Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Championship Street Fighting
Championship Street Fighting
STREETFIGHTING
Boxing as a Martial Art
Ned Beaumont
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CHAMPIONSHIP
STREETFIGHTING
Boxing as a Martial Art
Ned Beaumont
V
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
VI
WARNING
VII
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CHAPTER ONE
WHY BOXING?
1
his hands or suffers damage to the head more serious than a
trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth and some
mussed-up hair.
The movie brawl is meant to entertain. And it does
entertain, especially in Wayne films (nobody beats The
Duke, even today). Movie brawls don’t represent bloody
reality, however.
So now you know the kind of fights we’re dealing with
in this book. We’re dealing with the real thing. And in every real
fight, win, lose, or draw, in which I’ve participated or
watched, the issue was decided by a punch, usually a punch to
the head.
In other words, in genuine fights in bars, alleys, and oth-
erwise unsupervised areas, the winner fought like a boxer. He
used hard punches to put the loser on the ground. He used
boxing skills in hand-to-hand combat.
Nevertheless, nowadays, when the average American
interested in developing hand-to-hand combat skills thinks of
a fighting system, he automatically thinks of everything
other than boxing. He may consider Japanese karate,
Chinese kung fu, or Korean taekwon do. But he almost
always thinks of some Oriental system of bare-handed com-
bat instead of good ol’ American boxing.
Such wasn’t always the case.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
2
30 pounds heavier. (Such tales made it easier to nuke or
napalm the Japanese into submission, rather than fight him
at close quarters.) The mythical Japanese used jujutsu or
judo, so those were the styles Americans took to studying.
Look at military, police, and civilian self-defense manu-
als from the 1940s and 1950s, and you’ll notice that nine-
tenths of them teach a style labeled “combat judo,” “modified
jujutsu,” or some similar concoction. Whatever the precise
name, it always contained the magic word “jujutsu” or
“judo.” Such names were even used when the system taught
hadn’t the slightest resemblance to genuine Japanese styles.
The names were enough to sell to the public. James Bond
and Johnny Quest’s bodyguard, Race Bannon, both used
judo because judo was the hip thing to know.
Karate remained something mysterious in the United
States well into the 1960s. Oddjob, of course, used karate
in Goldfinger (not to mention that dastardly bolo), but most
of both the bad guys and good guys in the movies stuck to
more mundane methods of fighting. Karate was still a spe-
cial trick: when Muhammad Ali wanted to add an aura to
the punch with which he knocked out Sonny Liston in
their second fight, Ali called it a “karate punch” (really it
was just a well-timed straight right). Karate was still some-
thing exotic, but it was gaining on boxing in the popular
press and our imaginations.
The kung-fu craze of the early 1970s sealed the domi-
nance of Oriental martial arts over boxing in the public’s
mind. The Kung Fu TV show and all those Bruce Lee movies
spurred on a horde of lesser imitators (think of Billy Jack or,
better yet, don’t). Now, any action hero worth his salt is
more likely to launch a spinning round kick than he is to
throw a one-two combination.
But in real life, boxing still works, and it works better
than most Asian martial arts. And it has worked well in the
West for 200 years or more. Until well after World War II,
WHY BOXING?
3
boxing was what Americans studied when they wanted to
learn about unarmed combat.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
4
heavy armor obsolete, they also made battle-axes, morning
stars, and similar heavy, hand-carried weapons less desirable.
What was needed were a fast and light sword and an efficient
way to fight with it. Thus was born modern fencing; that is,
swordfighting based not on the hack-and-slash tactics of a man
in armor, but rather on speed, footwork, and, above all, the
straight lunge. From fencers, fistfighters in the West learned to
throw straight punches—the basis of modern boxing.
James Figg, an 18th-century Englishman, is usually con-
sidered to have been the first heavyweight boxing champion
and the father of modern boxing. Figg developed the funda-
mentals of effective fistfighting: straight punches that land
with bone-breaking force and the skills of slipping and
blocking necessary to defend against those punches.
Figg fought not only in the prize ring for sport and
money, but also in the streets for survival. His techniques of
fist fighting were as applicable in hand-to-hand combat as
they were between the ropes. It was no accident, then, that
James Figg was a master of many forms of combat. He
taught fencing, the broadsword, and the quarterstaff in addi-
tion to boxing.
London in the mid-1700s was a big, booming interna-
tional port, and there were no such things as policemen. It
could be a dangerous place for those who didn’t know how
to defend themselves. Figg realized that we don’t always have
a weapon on hand, and sometimes we must fight unarmed.
Therefore he developed boxing as an effective means of
streetfighting without weapons. Figg made a good living by
teaching English gentlemen how to defend themselves
against ruffians and riffraff by means of knockout punches.
From those beginnings under James Figg, boxing grew
more and more popular, both as a sport and a practical
means of self-defense. In England and America, it always
used to be that when someone “knew how to fight,” that
meant that he knew how to box.
WHY BOXING?
5
Real men in real fights used the skills they had devel-
oped in the ring to survive in hand-to-hand combat. For
example, Sir Richard Francis Burton, the 19th-century
explorer, used his fists as well as his sword and guns in the
course of his many adventures on four continents.
Another example of boxing used in self-defense involves
“The Rough Rider,” Theodore Roosevelt. Before he became
president, TR was a sheriff in the Dakota cow country. Of
course, Roosevelt knew how to use a gun or a big stick to
enforce order. But he also knew how to box when weapons
weren’t suitable. Roosevelt had, in fact, been the lightweight
champion of Harvard during his college years. (Harvard, per-
haps, didn’t offer the stiffest competition; but no doubt it
was stiffer competition than that found in the average
American strip-mall dojo of today.) When a drunken cowboy
drew a revolver on TR, the future president reacted instant-
ly with a jab-right combination that put the cowboy down
and out. It’s a shame that we don’t make presidents out of
men of such mettle anymore.
Boxing skills remain every bit as practical and useful in
modern America. In a genuine balls-to-the-wall bar fight or
street brawl, it’s still fair to say that boxing is the best prepa-
ration for the following reasons.
BOXING IS COMBAT
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
6
prepare their practitioners for combat. But do they really?
Not in my experience. Instead, most schools of martial arts
have a pronounced tendency to emphasize the art instead of
the martial.
Of course, that’s not a problem if you’re someone look-
ing for a method of physical and mental conditioning, a way
to develop self-discipline, or just a worthwhile hobby. All of
the Asian martial arts—judo, karate, kung fu, and the rest—
can provide these things in ways that boxing may not.
Boxing, for example, is a (relatively) young man’s activity;
look at elderly people practicing tai-chi in the park and then
try to think of the last time you saw an old lady pounding the
heavy bag down at the local gym.
