A Cyclone developing:

His movements are too big..

That's a spot on assessment, but from what i've seen his movements are really only "too big" when he's being pressed. Those same big movements can also paralyze a guy, get him stuck and frustrated....... Once you've got his "respect".......


I watched all the sparring videos, seems to me that majority of them are fought at a thinking man's pace, boxer vs boxer. I like those because you can really pick up a lot of technical details. But since I'm trying to pick up a lot of things from you and your students, I would love to see Mike against pressure fighter/brawler and the way he handles them.

I think a fair amount of what you are seeing as a "thinking mans pace" is due in part to those guys being "familiar" with one another. From what I have seen, when sins guys are sparring one another, it's far more technical than when they are sparring an "outsider". From watching enough of his guys that he's had a fair amount of time to work with, they really do have an almost "signature" style. At this point, if a sparring video is posted I can figure out in about 30 seconds which guy is trained by Sin vs. ? ........... and that's a good thing........ Same can be said for Trainers like Emanuel Steward, watch Chad Dawsons fights when he was with Steward...... you'll clearly see the influence.

Sin trained a guy named "Bandito" (I think?) for a while, may still. That'd of been an interesting sparring match for Mike as he appeared to be a pretty aggressive pressure fighter, with counterfighter tendencies, and he favored his left hip, opposite of what i've seen of Mike's clips.........
 
I love this thread. Mike is very much a fighter after my own heart and style. we execute differently and favor different weapons, but the base attitude is almost Identical. Cheers Mike, and congrats on the progress.
 
Sin trained a guy named "Bandito" (I think?) for a while, may still. That'd of been an interesting sparring match for Mike as he appeared to be a pretty aggressive pressure fighter, with counterfighter tendencies, and he favored his left hip, opposite of what i've seen of Mike's clips.........

Bandito isnt really aggressive. He's a pure counter puncher who was made to be aggressive by the trainers he had before me. I do still train him, but he's a 123lb'er and Mike is a 152lb'er.
 
I meant the other one with Jonathan and the sweet knock down. Still haven't seen it.

Anyway, I mostly hate to watch myself on video, so many things to nitpick about. I have almost come to accept my style will not look pretty. The only positive things I keep hearing about what I do, is that I'm tough and I can hit hard. I've had that from the start, what Sinister helped me with was how to use that ugly style effectively. Posture, Placing shots, distancing, and improved defense (when I'm not being a knucklehead).

It's also worth noting that an injury took me out of sparring for months. I couldn't tell but I got better in that time because it forced me to do more of the stuff I don't like to do. So it turns out you can get better without sparring
 
Mike, it's clear in your sparring sessions that you're still in a transitional phase. I know that you didn't want to accept that you were best cut out for a pressuring, swarming style. So there are times when you hang back and fight like a boxer-puncher, and that's when Daijon has his best moments against you. Other times, you do an excellent job of moving forward and attacking after damn near every defensive movement, and you look much better.

I hope you keep training and improving, because if you can fight like that consistently, you'll be the kind of guy who people are actually afraid to counter.
 
I meant the other one with Jonathan and the sweet knock down. Still haven't seen it.

Anyway, I mostly hate to watch myself on video, so many things to nitpick about. I have almost come to accept my style will not look pretty. The only positive things I keep hearing about what I do, is that I'm tough and I can hit hard. I've had that from the start, what Sinister helped me with was how to use that ugly style effectively. Posture, Placing shots, distancing, and improved defense (when I'm not being a knucklehead).

It's also worth noting that an injury took me out of sparring for months. I couldn't tell but I got better in that time because it forced me to do more of the stuff I don't like to do. So it turns out you can get better without sparring

It depends on how one defines pretty vs. ugly. There's a lot of truly ugly fighters out there (Sakio Bika, Sam Soliman...and they fought each other which was horrible), but you got to a point where you became more tricky than ugly. I don't think Aaron would describe you as a limited brawler who can hit hard, and take it...considering how much he missed you in those first two rounds.

And lol@"stuff I don't like to do." That right there tells the tale.

About the other knockdown session, I'll try to find it for you. It was in a 3-person session I believe, and I have a couple of those with you I hadn't watched. I thought you meant the one where he actually stepped it up himself. But I'll find the other one.

However, on this "ugly" thing...one of my all-time favorite fighters. He's the one who stays upright:

 
I don't typically go in for nationalism or team spirit or anything like that... but I fucking love the fact that Aaron Pryor is from my city.
 
