“I’ve been practicing the move and jab shadowboxing you stress in your writing. But I’m a wrestler, and a strong short guy. I thought I should hook—recall you writing about guys of my build being natural hookers in your first book—but your recent writing is drawing a question from that. Should I hook, or should I jab? I’m a survival guy, not a boxer or MMA guy. I want to be able to drop people that threatened me, not win a boxing bout.”
-Dom
Okay Dom, we are not going to reference anything other than that threat, that dude that needs to be dropped, that dude that might have a knife—and you’re going to throw a hook exposing your heart and lung?
If you have not read the account of this fight The Game Chicken Versus Elias Spray do so, and note the tone of the action. The guy that scored all of the hip throws—Old Anglo-Saxon Judo, my friends—was the guy who had the jab going, had the time and measure. The guy that risked all and lost on haymaker punches was the guy who never got the jab going.
Yes, you have big arms and wide shoulders—long chimp arms for your height—which would work nicely into a well executed hook. But without a jab to learn time and measure, and then to reaffirm it in the actual fight, you most likely miss with that hook.
Let’s say you have determined that the dude in front of you, who is a threat has no weapon, no friend, just him and you, man-to-man.
Well, my first question is, why are you fighting another white dude on the street? Are you fucking stupid, son?
Okay, let’s say he doesn’t give you a way out, and he’s coming to put you into misery.
You throw a hook. Let’s just say this is an excellent textbook hook, that you’re Dom “The Hook” Leveler. There are three possible targeting outcomes:
1. You miss short, pivoting through and give up standing side control, or leave yourself open to a straight right to the ear area.
2. You score, in which case the guy drops, or has some boxing or MMA background, or is Polish, Uzbeki-Russian or some other kind of thick-headed mutant and does not go down. I’m just a twerp, and I won’t go down, not from just one. If he does not go down you are in the clinch if he wants it, and in the clinch even if he doesn’t want it and throws his own hook. Yes, you are a wrestler. But why give him side control? Why not just feint a hook and do a double leg or ankle pick? The answer could be that he weighs 360 and you’d rather not end up under all of that.
3. You miss long and go into the clinch by default.
My point is, if you want the clinch, the takedown, fine, but get it when you want it, when you know it is coming, not by accident, maybe to his advantage.
The key here, is why do you miss two out of three punches?
Against untrained street opposition boxers with ring experience typical score with every shot. Most of these boxers never jab in the street. However, their accuracy with all punches is based on throwing tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of jabs at all angles and movement rates and positions. The jab teaches time and measure, burns it into your knucklehead brain!
Yes, in the ring, against a dude who boxes, you need the jab to get to him. But, in the street, against a threat, you want to uncork the power shot, and will not land it, unless you have zeroed your body in as a weapon system by training the jab. When you do use the jab in the street it is either as a power shot, usually against monsters stepping into it, or just as a touch for targeting purposes, like in the video below, which I have used before and will again, as it shows the oblique contact rule of boxing, that if you are trained and your lead foot is not between your rear foot and the target, you can hit with a power rear hand whatever you can touch with the lead, even with your eyes closed. Note the rear foot of the pimp/boxer kick out to line up the punch with his hip.
I with try to do an entry a day on the jab from here on out, now that I have the No B.S. Boxing book lined up with my literary jab.
Thanks for the excellent question, Dom.
Somewhere in the mists of my long past youth, I became infatuated with the left hook and taught myself to throw the hook off a jab. Flick the jab out about 1/2 to 2/3rd then suck it back in/shuffle step forward/ and deliver the hook with some good body rotation. In the ring it tended to get through the first time but not again. On the street I put a couple of guys to sleep with it.
K-
That is an excellent illustration of the jab principal.
That's really the sweetest shot in boxing because it rarely lands against your equal, so is a great thing to show the judges at ringside. Doing it even once puts you a level above most.
Once the guy gets a ring read on your jab, shuffle, hook gambit, the way to go back to that well and not get burned would be to throw double and triple jabs, then hook off a second jab after you condition him to three. Then after you feed him that just go back to the jab, hook.
I could never pull that shot off because I did not really get effective with the jab until I blew my shoulder out.
Thanks for the info Kman. That was a good description of the basic technique.