Martial arts certainly have their uses, but they also have
their limitations, especially as training for a streetfight. Thugs
don’t care if your kata is top-notch, so you’re liable to get hurt.
If what you seek from hand-to-hand combat training is
the ability to beat an opponent into a bloody pulp, however,
then boxing offers the most effective means by which to
meet your goal.
However, boxing isn’t the only way to learn to fight
effectively. The combative techniques of the Biddle-
Fairbairn-Applegate school, for example, are battle-tested.
The chin jab that strikes like a knockout punch, the edge of
the hand to crush the windpipe, and the low kick that snaps
a knee all work. Such techniques are also lethal. Additionally,
it’s hard for most of us to acquire much practice with tech-
niques that kill or at least maim every time they’re used. I’ve
never known a sparring partner willing to let me kill him,
and, mean as I can be, I wouldn’t want to kill my sparring
partners. Not everyone has had such qualms, however. The
ancient Chinese kung fu masters (who definitely emphasized
the martial more than the art) are said to have practiced their
killing blows on unarmed peasants (those unarmed peasants
seem to have taken abuse from everyone). In a similar blood-
WHY BOXING?
7
thirsty vein, Soviet Spetznaz commandos used to practice
hand-to-hand fighting on prisoners from the gulag (but, of
course, their successors don’t do that now; the Russians are
our friends, after all).
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not kill people
for practice. Thus, while I have learned and will use the
ways of killing taught by Fairbairn et al., I suggest that the
smartest path is to combine those commando skills with box-
ing skills. You’ll be better prepared for a real streetfight, and
you’ll only kill if you have to.
Unlike commando fighting, boxing offers a form of
practical and effective but survivable combat. Boxing also
gets you in the kind of physical condition most self-defense
training doesn’t. Conditioning can be the difference between
death and survival. A serious streetfight is, in my experience,
likely to last anywhere from a fraction of a second (the time
it takes to land one good sucker punch) to 30 seconds, and a
half-minute streetfight is an extremely long one (some may
go longer, but they’re rare).
So if the fight’s so short, why is conditioning so impor-
tant?
First of all, there is the possibility that the fight may go
longer, and streetfights, like war, are “the province of uncer-
tainty”: What can go wrong will go wrong, so be a Boy Scout
and “be prepared” by keeping in condition.
Second, strength drains away by the second in a real
fight. The combination of surprise and danger that charac-
terizes so many streetfights saps a man’s strength to a degree
much more rapidly than anyone who hasn’t been in such a
fight can understand. The man who regularly practices three
hard rounds in the ring is about as well-prepared to survive
one to 30 seconds of serious hand-to-hand combat on the
street as he can possibly be.
And don’t doubt for a moment that boxing is combat.
Simply watching professional fights on a regular basis should
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
8
convince any skeptic that boxers are frequently fighting for
their lives. Despite rules, referees, and all the other controls
designed to prevent death in the ring, every year trained pro-
fessional fighters are killed by punches from other pros.
How would those punches work against the average bar
brawler? How about against the typical black belt graduated
from a suburban, storefront karate school?
Fortunately for both boxers and boxing fans, death
under the controlled conditions of the ring is rare. Serious
physical damage is another matter. Broken jaws, smashed
noses, cuts, and concussions are everyday things for boxers.
Experienced fighters think next to nothing of pain and injury.
Can you say the same for most martial artists in
America? Boxers routinely shrug off the sort of bruises and
bleeding that are reasons for panic at most dojos.
Make no mistake about it: There is no better indicator
of the fact that boxing is combat than the frequency of
injury, often serious injury, among boxers. They learn how to
punch and how to take a punch. Contrast that with the prac-
titioners of most Asian martial arts in the United States.
BOXING IS EFFECTIVE
WHY BOXING?
9
realized what real fighting is all about. Then I wanted noth-
ing more than to learn how to box.
How did boxers convince me that they really knew how
to fight? They simply did what boxers do: They beat up peo-
ple. Boxers show their stuff not by breaking wood, but by
beating the hell out of trained fighters who are simultane-
ously trying to beat the hell out of them. In other words, box-
ers fight people who fight back. That’s real fighting.
Breaking bricks and boards is a nice trick, but tricks
will never be real fighting. Unless you regularly pick fights
with walls, there’s not a lot of practical utility to breaking
boards. As we all learned from Bruce Lee movies, boards
don’t hit back.
Why is boxing so effective? One reason has to do with
bone-breaking power. If nothing else, the boxing skills taught
in Championship Streetfighting will enable you to punch hard.
Any reasonably competent boxer has the kind of punching
power that breaks ribs, smashes noses, and batters oppo-
nents into unconsciousness. Hard punching is the primary
skill for effective fighting in the real world, and that’s what
makes boxing so effective for hand-to-hand combat.
BOXING IS CONTROLLABLE
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
10
Now, that fact may be disappointing news to you
Rambo wanna-bes, but it’s still the truth.
Think about fights in your own life. When your buddy
has had a few too many beers and decides to take on the
world, do you really want to smash the bones in his face as
you give him a concussion? When you’re in a scuffle with
some loudmouth at the corner bar, do you really want to put
him in the hospital for the next six months?
Boxing skills certainly enable you to do all the damage
you desire. So do well-developed skills of karate, kung fu, and
the like. Commando fighting teaches nothing but ways to
maim and kill. Lots of systems can teach you how to inflict
severe physical damage in a fight. Therein lies a problem.
Can you use those deadly techniques on the streets of a
modern American city? Are you willing to snap the knife
edge of your hand into the windpipe of every punk who
wises off to you outside the 7-11? For better or worse, the
sensible person who wants to stay out of jail cannot respond
to every rude remark or push by blinding, emasculating, or
killing the jerk who started things. The problem with relying
on a system of fighting designed solely for killing and maim-
ing is that you must maim or kill, no matter what the situa-
tion. The real world requires greater flexibility.
Flexibility is what makes boxing ideal for streetfights.
Boxing allows for various levels of force, levels appropriate
to almost any situation. If you can box, you’re prepared to
deal with everything from the rare kill-or-be-killed fight to
the much more common punch-out at the corner bar.
In my experience, restraint is more often called for than is
the “Black Death” or the “Poison Hand” (feel free to substitute
whichever deadly martial arts technique you like). In a bar
fight, the best procedure is often the restrained one. (Just jab,
slip, and sidestep, skills that someone without boxing training
invariably lacks until the bouncers break up the battle.)
A well-trained boxer, for example, can fight defensively.
WHY BOXING?
