As time goes on the whole aspect of 'styles making fights' and how you go about defining a fighter stylistically and which work favourably against others etc intrigues me more & more. It seems to me that coming up with some sort of taxonomy, firstly, and analysis on the expected advantages they create in opposition, secondly, would be a very interesting project and one the collective wiles here would be well put to use on. To that end I've taken a wee (possibly over ambitious) preliminary stab at it. Since the most interesting element of this is how it might help us predict fights MM or other wise, I'll start with some observations on what styles beat others (inspired by Dwyer) with examples. From what I've been able to work out (or construct) in my mind, there are effectively 3 overarching 'structural strategies' of boxing, like rock paper scissors that you can employ at a given time. This of course seems a bit neat and I hope it can be expanded on but bear with me. Firstly it seems by looking at past fights that Sluggers/'impact punchers', who are about landing fight impacting single shots or vollys have a natural advantage over swarmers. Simply put, swarmers come forward aggressively, they value output over defense and they leave openings in getting what they need done done that sluggers are all about seeing and exploiting (leaving aside the issue of chins, which of course interacts big time). Sluggers vs Swarmers 1) Foreman vs Frazier 2) Mosley (big credit Sly) vs Mararito, DLH I, many of his 135 opponents 3) Hamed vs Badillo, Robinson, Vasquez, Johnson etc 4) Cooney & Shavers vs Norton 5) Pavlik vs Taylor 6) Tito vs Vargas 7) Toney (yes, stylistically an impact puncher foremost) vs Jirov, Williams, etc 8) Haye vs Ruiz Conversely it's logical that Swarmers will tend to have a natural advantage over thinkers & cerebral counter punchers, since they throw more than a counter puncher can effectively or comfortably react to, pattern or neutralize. The big key here however is not so much the output as the unpredictability. That's the weasel out here! :: Hence IMO a guy like Mayorga, is in 'structural' terms a swarmer even though his output was low, since his unpredictability gave him the advantages of one, and his wildness the disadvantages of one. He could be sniped if you had the tools, but he could bamboozle and have a cerebral counter puncher jumping at ghosts. Similarly & more unfairly a tremendously fast fighter can take advantage of a swarmers unpredictability against a counter puncher, particularly by introducing allot of feinting. This built in potential multi facetedness really may be the single thing that makes speed such a strategic asset. Floyd vs Marquez & both Leonard & Hearns vs Benitez as well as Roy against allot of guys, including Hill & the first 8 rounds vs Hopkins are examples of this. The inability for a cerebral, pattern reading guy to read you is piss on the circuitry whether it's achieved by volume or speed. This strategy/style might really best be defined as the 'offensive unpredictability'. Swarmers vs Cerebral boxers 1) Williams vs Wright (and Martinex despite Martinez being better, IMO) 2) Margarito vs Cotto, Martinez 3) Frazier & Norton vs Ali 4) Calzaghe & Taylor vs Hopkins 5) Mayorga vs Forrest 6) Mayweather vs Marquez 7) Vargas vs Wright 8) Pac vs Barrera And lastly, cerebral boxers have the upper hand over sluggers/ impact punchers, who generally take long enough getting set and have low enough (or reducible enough) output due to footspeed, 'setting', balance or variety issues that they can be read and key threats neutralized. Cerebral boxers vs Sluggers 1) Hopkins vs Pavlik 2) Jones vs Toney 3) Wright vs Tito 4) Barrera vs Hamed 5) Ali vs Foreman 6) Floyd & Wright, forrest, Cotto, DLH II vs Mosley 7) Holyfield vs Tyson 8) Lewis vs Tua So to summarize Slugging>Swarming Unpredictability/swarming> counter punching counter punching>sluggers There's really so much more that could be said about this, particularly about how intangibles can change the strategies available to a fighter against a given opponent (Hearns height & speed reducing Duran to desperation, Floyd's defense reducing Oscar to swarming and being pot shotted) or changes in style midfight (Calzaghe upping his output against the counter punching Kessler, Floyd successfully turning to pot shotting against Castillo's swarming in their first first) etc. Thoughts? Is there a 4th style? or just so many that this kind of thinking is stupid?
I'll look into it more tomorrow when i have more time. It's an interesting thread. On a much simpler scale one of the rock/paper/scissors analogies in boxing is that boxers beat punchers, punchers beat swarmers and swarmers beat boxers.
Well I think thats essentially the conclusion I've come to, as well, put far more succinctly. Damn, I wonder how many of us ever have an original thought.::
Whiskey simplified nicely, but I think in order to really explore the topic detailed analysis like Hut Hut has provided is necessary. As complicated as it might seem from Hut Hut, I think the introduction of even more complexity is necessary to further our understanding.
Yeah, had I ever heard the swarmer>boxer>slugger>swarmer thing before my post woulda been allot simpler & better put across (though there are still caveats to the above). I was basically reaching for new terms when perfectly good, simple ones already existed. In a way Im happy to hear I was at least onto something even if it's already so well established that its just banal. But I agree the reality is more complex than the simple rock paper scissors equation and I wish there was a way we could explore it. Maybe I'll go away and think some more on it and try and post about it again. Hand dominance & stance interact to give advantages in predictable ways and thats another element. (hookers/converted southpaws will struggle with southpaws, strong straight right hand > southpaws) As I said, speed gives you a great potential to utilise the advantages of all three styles/strategies, though only if you utilise it. One of the interesting things to me is that looking at who a guy struggles against and thrives against can reveal the real nature of where his style really fits which often gets distorted due to his physical gifts or whatever. Ie Mosley & Toney effectively being 'sluggers', Abrahams & Clottey really being counter punchers, Mayorga being a swarmer despite the low volume, etc. :NotThink: These new smilies are fucking gash btw. Why we don't just lift them from Fanatics like Ive been saying for years I have no idea.
I think we should start by listing the "components" we think play into who beats whom - forget about how to classify them for now. 1. Height 2. Arm Length 3. Weight (ratios will be the key here) 4. Activity (number of punches/round) 5. No. knock-outs .....Many more Using cluster analysis (or recursive partitioning) we could actually identify naturally ocurring combinations of the above measures. The hard part will be compiling the data.
I'm not sure thats a useful avenue since it's pretty much limitless and you'd have to bring them all back to fewer categories again anyway before it become useful. I think the swarming/slugging/countering angle is solid, but again there's scope for all those intangibles recasting the strategies available to fighters in loads of ways, which adds nuance to it. And I think it may be possible to kinda combine & merge strategies, if you're gifted.....making this any more complex would really take allot of effort though, it'd be a stupidly big project. Surely the cunts at Ring magazine are getting paid for something they should get on it. ::
Well, I think I'm saying the differences between styles, even those that impact the outcome of fights, are too subtle for us to usefully classify simply by watching fights. So the degree to which I'd have to "bring them all back to fewer categories," could be a function of how relevant the identified styles are to the outcomes of fights. In my mind, the object isn't to keep it as simple as possible; it's to best explain which fighters will beat whom, given their measurable attributes.
