10 things no one tells you before you become a professional boxer

[Hi-Tech]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/acti...u-before-you-become-a-professional-boxer.html

I found this article today. Nice read.

 

[Marc A]

Great article I love his comment on granite chin lol

 

[mcveteran81]

Definitely insightful. The running doesn't surprise me in the least.

Oddly enough, getting your hands wrapped for 45mins was the only thing that I found unusual. Of course I no pro and never will be, but I used to wrap my hands in roughly 10mins. I could t imagine doing that for another 35mins.

 

[Pugilistic]

Definitely insightful. The running doesn't surprise me in the least.

Oddly enough, getting your hands wrapped for 45mins was the only thing that I found unusual. Of course I no pro and never will be, but I used to wrap my hands in roughly 10mins. I could t imagine doing that for another 35mins.

That is odd. I'm a pro and maybe it's different for guys who are preparing for world class 12 round fights, but my trainer never took that long to wrap my hands for a fight. We had a 12-round fighter at our gym before and I don't think it took him that long either.

 

[mma sharingan]

Pretty insightful and came of abit egotistical. 7/10.

 

[Social Distance Warrior]

Good read...thanks for sharing.

 

[Valhoven]

@Hi-Tech

Interesting. Thanks for sharing, mate. Reckon the Grow a Thick Skin advice on how to behave publicly when taunted is something that shouldn't be skimmed over.

 

[Hi-Tech]

That is odd. I'm a pro and maybe it's different for guys who are preparing for world class 12 round fights, but my trainer never took that long to wrap my hands for a fight. We had a 12-round fighter at our gym before and I don't think it took him that long either.

Some people have more durable hands and some people don't. You have boxers who routinely damage their hands during fights and you have boxers who never have these issues. I guess Froch has had many hand injuries and needs to be more careful than others. Also, he probably trained more than you and had more wear and tear on his body, considering the level he boxed at.

Another thing is that these elite millionaire professionals like him have time to kill and can do things like that just to be more safe. Cro Cop once said his warming up sessions last for eternity so his body is really prepared for training. I can't imagine myself wasting 45 minutes of my day before every training just to wrap my hands lol.

 

[Hi-Tech]

As for Froch's claims about iron chin, even that won't save him if he ever fights GGG at 168. He's lucky his wife doesn't let him box anymore.

 

[treelo]

As for Froch's claims about iron chin, even that won't save him if he ever fights GGG at 168. He's lucky his wife doesn't let him box anymore.

what a stupid comment

not only is Froch retired, he is known as one of the toughest fighters from the last decade, and has stood and banged with some decent punchers

i'm not even a fan of his, but he would maul GGG if they ever did fight, and i do believe he was game at one point

 

[Hi-Tech]

what a stupid comment

not only is Froch retired, he is known as one of the toughest fighters from the last decade, and has stood and banged with some decent punchers

i'm not even a fan of his, but he would maul GGG if they ever did fight, and i do believe he was game at one point

Froch is the one who is constantly talking about GGG to stay relevant.

GGG would break him mentally and physically and deck him eventually. Froch is the kind of guy GGG loves to fight.

 

[treelo]

Froch is the one who is constantly talking about GGG to stay relevant.

GGG would break him mentally and physically and deck him eventually. Froch is the kind of guy GGG loves to fight.

yeah, Froch was known to fall to pieces when the going got tough, are you usually an asshole?

 

[Hi-Tech]

yeah, Froch was known to fall to pieces when the going got tough, are you usually an asshole?

He never faced a hard hitting ATG like GGG before. No one from 154-168 goes 12 rounds with GGG.

 

[Shoemaker]

He never faced a hard hitting ATG like GGG before. No one from 154-168 goes 12 rounds with GGG.

Golovkin is a hell of a fighter, but he's got a long way to go before being called an all time great. And because I know it'll come up - so does Canelo.

 

[mozfonky]

Some people have more durable hands and some people don't. You have boxers who routinely damage their hands during fights and you have boxers who never have these issues. I guess Froch has had many hand injuries and needs to be more careful than others. Also, he probably trained more than you and had more wear and tear on his body, considering the level he boxed at.

Another thing is that these elite millionaire professionals like him have time to kill and can do things like that just to be more safe. Cro Cop once said his warming up sessions last for eternity so his body is really prepared for training. I can't imagine myself wasting 45 minutes of my day before every training just to wrap my hands lol.

ya, that is odd, i hit pretty hard and i can't see any reason to spend more than a minute or two to put on hand wraps. If you've been doing it for long enough your body should be adjusted to the shock of hitting a bag, sparring is different and harder on hands of course but i don't get what you would do that would make handwrapping take that long. I know that it's different for a real fight and that hands are wrapped more carefully but even for a fight, 45 minutes seems long. I remember when Alexis Arguello was fighting Billy costello, Alexis was a rare fighter who wrapped his own hands. a common ploy to get into a fighters head with all the prefight nerves is to complain about handwraps and make them wrap them again, this is what happened in that fight, Alexis, usually calm and composed was livid and insulted that someone would insinuate that he would do something underhanded. He wrapped his hands again, fight was shown live, I don't think it was delayed more than 10-15 minutes. Froch sounds a little full of himself really, I've never even seen him fight I don't think.