11
As anyone who has stepped into a ring can assure you, box-
ing is not only the art of hitting, it is also the art of not getting
hit. Practice in the sparring ring can enable you to control a
streetfight, spot and avoid blows, and counterpunch with an
appropriate level of force. In the kind of real-world brawl
that you’re liable to end up in, boxing skills allow you to pro-
tect yourself from serious harm, put sufficient hurt on your
opponent, and still avoid killing him.
Some may argue that killing a loudmouth is a good
deed: it’s natural selection at work and improves the gene
pool. I’m often tempted to agree, but then my rational side
asserts itself. In modern America, law-bound and litigious,
control is always best in a streetfight. Unless you’re in a life-
threatening battle, it’s best to avoid the legal and moral com-
plications that can follow the use of deadly and effective—
but inherently uncontrollable—forms of combat that are too
often taught as practical streetfighting.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
12
unarmed inmate over a minor matter. Therefore, Liddy did
not use the killing and maiming techniques he had mastered
as an FBI agent and government spook. Instead, Liddy boxed.
He jabbed and slipped until the guards broke up the fight.
Liddy both defended himself effectively and won the
respect of the other prisoners. Liddy controlled the fight
because of his boxing skills. (That story and plenty of other
good ones may be found in Liddy’s autobiography, Will. If
you haven’t read the book, do so. You won’t be disappointed.)
Even though boxing skills are most often used in a con-
trolled fashion that hurts but doesn’t kill, never forget that
the power punches of a skilled and well-conditioned boxer
can kill. As already noted, boxers die in the ring every year.
Perhaps the potential lethality of a boxer’s punches will
be easier to understand if you consider just how hard some
boxers can hit. The true greats can punch with almost unbe-
lievable power. Roberto Duran, for instance, once kayoed a
horse with a single straight right. And that was when Duran
was only a lightweight. Even ordinary fighters can punch
with killing force, however.
BOXING IS ADAPTABLE
WHY BOXING?
13
Observation and experience have also taught me that
boxing skills are a way to win a streetfight. They are not the
way. Power punches work well on the street, but punches
are not the only effective tools.
Let me tell you about just one of the experiences that
drove home that fact to me. I once trained with a very capa-
ble fighter who taught a “system” that he called simply “mar-
tial arts.” I sparred with his top student, whom I knew I could
take, but I wasn’t so sure about the teacher. He taught an
eclectic mix of several hard styles of Chinese kung fu, tae
kwon do, and boxing. I asked him, “What style do you teach?”
He replied, “Style is bullshit!” Then he went on: “All styles of
fighting teach one or more of the same three things: punches,
kicks, and throws. All of those can work in real fights, espe-
cially if the guy who’s using them is a real fighter.”
(That’s about the best commentary I’ve ever heard on
the question of “style.”)
Despite all my criticism of so many Oriental martial
arts, I’ve seen enough of the good stuff to realize that most
systems of unarmed combat—taekwon do, hapkido, kung fu,
et al.—can sometimes be as effective as boxing in a street-
fight. But I’ll add this caveat: any style can be effective in a real
fight WHEN EMPLOYED BY A TOUGH, FIT, AND KNOWL-
EDGEABLE PRACTITIONER.
In other words, in the real world it’s not so much the
“style” in the fight as the man in the fight. The “best style” won’t
protect a pencil-necked geek against a 300-pound Hell’s Angel.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
14
a meeting of the Olympic Committee in Puerto Rico so that he
could promote tae kwon do as an Olympic sport. As an immi-
gration inspector, it was my job to find out what he was up to.
As soon as I saw the man, I knew I was dealing with a
genuine fighter. He wasn’t young, but he was lean and mus-
cular and so tough-looking that he appeared to have been
carved out of some well-weathered hardwood.
I don’t speak Korean, and his English was not the best.
Nevertheless, the inspection proved to be remarkably easy.
The man’s passport told me his citizenship, so I asked anoth-
er basic question: “What do you do for a living?”
The Korean extended a huge, gnarled fist at the end of
his ropy arm. I saw the swollen tae kwon do knuckles (index
and middle fingers) that were as hard as rocks. We both
laughed. His gesture had answered my question better than
any words could ever have.
Convinced as I was then (and remain today) that the
punches taught in tae kwon do are not as effective as those
of boxing, I knew a true warrior when I saw one. I wouldn’t
have messed with that Korean armed with anything short of
a .357 Magnum, and then I still would have had my doubts.
Throughout Championship Streetfighting, I maintain that
the power punches of a boxer (straight lefts and rights,
hooks, and uppercuts) are the most effective hand-to-hand
blows of any system of unarmed combat. I never claim, how-
ever, that a boxer’s punches are the only effective hand
blows for a streetfight. In fact, boxing as practiced in the
modern ring under the Queensbury rules and its successors
is an incomplete system of unarmed combat. Some street-
fighting situations require grappling and kicking. Pure box-
ing cannot teach those skills.
Don’t think that you’ve bought an incomplete book,
though. Championship Streetfighting teaches techniques that
fill the gaps in boxing and make boxing skills even more suit-
able for combat outside the ring. Read on.
WHY BOXING?
15
“LESSONS FROM THE CHAMPS”
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
16
ed nowadays, such as Jim Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons, and Jim
Jeffries, ruled the ring. Without exception, those men were
cagey power punchers, and every one of them would have
been deadly in a streetfight. Learn their lessons well.
WHY BOXING?
17
To my mind, the best illustration of the adaptability of
boxing to Asian fighting arts is Bruce Lee’s jeet kune do. Lee
was a true “man in the fight” fully comparable in prowess to
the great champions of the prize ring who are used as exam-
ples throughout Championship Streetfighting. Lee took tech-
niques from many systems of unarmed combat, his only
qualification being that the techniques must work in a real
streetfight. Study carefully the punching methods taught in
jeet kune do and you’ll see that they are precisely the power
punches of modern boxing (as Lee himself admitted).
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
18
hand, deserved his name and his reputation; he weighed 450
pounds and had wrists as big around as an adult male goril-
la’s. Trained attack dogs turned tail and ran at the sight of
him (having seen The Giant up close and personal, I can tell
you that the dogs were smart; he was scary). Wepner stood
no more of a chance against Andre the Giant than he would
have against a grizzly bear.
Other fights were simply (or deliberately) misreported.
The most notorious example of a misreported match is the one
that took place between Bob Fitzsimmons, then the leading con-
tender for the heavyweight boxing championship (although he
weighed only 165 pounds) and Ernest Roeber, American heavy-
weight wrestling champion. The two fought at Carson City,
Nevada, in 1897. As usually reported, Roeber easily defeated
Fitzsimmons. The facts, however, contradict the usual reports.
According to the account of Nat Fleischer, longtime pub-
lisher of The Ring magazine and an expert on both boxing and
wrestling, Fitzsimmons, pound-for-pound perhaps the hard-
est puncher ever, kayoed Roeber with just one punch.