Jonathan IS a pressure fighter, he's just a measured one. How does Mike deal with it? He "talks" him out of simply wading in like he'd do to anyone else.

Aaron is also a pressure fighter. That's the most I'd ever seen Mike HAVE to back up in a session, and fight off the ropes. Mike got Aaron to slow down by making him miss a lot. Pressure fighters get bamboozled when they can't just reach out and touch a fella.

I watched Mike-Aaron session 5-6 times in last two days. It seems to me that Aaron is a boxer primarily, more pressure oriented maybe, but he builds his pressure on his jab and won't charge in if he sees that his jab isn't landing.
But anyway, back to the Mike. I watched him closely, because I realized I can learn from him. It looked to me that Mike had advantage every time he was throwing first, especially when going to the body. Those 'feint to the head-jab to the body', and 'feint to the head-right to the body' combos were really effective.
Other thing I noticed is that in the first two rounds Mike used his lead hip mostly defensively. In the third round he started to turn it into offense. My favorite moments were 7:27 when mike rotates from rear to front hip and hooks to the body, and 7:58 when he dips down to the rear hip and makes Aaron miss, then rotates to the lead hip and shoots lead hook(with the elbow kept down) to the chin. So that made me think "he should use that lead hip more often, it's so effective". But then also made me think "why the f...k I don't use MY lead hip more often?" It seems that I am trying to add so many new tools to my toolbox that I'm forgetting some of the old ones.
Also nice moment at 4:10 when Mike comes behind the jab and then steps to the right to create angle, and shoots combination from the angle.
Anyway, really nice work Mike, thanks for sharing Sinister, this is great learning material if you put some time to watch and analyze it!
 
Nah, Aaron's not a boxer primarily. He doesn't WANT to hang around on the outside. If you noticed he does his best work when he finally gets close in the later rounds. But his trainer is trying to teach him to establish a jab first. Aaron seems to me to be a reincarnation of Sandy Saddler. Tall, hits hard, can take a drubbing and fight harder, and does his best work close to you (though Saddler was arguably one of the dirtiest of his era).

He also resembles Saddler, similar facial structure and tooth gap.
 
God, I love watching Saddler fight. That's the first MMA fighter right there. That wasn't just boxing what he did to Willie Pep.
 
Bumping this thread because I was going through my sparring vids and came across one that shows Mike's Icelandic twin. Attitude, mentality, style, and primary objectives...all the same. Some of you might recognize him from other threads where I showed him working here, but Bjorn and Mike would have made a very intriguing sparring match:



(Bjorn was stopped due to a cut in the bout.)
 
Know any good examples of pressure fighter vs pressure fighter bouts? I guess Foreman-Cooper comes to mind, but Cooper was too inconsistent to be called a dedicated pressure fighter, and he definitely didn't try to pressure Foreman.
 
It's difficult to think of one where one of the guys didn't end up trying to box. In Diaz/Katsidis, Diaz boxed. In Monzon/Briscoe, Monzon boxed. In Garcia/Matthysse, Garcia boxed. In Hagler/Briscoe, Hagler boxed (no one out-pressured Briscoe). There's very few that were Wars of attrition with neither guy being willing to take a backwards step, so they end up slugging it out in the middle of the ring.

Perhaps Corrales/Castillo...
 
It's difficult to think of one where one of the guys didn't end up trying to box. In Diaz/Katsidis, Diaz boxed. In Monzon/Briscoe, Monzon boxed. In Garcia/Matthysse, Garcia boxed. In Hagler/Briscoe, Hagler boxed (no one out-pressured Briscoe). There's very few that were Wars of attrition with neither guy being willing to take a backwards step, so they end up slugging it out in the middle of the ring.

Perhaps Corrales/Castillo...

Good point. Or Cotto against Margarito Even Matthysse boxed a little against Molina.
 
Mike and Bjorn would look like a car wreck, though.
 
Where is the other one with Jonathan?

Good training was had this past year.

Looks like you had a real good year. It is really solid to see you never relax the guard even when out of immediate threat range.
 
I meant the other one with Jonathan and the sweet knock down. Still haven't seen it.

Anyway, I mostly hate to watch myself on video, so many things to nitpick about. I have almost come to accept my style will not look pretty. The only positive things I keep hearing about what I do, is that I'm tough and I can hit hard. I've had that from the start, what Sinister helped me with was how to use that ugly style effectively. Posture, Placing shots, distancing, and improved defense (when I'm not being a knucklehead).

