Parrying vs. Boxers

[DeusTrismegistus]

I have found that gloves make a huge difference for me. We normally spar with small gloves. When I put on bigger boxing gloves the lower amount of hand control and extra bulkiness of the gloves makes parrying much more difficult. I personally chalk that up to not being used to the equipment. One of my teachers black belts had trained in boxing since childhood and his punches can be very difficult to parry, but he is a lot better than me. One thing we have really been working on is footwork while blocking and it has really helped being able to parry string committed punches of any kind. Also the specific angles you use to parry are important as well as economy of motion. A parry only needs to be large enough to move the strike off you body line, this can be a very small movement. Hooking punches can be very hard to parry but so can swinging motions like ridge-hands and knife-hands.

[I am...]

Lost my last post, so I will try again:

Working out with sport fighters of any discipline can be a great educational experience IMHO. Some rules of thumb I use personally are:

Defense or parry should take the same amount of time or less than the amount of time it takes to launch the attack.
The persons body/core is the target, not just their hands, feet, etc.
Defense only is a losing game without counters.
At worst you should have an active defense, at best, your offense should simultaneously be your defense.

The evasion skills of some boxers are also incredible, although kicks/leg work can shut some of them down if used correctly. Boxing and most sport arts are also sciences.

[ashe]

i've fought full contact with both 16oz. gloves and 4oz. gloves and in both case i could use sticky hand skills just fine (appropriate to my skill level).

the problem with just parrying is you're essentially just controlling the hands, which is no good unless the other guy is low level. you have to exert some pressure on the opponents mass in combination with your attempts at controlling his hands fin order to be very effective.

[Bhassler]

I pretty much know that I'm slow with poor hand-eye coordination, so blocking anything is more or less suicide as far as I'm concerned. Last time I sparred a boxer/kickboxer I just figured I better move in close no matter what. I ate a few punches on the way, but I got there (at which point I didn't know what to do since it was punch and kick only and I didn't have room/skill to punch much at that range and couldn't elbow or throw the guy). My takeaway was that the strategery was good, but against a guy with heavy hands and bad intent I probably couldn't hang around long enough to make it work with my current skill level.

[Andy_S]

I parry only against jabs and crosses. If you misstime the parry on a hook, you get hammered - best, IMHO, to go forward/in. Against an uppercut (which you can't really see coming as it is fired from so close) you need to use proximity and sensitivity to turn and/or cover.

Strategy? What BHassler says: Get in to clinch range immediately, use knees and throw. One you have "hands on" above his elbows, you have control (at least, temporarily). The problem is how do you get in? It is all very well saying "I ate a few hits on the way in" but if you are a lightweight and your opponent is a heavyweight, one or two hits can do a lot more damage than simply putting you to sleep. If you have ever held a bag for a heavyweight boxer, the power is murderous (I am 75 kgs). Weight divisions are there for a reason.

Boxing was arguably a very, very significant influence on CMA in the 20th century. I don't know if the Chinese thought it mystical, but I can see why they might have: The footwork and the bobbing and weaving, not to mention the fact that they had training regimens (bag and padwork) which lead directly to fighting skills which could be learned in weeks rather than years. And no forms, no "qi" no secrets! Independently, in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, CMA schools have adopted boxing gloves for sparring, and also boxing training methods. Boxing was also taught as part of the curriculum at the Nanjing institute, and there is a theory (which I don't personally have an opinion on) that Wing Chun was created in response to Western boxing. According to an in-depth thread on EF, boxing was also the foundation of sanda; the latter grew out of China's ambitions in Olympic boxing.

[C.J.Wang]

I don't think that parrying against a boxer is a good idea. Boxers expect their opponents to parry or dodge, so it is a tactic that they are familiar in dealing with. Instead, try Xinyi's heavy arm approach and use structure to connect and stick. Once you've made an opening, take it and go through rather than hit and retract.

[klonk]

One way to approach the question is ask, how does a boxer fight a boxer? There is very little parrying, defense is mainly by getting out of the way and launching couhter-attacks. The idea is to take the initiative.

In my (very) humble opinion, the closed-up boxing guard is mainly insurance. The main defense is being on the other foot when he swings.

[ashe]

Boxing was arguably a very, very significant influence on CMA in the 20th century. I don't know if the Chinese thought it mystical, but I can see why they might have: The footwork and the bobbing and weaving, not to mention the fact that they had training regimens (bag and padwork) which lead directly to fighting skills which could be learned in weeks rather than years.

except that even western boxing didn't really have any of that in the late 1800's. just watching the old video of matches from the 20's shows a style much closer to CMA than the boxing of today.

[klonk]

I don't think that parrying against a boxer is a good idea. Boxers expect their opponents to parry or dodge, so it is a tactic that they are familiar in dealing with. Instead, try Xinyi's heavy arm approach and use structure to connect and stick. Once you've made an opening, take it and go through rather than hit and retract.

That's interesting. One consequence of the close guard of boxers is to deny the opponent the use of your arms--to avoid entanglements of the kind dear to the hearts of all CMA fighters. Can the stick-adhere, entanglement approach be forced on a Western style boxer?

[velalavela]

Regards boxing and its influence on CMA.

Until gloves were used bare knuckle fights mainly featured body blows. hence the old photos show boxers with the arms in low guard not seen in modern boxing. Bouts would go for ages until one boxer could not handle it anymore.

Once gloves came in the game changed and started to feature head attacks as you could get a knockout more easily with the added weight of the glove.

So gloves have made a big difference in tactics and methods.