Fleischer knew a lot about boxer-wrestler bouts, which he
called “mixed contests.” Most of the fights he reported support
the superiority of boxing over wrestling. Fleischer even had
some noteworthy examples of boxers beating martial artists. In
one bout, which took place in 1908, Sam McVey, a heavyweight
contender, knocked out Tano Matsuda, whom Fleischer called
“one of the foremost experts of jujutsu-jets.” Another match, in
1928, was fought between an American bantamweight (ban-
tamweight limit = 118 pounds) by the name of O’Gatty against
a similarly sized Japanese jujutsu expert. The boxer knocked out
the Oriental martial artist in just four seconds.
WHY BOXING?
19
one that comes closest to the conditions of a real streetfight.
It’s the story of how John L. Sullivan got in shape for the last
bare-knuckle heavyweight championship bout.
In 1889, “The Great John L.” had already been champ
for seven years. He so dominated the competition that he’d
grown overconfident and out of shape. Instead of training in
gyms, Sullivan found most of his exercise in saloons.
Then Sullivan signed to defend his title against the top
contender, Jake Kilrain, who had been dogging him for years.
Kilrain was a hard puncher and kept himself in top condi-
tion. Sullivan’s backers understood that if their man was to
remain champion, he needed some stringent training, so
they hired William Muldoon to whip the champ into shape.
Muldoon advertised himself as a “physical culturist,”
someone who today would be called a bodybuilder. Muldoon
looked the part: 250 solid, muscular pounds, all barrel chest
and beer-keg biceps. But Muldoon’s muscles weren’t for
show; he was a champion professional wrestler in an era
when wrestling was a serious sport, not an exhibition.
Sullivan’s men reasoned that if their aging, alcoholic fighter
(at 220 flabby pounds, when his best fighting weight was
190) wanted to drink instead of run, then the massive
wrestler had the fighting ability to make the boxer train.
Muldoon, however, knew enough about real hand-to-
hand combat to know better. Even out of condition, Sullivan,
who had as much of a reputation as a bar fighter as a boxer,
was too formidable to fight fairly, so Muldoon brought a
baseball bat to his “discussions” with Sullivan when the
champion didn’t want to work out.
Muldoon’s method of persuasion worked. Sullivan got
into top condition. He retained his title after a grueling fight
that lasted 75 rounds over two hours and 15 minutes.
William Muldoon, at least, was one wrestler who was-
n’t convinced of the superiority of wrestling to boxing.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
20
CHAPTER TWO
PRINCIPLES OF
THE RING AND
OF THE STREET
o be a “championship”
1) controlled aggression
2) momentum equals maximum force
3) taking a punch
4) combinations
21
of the ring. But, as you’ll soon discover, perhaps no boxer
better exemplified those principles than the legendary Jack
Dempsey. Learn from his example and discover your own
championship potential.
CONTROLLED AGGRESSION
I hate “self-defense.”
Although those of us who teach and write about meth-
ods of hand-to-hand fighting often refer to unarmed combat
as “self-defense,” it’s not always a good term. Moreover, it
can be a dangerous one.
The surest way to end up beaten, stomped, bloodied,
and maybe even dead in a serious streetfight is to concentrate
on “self-defense.” The surest way to emerge victorious and
intact from the same fight is to attack, rather than defend.
Now, of course, there’s a time for defensive fighting
(that’s the “controllable” part of boxing), but even the best
defense is usually a good offense. Perhaps the single most
important lesson to take away from boxing training is this:
BE AGGRESSIVE!
By the time you finish reading—and practicing—the
lessons taught in Championship Streetfighting, you should
have developed an aggressive state of mind. Just as impor-
tantly, you should develop the awareness that lets you know
just how much aggression (controlled aggression, remember,
is the principle) each streetfighting situation requires. Once
you have determined in your own mind that a serious fight
is either imminent or inevitable, then be aggressive and don’t
stop being aggressive until your opponent is down and out.
Aggression alone, however, is not the answer either in
the ring or on the street. Uncontrolled aggression is anger,
and to a trained fighter, such anger is not merely useless, it
is positively detrimental.
An old boxing adage says, “Never lose your temper in the
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
22
ring.” In the boxing ring, uncontrolled aggression leads to crude,
unfocused, and ineffective punching. That’s why wild punchers
are rarely power punchers. Angry, out-of-control boxers are also
the sort who get hit, because their uncontrolled swings leave
them wide open to the precise punches of smart fighters.
Uncontrolled aggression on the street can be even more
dangerous than in the ring. It leads to unnecessary fights and
legal trouble.
Controlled aggression, then, is a key to successful fight-
ing. It is a quality every championship boxer must develop. It
is also a quality that every smart streetfighter should develop.
How does boxing develop controlled aggression? Mostly
by means of the sparring ring. Sparring with hard, full-con-
tact punching is something that separates boxing training
from so much of what passes for training in the martial arts.
Sparring is controlled, practice fighting, but it nonethe-
less features genuine contact; it can hurt. Even though boxers
wear heavy gloves, headgear, and similar protective equip-
ment when they spar, they still feel real, hard punches from
people who know how to punch. They experience bruises,
blood, and stars before their eyes. Contact of that sort makes
a boxer feel something of what a genuine fight to the finish is
like. He learns what it’s like to lose control, open himself to
an opponent’s punches, and get nailed. Through the unavoid-
able process of trial and error repeated in the sparring ring, a
boxer learns that he must fight with controlled aggression, or
else that boxer doesn’t last very long in the gym.
How many dojos do the same?
The reason so many Oriental martial arts (at least as
they’re usually taught in the United States) do not allow their
practitioners to develop the kind of controlled aggression
necessary for a street fight is that they rarely if ever use full-
contact sparring. Boxers, on the other hand, spar almost
every workout, thereby quickly learning the consequences
of uncontrolled aggression. Pain is the best teacher.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
24
Boxers refer to the ability to hit with momentum as
“putting weight into punches.” That phrase captures perfect-
ly the importance of the principle of momentum. The abili-
ty to “put weight into punches” is precisely why a trained
boxer of, say, 135 pounds can routinely knock out an
untrained goon of heavyweight proportions. Properly
applied, the principle of momentum allows for even greater
feats: think of Roberto Duran kayoing the horse.
A well-trained boxer knows how to combine momen-
tum with controlled aggression so that the two principles
complement each other. When used with controlled aggres-
sion, getting weight into your punches keeps your momen-
tum, both physical and emotional, always moving forward in
a fight. Forward momentum is critical. It places you on the
attack, always slamming into your opponent with explosive
punching power. Knockouts are the result.