It's also worth noting that an injury took me out of sparring for months. I couldn't tell but I got better in that time because it forced me to do more of the stuff I don't like to do. So it turns out you can get better without sparring

I would not not call you it ugly ugly. It is really nice to watch, can see the gears turning, gauge and setting distance, opening the target lines. For a technical fight fan, i would call it pretty nice.
 
Mike also had a few physiological issues. He is slightly bow-legged, and pigeon-toed. Also some middle-back weakness that compromised chin positioning. A physical therapist and I put in place a stretching regimen that allowed for better external rotation, making his circular punches harder (as demonstrated above), and strengthened other areas out. But one of the last nagging issues was a foot-spacing thing. Once he felt more comfortable using his hips, his stance W-I-D-E-N-E-D. I always kept his Mauy Thai in-mind. So I needed to refine that a bit, and used an old school method:



Eventually it came time to test Mike with people he had no prior knowledge of. My guys all improved together, but they all knew each other. He and Daijon had a healthy rivalry. But I wanted to put the improvements into effect. Injury had prevented both sparring and fighting for a while. But once we had the chance again, I was very pleased with the results:



It all culminated here. His last sparring session at Tocco's was in-part with an undefeated Pro who had around 30 or 40 Amateur bouts (Daijon goes first, then Mike):



The guy said he was gonna do another, but was done after that round (he'd done two lighter rounds previous to that). The moment where they talk to each other Frank landed a hook and said "you alright man? That one was kinda hard." Mike replied: "It was alright, I guess." After the session I knew a lot of my principals had taken effect when Mike said that the hook was definitely hard, felt hard, but didn't hurt...he said: "because I was in a good position."


The last session of fun between Mike and Daijon. Afterward, Mike told me his intention initially was to psychologically crush Daijon with the old: "hit me all you want, I don't care." In the last 2 rounds, however, he showed the understanding I was looking for of how to get close to the fast guy with the fancy feet:



So as some of you know or have figured out by now, the guy known around here as "Cyclone Mike" is one of my own. Or was, for a year. This thread is to show progress, and appareciation for a good student. Mike basically came to me with the goal of learning to box people's faces off. His most recent experience at the time was in Muay Thai. So of course, I saw a lot of things that needed fixing. This is how Mike looked back then, back when (in my boxing eyes) he was a wee lad full of wonder, who would often say: "I'm not sure this is working right for me"...:



I quickly realized what kind of guy Mike is. He'll box you for a little bit, then get tapped a few times and basically go: "alright, fuck that, we're fighting." So from there, the goal became to allow him to do this with minimal repercussions. Dadi would often say: "most of these kids just need permission to be themselves." The goal was to facilitate smart aggression, to refine the techniques to make them simple and streamlined, and produce optimal results. As some of you saw in the "Fixing the Problems" thread, Mike had an Amateur bout under me. SHOULD have been his first win. You can view that here.. I and everyone else (including his opponent) feel he was robbed. But it let me know where he was at when letting everything go. We had a lot to work on, mainly rhythm, distance control, and the ability to think creatively/listen to adjustments. I recall after the first round, I gave Mike about 35 seconds worth of instructions...all to which he nodded. Then looked right in my eyes and said: "WHAT!?!?" I had to swallow, and calmly sum up in the 10 seconds we had left.

Mike is not lacking for strength, and fitness once he got into shape here. You'll notice a different look of his body from that first video to this one, but here his power can be seen:



But in the above video I'm also specifically working on his distancing. He asks a couple of times if he's too close. And in-terms of optimal results, particularly we worked on the lead-uppercut and a couple of transitions. Making EVERY punch hard, as he had a habit of loading up on just one. Rhythm was also a very big concern, Mike can be an "all in" or "all out" guy. Everything, or nothing at all. In poker, no checks, no raises, either fold or all in. When he first started couldn't hit a double-end bag with a timed 1-1-2 consistently. Much improvement was made:



Much improvement was also made in application. Mike turned into the guy who knocked down pretty much everyone:



Here's a funny one where I told him to go easy on an MMA guy I work with (now) when he was still in the evaluation stage of whether or not I wanted to work with him. Mike was babying Steven, and frustrating him. At one point Steven says "I feel bad for hitting this guy!" So I told Mike to open up a bit in the second round:



But that's a significant improvement. It got to where two things happened. 1) I couldn't let Mike spar with people smaller than he is unless they could REALLY defend themselves well. And 2) he HAD to baby people sometimes.


I'm interested to know what you're after in using a punch shield rather than regular mitts. Is it just a method for working on power with a target that moves more than a heavy bag? And how much does it suck to hold the shield?