 

[mozfonky]

also, i don't think his running times are all that exceptional for a boxer. and no, running isn't generally as much as what he's saying. I think floyd patterson cautioned against running too much in his instructional book, saying he thought more was better and ended up in bed once from running too much when he should have been training. I was told when I was young, 7 minute miles are what you shoot for but really, I agree with Joe Frazier who said it really doesn't matter, even 11 minute miles are fine. I agree with that. How often do we see footage of boxers really tearing it up in roadwork? rarely. Usually they are jogging, I wouldn't even call it running most of the time.

 

[Hi-Tech]

ya, that is odd, i hit pretty hard and i can't see any reason to spend more than a minute or two to put on hand wraps. If you've been doing it for long enough your body should be adjusted to the shock of hitting a bag, sparring is different and harder on hands of course but i don't get what you would do that would make handwrapping take that long. I know that it's different for a real fight and that hands are wrapped more carefully but even for a fight, 45 minutes seems long. I remember when Alexis Arguello was fighting Billy costello, Alexis was a rare fighter who wrapped his own hands. a common ploy to get into a fighters head with all the prefight nerves is to complain about handwraps and make them wrap them again, this is what happened in that fight, Alexis, usually calm and composed was livid and insulted that someone would insinuate that he would do something underhanded. He wrapped his hands again, fight was shown live, I don't think it was delayed more than 10-15 minutes. Froch sounds a little full of himself really, I've never even seen him fight I don't think.

I think that if you have previous hand injuries you need to be more careful. One of my former training partners damaged his knuckles in a street fight and was never the same again, he had constant problems and pain.

The amount of training elite professional fighters go really causes a lot of wear and tear.

 

[mozfonky]

I'm aware of that, I had hand problems but I can't really see what 45 minutes is gonna do to help that. Ali had severe hand problems and did a lot of extreme things to counter them, i've heard he didn't even hit the bag for long stretches in his first reign as champion. I think they even used tampons on his hands in the 70's for fights, and shot novocaine into his hands. For me, my hands hurt from both training and hitting skulls in streetfights. I don't know, sometimes i wonder why the old timers weren't plagued by hand troubles, Dempsey, Johnson and Louis seemed to do ok even though the gloves were smaller. they say that body punching was more common in earlier times, still, you'd think that dempsey would have busted his hands somewhere along with all those kayoes, maybe the hands were conditioned better then. For me, what i hated more than anything was shaking hands with fuckers who felt they had to crush the shit out of your hands to come across as a man, that bothered me more than hitting the bag.

 

[Hi-Tech]

I'm aware of that, I had hand problems but I can't really see what 45 minutes is gonna do to help that. Ali had severe hand problems and did a lot of extreme things to counter them, i've heard he didn't even hit the bag for long stretches in his first reign as champion. I think they even used tampons on his hands in the 70's for fights, and shot novocaine into his hands. For me, my hands hurt from both training and hitting skulls in streetfights. I don't know, sometimes i wonder why the old timers weren't plagued by hand troubles, Dempsey, Johnson and Louis seemed to do ok even though the gloves were smaller. they say that body punching was more common in earlier times, still, you'd think that dempsey would have busted his hands somewhere along with all those kayoes, maybe the hands were conditioned better then. For me, what i hated more than anything was shaking hands with fuckers who felt they had to crush the shit out of your hands to come across as a man, that bothered me more than hitting the bag.

I think the old timers didn't have that much protection for the hands, the gloves were different back then or something, so they needed to be more careful when punching. I heard bare knuckle fighters and certain karate guys are also well conditioned and wouldn't break their hands easily because they don't load up on every punch and watch how they place their wrist and all that because they're used to fighting that way. Remember Machida hitting the heavy bag bare handed and I think Gunnar Nelson (who is from karate background too) saying that he doesn't need wraps or something like that.

Boxing gloves let you get away with a lot of things and you can develop some bad habits. I think a lot of hand damage comes when you're tired and you're just throwing flurries without enough concentration whether it's the heavy bag or sparring or actual fight, you can easily say bend the wrist the wrong way and load up the punch too much which can lead to damage. Modern boxers punch really hard because for the most time you get away with it because of the big gloves and all the padding, but once you damage something it will only get worse and worse.

EDIT: Look at how Machida bare knuckle punches here with vertical fist, from what I read the old school boxers used to throw straight punches with vertical fists a lot too. It's better for hands but it doesn't create as much power as the corkscrew motion horizontal straight punches that are the preferred technique today.



(timestamp)

 

[mozfonky]

i really wonder about it, i asked my mentor about it one time, is it possible to condition your hands, and mentioned the iron palms training and so on. he said something that i think is basically true. that with the way the hand is configured that it's not really possible to make it so there isn't a big risk of breaking your hand. of course, if you have a static object, you can pretty much land the way you want but the human head is both hard, not consistently shaped and is probably going to be moving too, all of those make it seem impossible not to have hand problems. my hands haven't bothered me in years but I don't spar anymore and when i hit the bag, i always wear protection. the only thing i can say happens when i take long breaks from training is that my wrist buckles when i start back, but that's why i have the wraps and usually that stops after only a few training sessions. i must say though, that my right hand doesn't seem as facile as a pianist as it was when i was in my twenties, especially between my middle and ring fingers.