping the divvy bastard was going to do precisely that thing. Ignore that last part

[Yuzo]

great answers.

[Yuzo]

say you and i are boxing. i throw a jab and you slip it through the space next to your right ear and over your right shoulder.



but whenever you slip a jab through the space next to your right ear and over your right shoulder, your head moves into the path of a right hand.



so when i see you slip my jab through the space next to your right ear and over your right shoulder i ought to throw my right hand, right? heres where it gets tricky. because the motion of this slip mimics the motion of a right hand, at that very moment, there is no way to know the difference between what may just be a slip or what may actually be a right hand. thats how jose quinones knocked out doug dewitt.



dewitt throws a jab thereby creating a slip, and, thinking he has moved quinones into the path of his right hand, at that very moment, runs into a counter right hand that was coming back over the top of his jab as he is trying to throw his right hand. heres a different view of the same thing.



so say you and i are boxing. i throw a jab and you slip it through the space next to your right ear and over your right shoulder. i have just moved you into the path of my right hand, but because theres no way for me to know the difference between what may just be a slip or what may actually be a right hand, at that very moment, i have to take a chance. in this view boxing can be described as a game of chance, or, more accurately, many miniature games of chance merging with each other to form into a greater sum that we have collectively named boxing. this was one game of chance. but there are many more. to navigate these games of chance, the boxer must have some understanding of what probabilistic outcomes can occur from each game of chance, weigh the risk, and choose which games of chance to play, and which games of chance not to play. in other words, the boxer will want to repeatedly impose carefully picked games of chance onto his opponent that he probably can win, and try to stay away from games of chance that he probably cant win.