Quote:
Geoff Byers wrote:
But boxing is not a fight. It's a sport. In boxing, fair enough, perhaps you can, perhaps the range of options are so limited that one can learn what the opponent is going to do, though I suspect it would be more to do with noting general upper body movement than the eyes. In a fight, where there are no rules, his eyes will not tell you if he's going to pull a knife or try and club you with a bottle, if he's going to kick you or grab you, bite you or eye gouge you.
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Unfortunately it seems very difficult to convey this to persons that have not been there. I realize this continuously. It is certainly my fault.
There is, for any given starting setting, only a definite set of following movements that the physical constraints
impose. An arm can do only a limited set of movements, and combinations that have been proved as truly effective are routinely taught.
You must learn how to tell them
beforehand.
You learn them only by
experience, but once you have learned them, if you keep practicing, it is totally irrelevant what the hand is wielding: the physical constraints of a human body are always the same, no matter how furious his movements are or what is on their hands whether a naked or gloved hand or a bottle in it (if they have a gun however, we are on grounds I cannot deal with).
To a jab 90% of the times follows another jab, about 60% of the times a right.
It would be foolish to train in order to defend against an hook after a jab, because the odds you will see an hook coming after a jab are I'd say less than 1%.
It would be
even more foolish, and actually truly dangerous, not to
anticipate what is more
likely to arrive on your face in order to "watch by his hands" what's coming next: I tell you, what is coming next after his jab is his right; and it will land on your face
100% of the times as you watch it arriving, if instead than anticipating it you want to wait in order to
actually see it coming!
To an hook follows normally another hook, and yet you must anticipate also the possibility of an uppercut, if you lower to dodge.
If instead you stay there trying to "watch his hands" rather than anticipating what the physical constraints suggest, you will be hit many more times than you should. That's not what a guy who fights competently does: he never tries to see what you do, he is
constantly continuously intent on
anticipating you.
That is how it works when you fight competently: you
anticipate, and at that point
experience is all.
This is the first level of your initiation, and will take at least one year (for the most typical combinations at least), and eventually forever.
Then, there is a second stage. His eyes. This is why I said if you don't know this, don't venture into a fight: if you find a
competent guy, he will beat you half dead and will turn your face into a
mask of blood (ok ok, it's not true: it's my fantasy, ok. I am
inventing I have seen movies ok...), depending on how much of a bastard he feels like to be, on how much of a bad day he had, and on how much fun he wants to have with you today...
I am very glad knowing that most of you have never met one.
Yet you realize this eye thing only after you have been sparring
daily for at least one year.
I know that you deem boxing a nuisance, but that's because you have never seriously practiced it in order to fight in competitions: how can I tell? because you feel so about it... for no one who has boxed seriously and made
competitions would ever think that it's gonna be a "sport" - the injuries and pains you go through will be telling enough to clear your mind of any idea that you may be practicing a "sport" in the same way swimming or horseriding or a picnic - or even aikido, for that matter- could be... your adversary wants your blood, he wants your
mental incapacitation and
eagerly and actively seeks it. People have
died on rings, my friend.
If you're not used to those situations, don't go around chivalrously helping ladies in distress.
Actually, it is even more esoteric than this but only those who have been there may understand me so here I have just
no hope that any of you may either understand or believe me.
If you fight daily, you eventually realize how
your own postures are in any given emotional setting
you experience (and this is why you need time, at least one year of daily sparring: in order to go through the
whole gamut).
You must learn how
you behave (in a fight) when you feel arrogant or overconfident, how
you behave when
you felt the hit but you are trying to disguise it, how
you felt when he hit
your liver squarely, how when he hit
your spleen, how when he hit
your ears, how when
your jaw and how when
your chin, how you slightly bent one of
your ankles but it was just so slightly that
you could tell only by a twitch on
your shoulder and not by any sudden difference in height like it is when
your ankle actually fails
you, how
you were trying to conceal
you were about to run out of breath, how
you behaved when
you feared, how when
you were about to mount up and to hit more furiously, how
your gait was when
you felt full of energies and how when
you were feeling the first pangs and troubles -
you go through the
whole gamut of sensations and emotions you can experience while beating each other for good.
Once you have been through this, you have an invaluable asset, a
treasure!
A treasure, my friend! A
treasure!
By knowing how
you behaved (and since you were feeling yourself, you were keenly aware even of the most
minimal nuances of your behavior and postures and... even of the look of your own eyes
yes! You self perceive yoruself!) you are much,
infinitely better equipped to understand how your opponent will behave and to interpret even the slightest changes in his attitudes.
There will be times when you will read him like an open book. Precious!
You have a translitteration scroll. By knowing how you felt and how your body arranged itself accordingly to each given blow and pain and fear and emotion, you are now infinitely better equipped to interpret similar signs in your opponent, signs that you were
totally uncognizant of before you went through this ordeal
yourself.
You know your opponent
by knowing yourself. I really don't know how to convey this. I guess that, sadly, you need to have been there. Aikido does not help you in this, and I always felt this as the most saddening difference when I see how most ukes behave.
It is not that you know your opponent. Actually, you know
yourself. And this works wonderfully to know a good 50% more of what's going on in your adversary too - and I cannot tell you what a difference that can make! As much as between life and death.
It is true that persons behave
differently, and yet they behave also similarly or we won't have shared DNA along with unique parts: we are all humans, not a few humans others tigers other mosquitoes and a few other dolphins.
What applies for me, has a value also for others.
In a serious fight this asset, this inheritance, may be
critical.
Not having it, may spell disaster and
death.
For how much a person may pose differently facing one same feeling, between knowing how you yourself did and not knowing it at all, spreads a gulf of differences that is immense and much more telling than the differences that can spread between what separates you and your opponent.
If you don't have this cognition, don't ever venture into a street fight - the fact you don't have these notions, that you don't even suspect how much telling the eyes of your adversary can be and that boxers who watch each other in the face for 15 rounds are not doing that because they are "falling in love" with each others, is
not one reason less in order not to venture in a street fight where they may (I quote) «
pull a knife or try and club you with a bottle, if he's going to kick you or grab you, bite you or eye gouge you»: it is indeed one reason
more in order
not to venture there!
Don't push your luck my friends!
For if you don't know this eye thing, and you don't know that you must know the possibile combinations enough to
anticipate them, you're pushing your luck even if your fleeting successes in a couple of brawls my be hiding from you this critical factor.
My friends, you are
playing with fire! You
worry me!
No later than a few days ago we had in this forum a recount of a person who nearly
killed someone in a street fight! With
one punch, one of those things I warn against and that some deem not so dangerous after all. I have seen plenty of kids in their first boxing months feeling exhalted searching for troubles - we had our special way to fix that, for
their own good.
And we read every day of guys dead after a punch, on newspapers.
My friends, don't go in any street fight, don't help damsels in alleged distress because you feel chivalrous. It's a dangerous business.
Quote:
Geoff Byers wrote:
My personal impressions of watching a fight mean absolutely nothing. I could watch it on two different days and come to two totally different conclusions depending upon what I ate for lunch. Human observations cannot be trusted, we are renowned for being subjective. We see things not as they are, but as we are.
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I think in the video it is clear (ar at least this was my hope) that when people who are competent fighters (I deem Hagler one, and Mugabi was as much as him), they watch each other
right in the face, squarely. You never see anybody "watching hands" in orer to know "how he's beginning". That was meant to illustrate that point. .