From what I’ve seen and experienced, a serious defi-
ciency of many martial arts is that they do not teach the
importance of momentum. Nor do they develop the ability to
exploit full momentum for hard punching. For punches to be
effective, they have to be hard; to be an effective fighter, you
need to be a power puncher. Real power punching can knock
an opponent cold and shatter his bones. That’s the fastest
and most certain way to end serious hand-to-hand combat.
Instead of teaching students how to put weight into
their punches, however, lots of martial arts schools teach
what a boxer would call powder-puff punching. In a fight, a
boxer can often ignore those kinds of fly swats.
Because this chapter is about principles, it isn’t the time
to explain the techniques (falling step, waist twist, etc.) that
will allow you to get weight into your punches. Read ahead
for those in Chapter 4. Always keep in mind, however, the
importance of momentum for power punching and the
importance of power punching for championship fighting.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
26
places, stinking of stale sweat. Bloodstains mark the mat in
the sparring ring. A good gym is a kind of Darwinian labora-
tory for hand-to-hand combat; it’s survival of the fittest.
Survive the gym, and rest assured that you’re fit to fight.
Street fights, of course, are the ultimate test of your fight-
ing skills. You don’t have to be a boxing champion to win a
street fight, however. If you can survive a boxing gym and
develop the ability to take a punch, your survivability on the
street will be immeasurably better than that of the typical
black belt graduate of most American martial arts schools.
The deficiency of most dojos in comparison to most
boxing gyms again becomes apparent when you think about
taking a punch. Unlike the boxer, the typical martial artist
does not have the daily experience of full-contact sparring.
When the pain starts and the blood flows in a street fight, the
martial artist ventures into uncharted waters. He has not
developed the ability to take a punch.
What about sucker punchers? Many dangerous and expe-
rienced street fighters rely on one tactic and one tactic alone:
the sucker punch. A streetfighter may not have the polished
moves of a martial artist, and he may not have the punching
power of a boxer, but the sucker puncher remains confident
that he can win the fight because he strikes unexpectedly.
He’s probably right—most of the time, anyway. The
sucker puncher is usually justified in his confidence when
he’s hitting the typical karateka. The tournament martial
artist, after all, isn’t used to getting hit.
The boxer is another animal. He knows what it’s like to
be slammed with a vicious punch. Frequently, he’ll be able
to absorb that first unexpected shot, and then reply with
counterpunches that put the streetfighter down and out.
And, by the way, the boxer’s reflexes allow the boxer to look
out for real punches. They make the boxer more aware, and
there’s no substitute for awareness for the sake of survival.
Because of his experience with facing punches thrown in
COMBINATION PUNCHING
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
28
Combinations are at the heart of the art and science of
skillful boxing. Combinations allow boxers to use the
momentum of one punch either landed or missed to add
momentum to the next punch. This allows power punching
to build on power punching.
Punching in combinations also multiplies the effects of
a boxer’s blows. Damage accumulates in rapid succession.
Every punch may not land perfectly and cleanly, but a flur-
ry of focused punches hurts more than any single blow.
One reason why boxing combinations work is that they
are based on the experience of hitting flesh and blood.
Hitting air, a makiwara, or a punching bag is not like hitting
a human body. The human body reacts in certain ways when
it is struck. In fact, the body instinctively responds to certain
blows delivered to certain parts of the anatomy in the same
ways every time. Boxing combinations take advantage of those
natural anatomical reactions in order to make punches more
damaging. The classic one-two, for example, uses a left jab to
tilt back the skull so as to expose “the button” on the jaw to
a straight right knockout punch.
Another problem with most martial arts is that they do
not use combinations. A common claim is that a single
karate, kung fu, ate-waza, or other martial art blow is “so
deadly” that only one will drop any opponent. That, frankly,
is pure, unadulterated bullshit!
The myth of the one-punch (or one-kick or one-chop)
stop is one of the most dangerous things to take with you into
a street fight.
Because so many martial arts do not use full-contact
sparring, such fighting systems do not teach the human
body’s reactions to being hit. That’s a significant drawback
for a real streetfight. Boxing does teach the reactions of the
body to punches. Moreover, boxing takes advantage of those
reactions to make combinations work.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
30
CHAPTER THREE
GLOVES AND
BARE FISTS
31
padded and relatively soft. Training gloves are designed as
much to protect the face as they are to protect the hands;
look at the faces of boxers after a bout, and you’ll see that
the same cannot be said about regular boxing gloves.
Training gloves also serve a conditioning function: they
develop endurance in the arms and shoulders. Try holding
up a pound of extra weight in each hand and throwing
punches with those same weights for several three-minute
rounds, and you’ll soon have outstanding stamina in the
muscles of your upper body.
MUFFLERS
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
32
skinned knuckles, you either failed to land a punch or were
smart enough to protect your hands with light gloves (or you
delivered your “punches” with a part of the hand other than
the knuckles, something taught in Championship
Streetfighting, by the way).
Bones can be another problem. The 27 bones of the
hand are small and fragile compared to the big bones of the
human body. The fists, therefore, are readily susceptible to
injury. Broken bones, dislocated knuckles, and sprains are
inevitable, if you punch improperly. If you learn to make fists
and land punches correctly, you can spare your hands from
serious injury. Learn the power punching taught in this
book, but always keep in mind the importance of protecting
your hands as you learn.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
34
the rules. At first, Sullivan used boxing gloves only for his
exhibition bouts; but eventually he mandated their use for
championship matches as well. All challengers would wear
gloves if they wanted a shot at the heavyweight title.
Champions don’t remain champions if they aren’t smart,
and Sullivan was champ for 10 long years. As he aged, “The
Great John L.” grew greater and greater, especially around
the waist. Since he did much of his training in saloons instead
of in gyms, the champ preferred to avoid contests of
endurance, but he never lost his punch. Sullivan could always
score knockouts, as long as he didn’t hurt his hands. Despite
his naturally heavy bone structure, Sullivan did damage his
hands in several bare knuckle bouts, so he fought with gloves
because light gloves allowed him to smash the bones of his
opponents without crushing the bones of his own hands.
Sullivan, by the way, did at least as much fighting out-
side the prize ring as he did in it. Sullivan, the boxer, was
such an accomplished bar fighter that a future president had
to sit up and take note.
When Theodore Roosevelt was police commissioner of
New York City, he used his influence with the champ (not
always successfully) to keep Sullivan under control during
pub crawls in the Big Apple. This allowed both bouncers and
Roosevelt’s cops to avoid the shattered ribs and broken jaws
that Sullivan routinely dealt out in the ring.