Interesting thing is there were very few deaths under bare knuckle rules, but with the advent of gloves has come the risk of bad head injuries leading to some deaths over the years. Many long term boxers have experienced some form of brain damage.

Shame, as it is a great sport. BTW any one seen the Ali/Forman movie 'When we were kings'....a fantastic movie.

[Andy_S]

Ashe:

Granted, old English boxing used much more in the way of body shots (as well as throws and in some fights, low kicks) but the training regimens of some of the boxers of the Regency era (late 18th-early 19th century - Mendoza, Cribb et al) included various forms of bobbing and weaving, as well as bagwork. And footwork was long known as a key component of boxing.

As for the padded fists: Marquis of Queensbury mandated gloves over bare knuckles and this was keenly adopted, but even before those rules came into effect, heavily padded gloves ("mauleys") were used in training, and are visible in boxing training prints from the day.

Bear in mind also that Western penetration of China did not really take place until the late 19th century; prior to then, interaaction was pretty much limited to the treaty ports. So most of the boxing that would have been seen by the Chinese as the Western popoulations of places like Shanghai and Hong Kong bloomed in the early 20th century would have the "modern" variety.

Velavela:

Indeed, once gloves came into play there was much more punching upstairs, though I think it was the ability to hit harder, with less risk of injury than the weight of the handwrap and glove itself. "When We Were Kings is terrifc," moving even.

[velalavela]

Yep you are right there....before gloves, a hit to the face could easily break hand bones of the attacker so people could not do it/hit so hard in bouts....

[BruceP]

before gloves, a hit to the face could easily break hand bones of the attacker so people could not do it/hit so hard in bouts....

That's why passive structure and sliding blocks are the way to go. Strong, simple and effective, and can be learned in very short order.

[Chris McKinley]

Thanks for all the replies, guys.

Walk the Torque,

RE: " I prefer to use drilling/wedging/glancing type movements against people who can box. Anything where I can extend, penertrate or smother.". That isn't an either/or choice. Remember, I started the thread by asking about parrying entries, not just parries. In the arts I specifically mentioned, the parry is what opens the door for your entry, which can and often does includes lots of drilling/wedging/glancing type movements to follow. Your point about trying to parry open-hand attacks is a good one. Open-hand attacks are much faster and are damned, bloody hard to parry in terms of timing.

bigphatwong describes a method based on structure to overcome multiple close-range punches. This kind of thing is what I've found you pretty much have to do if you are forced to stay close. Boxers themselves do it, albeit with a slightly different structure, but they rely on structure to protect them. This is also where any parries, if still applicable, must be very small like CaliG described. bigphatwong also mentioned a classic case of learning to fight a mannequin from long range. Kenpo is painfully guilty of that sometimes, just as is Aikido and many Karate styles.

To paraphrase MC Hawking, it's easy to look like the f*cking Quake Master of parries when your opponent is fighting you from 3 feet away, has no footwork at all, and constantly attempts long-range head shots that he just leaves hanging there if they don't connect.

Dmitri's point of not playing the other man's game is taken, but keep in mind that parries (which do work when used properly) are designed to be used against punches and other standup attacks, not against grappling maneuvers. If they are to work at all, they must be used against exactly the kind of thing a boxer would do, not a grappler.

To be fair, against Jake's amateur heavyweight roommate, it might not matter a whole lot what you tried against him, so including him as a reference to prove some kind of point in this thread isn't really useful either way.

Shooter's reference to "sliding blocks" sounds an awful lot like the kind of followup entry movements that often follow good parries, and also like the kind of movement I've found necessary against boxers as well.

dragontigerpalm,

RE: "While I love boxing and definitely can see the benefit to training by going up against a boxer because of his different fighting style, I don't see a significant difference in learning to be gained by doing so as opposed to going up against any fighter of approximately equal skill whose art is different than one's own.". I certainly do. In fact, the reason I specifically chose boxers (as opposed to Hung Gar, Wing Chun, Karate, TKD, Shaolin, IMA, etc.) is because their mechanics are particularly and especially difficult to correctly apply parrying entries to, compared to most other styles, systems and approaches. The curve of going from efficiency to effectiveness is particularly steep against boxing mechanics.

[Chris McKinley]

DeusTrismegistus's point about hooks and wide, swinging attacks like ridgehands being especially hard to parry is worth noting. In fact, note that the factor they have in common is a circular or elliptical trajectory which imparts a much greater lateral stability to their structure. Parries only work against structures which have little relative lateral stability; that's simple physics. To deal with more horizontally elliptical attacks, you must learn to blend the structure of your parrying limb to become itself more elliptical, such that there is an analog spectrum where your strict parry morphs into a strict blending action. Where along that spectrum your motion should fall changes with each and every punch thrown. For me, this is where Shooter's "passive structure and sliding blocks" come into play, as these represent blending actions if I am understanding him correctly.

I am's point about attacking the core rather than the arms is a good one. When we talk of playing a boxer's game, it isn't really about range, or even about the fact that we're fighting standup vs. standup. It's a matter of standing toe to toe and trying to deal with his hands rather going right for his core/center. The reason you will likely lose against a boxer by "playing his game" is that you are trying to deal with his hands, trying to play a game of catch-up with them. You can't. Action always beats reaction. Even boxers don't try to do this with each other. They don't try to parry or jam each and every punch thrown by the other boxer or they'd quickly lose. Instead, they ride out the flurry of punches...slipping, weaving, using structure and footwork to protect them...until they see an opening to go in and tag their opponent's center with their own punch.

Ashe, klonk and C.J.Wang also speak to this same need to "take the opponent's center from the first motion", to borrow Baguazhang's prime directive.