Mike also had a few physiological issues. He is slightly bow-legged, and pigeon-toed. Also some middle-back weakness that compromised chin positioning. A physical therapist and I put in place a stretching regimen that allowed for better external rotation, making his circular punches harder (as demonstrated above), and strengthened other areas out. But one of the last nagging issues was a foot-spacing thing. Once he felt more comfortable using his hips, his stance W-I-D-E-N-E-D. I always kept his Mauy Thai in-mind. So I needed to refine that a bit, and used an old school method:



Eventually it came time to test Mike with people he had no prior knowledge of. My guys all improved together, but they all knew each other. He and Daijon had a healthy rivalry. But I wanted to put the improvements into effect. Injury had prevented both sparring and fighting for a while. But once we had the chance again, I was very pleased with the results:



It all culminated here. His last sparring session at Tocco's was in-part with an undefeated Pro who had around 30 or 40 Amateur bouts (Daijon goes first, then Mike):



The guy said he was gonna do another, but was done after that round (he'd done two lighter rounds previous to that). The moment where they talk to each other Frank landed a hook and said "you alright man? That one was kinda hard." Mike replied: "It was alright, I guess." After the session I knew a lot of my principals had taken effect when Mike said that the hook was definitely hard, felt hard, but didn't hurt...he said: "because I was in a good position."


Mike's big improvement is in his ability to hit a guy against the ropes without smothering himself. I remember in all of his old videos he was falling in on every power shot, and giving the guy plenty of chances to get out. Now he's at a much better distance most of the time, and it's hard for Frank to get out of the corner without eating at least one shot for his efforts.

In addition, Mike shows a very educated jab, which I think is a must for any pressure fighter. Frank was trying to bait him into throwing at his head with his hands down, and Mike just casually jabbed him in the belly instead. Good, stiff jabs too, that make you second guess yourself for deciding to stand in front of him.

The one other thing that has improved but still gives Mike occasional problems is his tendency to move his head without advancing, which allows boxer-puncher types like Frank and boxer types like Daijon to tee off on him at range and dance circles around him. Watching Marcos Maidana's improvements has really opened my eyes to the importance of forward and angular movement during head movement. Every slip or roll is an opportunity to move towards the opponent and start corralling him into the corners or against the ropes. Like I said, Mike does this well when he does it, but occasionally he gets stuck in place by faster combination punchers, which takes away his initiative.

Jonathan IS a pressure fighter, he's just a measured one. How does Mike deal with it? He "talks" him out of simply wading in like he'd do to anyone else.

Aaron is also a pressure fighter. That's the most I'd ever seen Mike HAVE to back up in a session, and fight off the ropes. Mike got Aaron to slow down by making him miss a lot. Pressure fighters get bamboozled when they can't just reach out and touch a fella.

This stings because it's true.
 
I'm interested to know what you're after in using a punch shield rather than regular mitts. Is it just a method for working on power with a target that moves more than a heavy bag? And how much does it suck to hold the shield?

Mike's big improvement is in his ability to hit a guy against the ropes without smothering himself. I remember in all of his old videos he was falling in on every power shot, and giving the guy plenty of chances to get out. Now he's at a much better distance most of the time, and it's hard for Frank to get out of the corner without eating at least one shot for his efforts.

In addition, Mike shows a very educated jab, which I think is a must for any pressure fighter. Frank was trying to bait him into throwing at his head with his hands down, and Mike just casually jabbed him in the belly instead. Good, stiff jabs too, that make you second guess yourself for deciding to stand in front of him.

The one other thing that has improved but still gives Mike occasional problems is his tendency to move his head without advancing, which allows boxer-puncher types like Frank and boxer types like Daijon to tee off on him at range and dance circles around him. Watching Marcos Maidana's improvements has really opened my eyes to the importance of forward and angular movement during head movement. Every slip or roll is an opportunity to move towards the opponent and start corralling him into the corners or against the ropes. Like I said, Mike does this well when he does it, but occasionally he gets stuck in place by faster combination punchers, which takes away his initiative.



This stings because it's true.

The punch shield is about weight transfer BETWEEN power-punches, and the resistance of a human body. One that feels very heavy, but can be moved. If you notice that's what I'm correcting with Mike. One punch is good, so must the next.

And yes, he got WORLDS better with measuring distance, and there was still a lot of room to go. But the concepts were ingrained and by the end he was very conscious of them. So that's great.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and it sucks immensely to hold the shield. Even when you know how. I usually end up with a few bruises.
 
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