The first modern heavyweight champion’s abilities in
bar fights is yet another indication of the utility of boxing in
street fights. Bring Lessons from the Champs with you to
every brawl.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
36
GLOVES AND BARE FISTS
37
THREE-KNUCKLE LANDING
For effective power punching, the way that you land the
punch on your fist is as vital as the way you make that fist.
The best way to land a punch is with the three-knuckle landing.
Too often in the ring these days, the three-knuckle land-
ing is forgotten. That’s why so much of the fighting, even
among the so-called champions, is crude and ineffective.
Every boxer—or boxing-trained streetfighter—should strive
to land maximum power punches on the knuckles of the
middle finger, ring finger, and pinkie together.
Why three knuckles together? First of all because of the
line of power. When a punch lands properly, the power of
mass in motion runs from the shoulder, through the arm,
Above left: A karate reverse punch at head level lands on the second knuckle—
a free ticket to a weak punch or broken hand. But with a left jab delivered with
a vertical fist (above right), the punch lands cleanly and with full power on the
pinky, ring finger, and middle finger knuckles.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
38
and directly out the ring finger knuckle. Jack Dempsey (who
knew more than a little something about power punching)
called that ring finger knuckle the “aiming knuckle.” In other
words, the cross hairs of the gun that is a boxer’s fist run
through the ring finger knuckle.
In practice, it is impossible to land a punch on just that
one knuckle. Even if you could punch with only the “aiming
knuckle,” the power of a serious punch would shatter the
bone in the ring finger when the punch landed. Spread
among three knuckles, however, it is possible to land full-
force punches without injury to your hands.
The three-knuckle landing is unique to boxing. Many
styles of martial arts—most notably, taekwon do—employ a
two-knuckle landing (i.e., with the forefinger and middle fin-
ger knuckles). Now, it is possible to land a hard punch with
the two-knuckle landing, but only within a limited range.
And it is impossible to land a maximum power punch on
two knuckles in the way that taekwon do and other martial
arts teach.
Doubt it? Then try this simple experiment: Roll a fist
and stand within arm’s length of a wall. Extend your arm
toward the wall at eye level, as if throwing a punch in taik-
won do (TKD)/two-knuckle fashion. Can you land the punch
on two knuckles? I sure can’t, at least not without bending
my wrist (and, as I’ve already explained, punching with a
bent wrist is a fundamental mistake). One can land a straight
punch with two knuckles at targets below shoulder level, but
that’s about it as far as range is concerned. If you can’t land
punches to the head, where’s the real utility—not to mention
the fun—of punching?
Now roll a fist and extend your arm at about eye level,
but instead of rotating your fist karate-style, keep the fist ver-
tical, with your thumb pointing up. Let your “aiming
knuckle” make contact with the wall, and notice how the two
knuckles on either side of your ring finger also make contact
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
40
style punch, but also serves to protect the bones of the hand
by spreading the force of impact over a larger surface area.
Also, by keeping the wrist straight, the three-knuckle land-
ing prevents sprains and breaks of that joint.
HAND CONDITIONING
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
42
your hands in preparation
for hitting the heavy bag.
First, don’t use wraps that
are too heavy or too tight.
Second, don’t go too light
on the wraps.
Wraps that are too
bulky (especially around
the knuckles themselves)
will prevent you from
making a tightly rolled
fist. Instead of punches
landing on the standard
three knuckles, with over-
large wraps they’ll land on
the second knuckles of the
fingers. This leads to weak
punches and sprained fin-
gers. If your wraps seem
to be getting too thick
around the knuckles, put
the excess around your
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
44
lot, but they can never make up for genetics). Also, don’t
make the mistake of thinking that because your hands are of
the slighter sort you can’t develop a knockout punch.
Starting out with bad hands can even make you a better
boxer in the long run. Just look at the career of Gene Tunney.
If he’s remembered at all today, Tunney is remembered
for the long count fight against Jack Dempsey, but he
deserves much more. Tunney was truly one of the greats: he
lost only one fight in his career (and that was as a light
heavyweight), and he was one of the few champs smart
enough to leave the ring for good while still at the peak of
his powers. Tunney’s greatest strengths as a fighter were his
slick boxing skills and intelligent ring generalship, but don’t
think that he couldn’t punch: he dropped Dempsey in the
ninth round of the infamous fight and, as Dempsey himself
admitted, Tunney probably would have won on a knockout
if the fight had been scheduled for more than 10 rounds.
When Tunney was starting his career, however, he had
trouble scoring knockouts because he had such trouble with
his hands. Around the gyms, Tunney was known as “The
Fighter with Brittle Hands” (not a nickname the equal of
“Gentleman Jim” or “The Greatest,” but certainly descrip-
tive). Tunney broke bones in his hands more than once before
he learned to protect them. He gradually built up the strength
and toughness of his fists by means of diligent exercise.
Tunney punched the bag, squeezed a rubber ball throughout
the day, chopped wood to strengthen his wrists, and made his
fingers like iron by doing 500 fingertip push-ups a day.
At the same time, Tunney turned an apparent weakness
into a strength. His bad hands required him to place his punch-
es not only with power, but also with great accuracy. That
GLOVES
As soon as you hit the heavy bag with bag gloves, you’ll
understand how much even light gloves can protect you
hands. Power punching becomes even more powerful when
your hands are protected by light gloves because the sub-
conscious fear of hurting your bare hands is removed.
But how much good is that for streetfighting? Walking
around while wearing bag gloves is something few of us are
likely to do and still remain outside an asylum.
Try this experiment: Once you’ve developed your hands
to the extent that you can practice at least a little on the
heavy bag without hand wraps, hit the heavy bag with light
leather dress or work gloves. You’ll be amazed at how much
those inconspicuous, light gloves protect your fists. Even full
power punches to the head can be dealt out without injury
to your hands if you’re wearing gloves.
If you plan on throwing lots of knockout punches in a street-
fight (and you should), you may want to get into the habit of wear-
ing light gloves. Since I live in Buffalo, it’s easy for me to wear
gloves during much of the year and still keep from standing out
in a crowd. If you live in Miami or some other hothouse, it could
be more difficult to keep from looking like a thug in search of
trouble. Still, it might not be a bad idea to carry some gloves in a
pocket and put them on when things begin to turn ugly.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
46
LESSONS FROM THE CHAMPS #6:
“SIXTY-ONE ROUNDS IN DRIVING GLOVES”
MASS IN MOTION:
THE PHYSICAL PRINCIPLE
BEHIND HARD HITTING
49
your mass in motion at the highest velocity you can manage.
Putting your mass in motion (i.e., putting weight into your
punches) in the right way is what enables a small fighter to hit
harder than a heavyweight who is clumsy and slow. The
same principle of mass in motion at high velocity is what
allows a small bullet traveling at high speed to hit harder
than a big, slow bullet. The smaller bullet contains less mass
but has more force (retained muzzle energy) because of
greater velocity.
