This past Sunday night I was speaking to a boxing fan about how various heavyweights from different eras would match up. This discussion occurred as we viewed a very well-played baseball game. The man had not boxed and was not a martial artist, but grew up in the 1960s and 70s when being a black belt in karate was a big deal. He mentioned an episode on a baseball field when one player confided in another that he was going to ‘beat Rod Carew’s ass.’ The third player said, “You want to rethink that. He’s a black belt.”
I said, “Wow that would be nasty. Rod Carew was the fastest man in baseball, and a big dude, probably could have been the light heavyweight champion if he was a boxer instead of a ball player.”
He then asked me, “How can you type fighters like that, not having seen them fight?”
I said, “Any high level athlete has half of a fighter’s psychiatry hard wired in—and all of them have a fighter's eye. Of course over half of baseball players lack the aggression to be a combatant, but a base stealer like Carew, that guy will fight. A catcher, that guy will at least fight back. You look for the aggressive positions and then the exceptions, like the base stealer who has a high tolerance for risk in a pressure situation.”
He then referenced his sport, “I coach tennis. There is a certain level of athleticism required for the basic requirements. For instance, if your kid cannot move laterally by 12 after training for seven years, that’s pretty much it. They aren’t going to be a tennis player. How do you know if the fighter—if he’s got the guts to be a fighter—has the biomechanical aptitude to succeed?”
“For stick fighting it is just their willingness to do the work, as the stick requires so much specific muscular conditioning that nobody's a natural off the bat, and anyone can be trained to hit hard with it. It’s a matter of finding out if they will hit to hurt, and if they will put the work in. The stick-fighting field is so slim that you can get into the top bracket with average athleticism because the skill set is so deep and the weapon ameliorates the impact of a superior physique. Nevertheless, I am only stick fighting at a high level, and karate guys are only winning karate tournaments, because those guys on the baseball diamond aren’t doing it.”
“Now with boxing I have a simple test: how long does it take you to learn how to hit the speed bag effectively? It takes the average person six hours. It took me six and a half. It took my brother twenty minutes! My skills were as good as his and I hit harder and could take a better punch. But, I never saw his punches coming. I had to wait for him to hit me and hope he was still where he was when he threw the punch and fire along that line. Now he was a good amateur.
“A good pro I can’t even counter because he’s not there anymore. You see in a stick fight he has a lot more to worry about and has to be more dominant to get away with that because the weapon expands his target area and my cutoff and counter options at the same time.
“That is why empty hand fighting is such a test of native ability. I have fought one of the best stick fighters in the world and actually hit him, even out pointed him once out of thirty bouts. Against an Olympic boxer or a top ten pro, I never hit that guy—ever.
“One of the reasons I like baseball is the art of hitting. Most people think anybody can hit a major league pitch. I tried. Have good eye-hand coordination, have never ever missed a swing at a softball in slow pitch and can score a thrust with a stick or knife or sword on a bottle cap from a five foot lunge three out of four times. I never missed a wiffle ball pitch when I was a kid. This ability came from practicing things like the speed bag.
“A friend of mine pitched double-A for the Phillies. He blew his shoulder out and could not make the majors. He could still through at 94 miles per an hour, just couldn’t do it long enough to get in a big league lineup—although today with the way they use closers he might have gotten work. This guy once dented a dumpster with a snow ball from sixty feet.
“One day we went out to the ball field in Rosedale and he told me he was going to throw it right down the middle. I saw it leave his hand, and I was still looking at it leave his hand when it blew by me. He did it again and the same result. He could see me trying to adjust and anticipate his release so he threw it at about 95 and I jumped back when I felt the air turbulence. Now that was a little league diamond, so he was closer than the pros are. But still, trying to hit his fast ball would be like trying to parry one of my brother’s invisible jabs.”
I can deal with a stick going as fast as that ball because it has a long surface and I have a stick with a long surface to intercept it. But when you get down to something as small as a fist moving within the visual field of the puncher’s body you don’t want to be playing fastball with the pros unless you have that natural reaction time.
If you are curious about your potential with the fists I highly recommend learning the speed bag with a timer just to see where your learning curve is. Now, you can still get as good as the natural in time, but you will be older and more banged up when you get there and he will get away with breaking the rules that you can’t afford to break, which still makes it an uphill fight.
I can tell you this, if it takes you longer than 6 hours to learn the speed bag you better have a good chin and you need to study counter punching.
A very interesting observation! One of the peculiarities of the oriental martial arts is the tendency of their practitioners to discount the impact natural athleticism (or lack of it) has on actual fighting ability. But a person’s natural gifts have a profound impact whether classical martial artists want to admit it or not. Fighting is much like singing in that if you lack the requisite genetic gifts (a good voice for example) there is a limit to what you will be able to do to compensate for it, no matter how hard you train. You certainly won’t be able to make a living at it.
Hello i am Alex from greece.I always enjoy it, when you are drewing the parallels between athleticism and fighting abillity Mr LaFond.When you talk about specific muscular conditioning for stick fighting,what it entail's.It is obvious, that you need a durable grip but what other muscles are involved and how can you strengthen them, besides beating something with a stick.As I am thinking it now,maybe the best way is to beat regularly something with a stick,because once i was swinging a rattan stick in the air for some time and then i could'nt close my hand for a week.
Nice to hear from you again Alex.
This deserves an entire article which will be up in 24 hours.
Thanks for the feedback.