A fighter’s fists are his bullets. Therefore, to hit with
bone-breaking force, he must learn to do two things. First, he
must put the maximum amount of his body weight in motion
at the fastest possible speed. Second, he must learn how to
channel the energy of that body weight in motion into the
narrow point of impact of his punch. To draw upon the bul-
let analogy again, punching skill works with the fist as a rifle
barrel does to channel the explosive power of a cartridge into
a small lead bullet.
Anyone can learn to hit hard. You don’t have to be built
like a gorilla or a greyhound to be a knockout puncher. There
is no one body build that necessarily makes someone a hard
hitter. The history of the ring proves this fact.
If you think that you’re too short, too tall, too small, too
lean, or too stocky to turn yourself into a puncher, think again.
Some of the hardest punchers in boxing have been broad-
shouldered, muscular, and athletic-looking. Think of Jack
Dempsey and Joe Louis. Others were stocky and so full of mus-
cles that they looked like they could hit as hard as they really
could. Mike Tyson is a good example of that sort, as was Rocky
Marciano who, at only a 190 pounds (not a lot by heavyweight
standards), had perhaps the hardest right-hand punch ever seen.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
50
But not everyone who could hit looked like he could.
Some vicious hitters had rangy, even skinny builds. Bob
Fitzsimmons, for example, was called a “fighting machine on
stilts” because he stood 6’ tall with long legs and a lanky
frame and usually weighed less than 170 pounds, but Fitz
was actually one of the great heavyweights (he also held the
middleweight and light-heavyweight titles). By all accounts,
Fitzsimmons was one of the most powerful punchers with
either hand to have held the heavyweight crown. Thomas
Hearns, as a welterweight, and Alexis Arguello, as a light-
weight, are more recent examples of great champions with
knockout punches who were lean and mean.
On the opposite side are the fat punchers. Think of the
hard-hitting (he put Joe Louis on the canvas) heavyweight
contender of the 1930s, “Two Ton” Tony Galento, or consid-
er George Foreman since his comeback. Even when Foreman
looks as if he’s wearing a 30-pound doughnut around his
middle, do you seriously doubt that he’d have any trouble
knocking out Mr. America? Maybe the hard-hitting fat guys
just have more weight to put into their punches.
Size itself is not necessarily the determining factor in
punching power. Fighters in the lighter weight classes can
sometimes hit as hard or harder than the big boys.
(Remember Roberto Duran and the horse incident.) Another
great lightweight, Joe “The Old Master” Gans, regularly
fought and kayoed heavyweights.
This clearly shows that men of all builds can hit with
knockout power, if they know how.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
52
your body mass at high velocity and thereby creates tremen-
dous force that is unavailable through muscle power alone.
Second, stepping channels the muscle power of not just the
arm that delivers the punch, but also of the far stronger mus-
cles in the legs, hips, and back.
The technique of straight-punch stepping goes by many
names. It’s called the “falling step” because the action is a kind
of controlled fall (and perhaps because your opponent will fall
hard when hit). It’s called the “gliding step” because of the way
your feet glide forward during the move. It’s also called by my
favorite name, the “trigger step,” which should make you think
of the trigger of a gun: BANG! Whatever the name, it’s the
same technique, and I use all those terms interchangeably.
Above left: Put your weight on your toes, well forward on the front leg. Above
right: With no preliminary movement, take a long step forward.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
54
movements telegraphing your punches, and if you telegraph
punches—if you let your opponent know that a punch is coming—
he’ll avoid your punch and land his own. Don’t develop that
bad habit even before you learn to punch with your steps.
Don’t be concerned because your steps are long, say, a
foot and a half. They should be that long at this stage of your
training. Just keep practicing that long step. As you learn the
straight punches and begin to practice them against the
heavy bag and when sparring, the trigger steps that you use
with actual punches in real fights will grow shorter and
shorter, faster and faster. Eventually, you will be able to
channel your body weight into every straight punch by tak-
ing steps that are only a few inches long or less.
The principle of stepping with punches can even be used
to make hooks and uppercuts more powerful, but more about
that when the time comes. For now, let’s stick to principles.
Stand with your feet parallel and just more than shoul-
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
56
your right. Remember to pivot at the waist and to keep your
shoulders in line. Your right foot will remain almost flat, but
your left foot will turn sharply and pivot on its ball.
Practice the twisting back and forth, left and right, mov-
ing loosely and slowly until you feel comfortable with it. The
waist twist is a much more natural movement than the
falling step and you should find it easier to learn.
Now for your arms. As you twist left again, extend your
right arm forward until that arm is straight out at the end of
your twist. Turn your head and look at your fist; it should cut
a perpendicular line from where your shoulders were at your
original position. Turn right and extend your left arm. You’re
beginning to experience the punching motion that will eventu-
ally lead to straight rights and hooks that pack knockout power.
Notice especially how your weight shifts as you twist.
Also notice how the muscles in your legs, hips, and back
work together in the twist. From both the moving weight and
the action of multiple muscles, you can begin to get a sense
of the sources of power punching.
At all times keep your arms and shoulders relaxed. The
posture rules drilled into us as children—”Stand up straight!
Shoulders back!”—are no good in a fight. Stand up straight
and stiff, and you’ll only throw fly swats—and you’ll make a
better target for an opponent’s hard punches.
Look at the posture of boxers. Unless they’re posing for
publicity stills, they tend to look round-shouldered and
somewhat stooped. They never look as pretty as body
builders with shoulders thrown back and puffed-up chests.
The muscleman’s position is all for show; the fighter’s is for
action. In part, the boxer’s round shoulders are a defensive
device: he drops his sternum over his solar plexus and pro-
tects his ribs with his elbows. More importantly, a hard-
punching boxer drops his shoulders in order to obtain the
relaxed focus that channels the power of his waist twist into
his punches.
CHAINING PUNCHES
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
58
leads to another—and you’ll get the idea of how chaining
punches works. Chaining is using the momentum of one punch
to lead naturally into another punch, thereby increasing its power.
The key to throwing efficient combinations is the use of
chaining punches. And combinations, in turn, provide the
best way to hurt or knock out an opponent.
How does chaining work? We’ll get into the technique
when we deal with combinations, but you can get the idea of
how to chain punches from your practice of the waist twist you
already know. Notice how the natural and immediate reply to
a twist to the right (i.e., a leading left-hand blow) is a twist to
the left (i.e., a right-hand blow). The right and left twists show
exactly the chaining that leads to the classic one-two combina-
tion. Chaining and combinations work hand-in hand.
By learning to chain punches in combinations, a boxer
learns to hit harder with a series of punches than he ever could
by throwing any of those punches singly. Chaining in this fash-
ion is one way boxing differs from most martial arts: one karate
punch (or kick or chop) can only develop the force of that single
blow, whereas chained punches have a cumulative effect (and
the last punch of a combination is usually the knockout blow).
SHIFTS
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
60
First, he would feint a right hook to his opponent’s head. As
he did so, he would step forward with his right foot and
plant it next to and outside of his opponent’s leading left
foot. (The step was not a falling step, but an actual step for-
ward.) Then he’d change stance from regular to southpaw.
Use the principle of chaining to twist your body to the
right, delivering a left hook or uppercut to the midsection
(the punch may also be sent to the head for a knockout;
either way, the shift imparts tremendous force to the left).
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
62
tivate your killer instinct and never let an adversary off the
hook when he’s hurt.
The most practical technique for developing your killer
instinct is visualization. Whenever you practice punching, use
visualization to channel your killer instinct into the punches.
You should “see” an opponent in front of you (not the heavy
bag or your sparring mate). Even when shadowboxing, that
“opponent” should always be in your mind’s eye.
When a boxer is in camp for a fight, he uses all sorts of
tricks to visualize his opponent and thereby focus his killer
instinct on that particular fighter. For instance, a boxer may
have sparring partners who look like and mimic the style of
his upcoming adversary. I’ve even heard of fighters taping a
picture of the boxer whom they’re set to face to the heavy bag.
In a streetfight you may not have the advantage of know-
ing just who your opponent is going to be, but you can still
use visualization to develop you killer instinct. Picture your
greatest enemy when you work out. Hit him instead of the
heavy bag. Such exercises are also a great way to build confi-
dence as you “defeat” your enemy time and again in practice.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
64
PUNCH IS PARAMOUNT
67
LESSONS FROM THE CHAMPS #10:
“WHY ALI DANCED AND FRAZIER CROUCHED”
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
68
Ali paid for all those hard shots from the likes of George
Foreman and Earnie Shavers.
A boxer should remain flexible in all ways, not least of
all in his stance. The flexibility of a fighter’s stance is some-
thing that separates boxing from many martial arts. The
rigid, programmed stances of so many Asian fighting styles
are not suited to the demands of a real fight. The horse
stance, the cat stance (and, for all I know, the zebra stance)
may work well for training, but in a real fight, forget it!
(While you’re sinking into your stance, your opponent is
going to pound you to a pulp.)
Although you’re about to receive detailed instructions
for how to assume a fighter’s stance, keep in mind that those
instructions are at best only guidelines. (Ali learned the classic
stance and then fought the “wrong” way and won a champi-
onship.) You may not be an Ali, but your style should suit you.
Whatever works for you, two factors should always
characterize your stance: flexibility to the situation and adapt-
ability to your build and style.
For the streetfighter, it’s even good practice to punch
without falling into your stance. Knowing how to throw a jab
or slip a sucker punch from your position at the bar is a valu-
able skill to have in the real world. Thinking about how
you’ll react if attacked—whatever your posture—will teach
you what postures to avoid (such stances as standing around
with your hands in your pockets; a serious mistake). You
should be able to avoid a punch or throw one, and in the
process slip immediately into your stance, ready to do seri-
ous damage. Then you’ll be well prepared for a streetfight.
• The left leg and toes should be turned slightly inward for
defense. Don’t turn in too much or you’ll interfere with
your steps and lessen your power. (It’s easy to straighten
out your stance for maximum power when the opening
arises.) Your weight should be forward on your left leg to
allow for powerful falling steps: think of a 70/30 or 60/40
division of your weight between left and right legs.
• Your right heel should be raised slightly. This adds
power and spring to your steps. It also allows for an
easy sidestep—an essential defensive maneuver. Your
weight should be on your toes or the balls of your feet.
• Your shoulders should be relaxed and rounded (remem-
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
70
ber the rules for hitting hard). Hunch your left shoulder
slightly so that it protects your chin. Dropped shoulders
also allow your sternum to fall and protect your solar
plexus (as the crouch and bent back enables you to
accept body punches with less chance of injury).
• Your chin is down to protect your throat.
• The hands are up. Keep your left at a level just above
shoulder height so you can throw hard jabs straight
from the shoulder. Your right should be held a little
higher to protect your face. Elbows are held in to pro-
tect the ribs.
• Keep your eyes open and on your opponent. It’s a good
idea to look at a spot around an adversary’s chest
(peripheral vision thereby spots openings and sees
punches coming).
BALANCE
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
72
Streetfights can be very much like bare-knuckle boxing.
Therefore, as a boxing-trained streetfighter, you’ll automati-
cally tend to fight from a deeper and squarer stance on the
street than in the ring. Don’t be alarmed.
MOBILITY
STRAIGHT PUNCHES
75
Why is the left jab so vital? Because it is both an offen-
sive and defensive weapon. Defensively, the jab keeps your
opponent busy, off balance and unable to “get set” for his
own haymaker. Offensively, the jab is the fastest of all the
punches in a fighter’s
arsenal, making it the easiest to land. The jab also sets
up all the other punches and it is usually the first punch of
leading combinations. The right may effect the actual knock-
out, but the jab makes the knockout possible in the first place.
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76
on to kayo the Swede in four rounds in 1960 and then did the
same in six rounds the following year for good measure.
Because Patterson had learned how to deal with
Johansson’s primary weapon, the left jab, “thunder and light-
ning” never threatened him again.
1) Step with your jab. Coordinate the fist flying from your
shoulder with a falling step. Get some weight into the
punch.
2) Use the waist twist to add power to your jab. Again, the
waist twist has to be coordinated with the step. You
won’t be able to use a full waist twist with the jab
because you’re leading with the left and your body is
already turned part way toward your opponent, but
you’ll still add power to the punch. Be careful, howev-
er, not to telegraph your jab by “winding up” and turn-
ing your waist to the left before launching the blow.
3) Jab straight from the shoulder. Your fist should explode
from your shoulder like a bullet from the barrel of a
gun. Two guaranteed ways to throw fly-swatter jabs are
to punch from the waist (as in karate) and punch with
the elbow raised laterally outward, in a flicking motion.
Instead, keep your elbow in and let the power of your
mass in motion flow through your shoulder.
4) Land the jab with a vertical fist (your thumb facing up).
The vertical fist allows you to use a three-knuckle land-
ing, which both protects your hand and conveys the full
force of the punch to the target. Too many trainers teach
STRAIGHT PUNCHES
77
fighters to turn the fist over (palm down) when they jab.
This supposedly adds “snap” to the punch, but what it
really does is weaken the jab. The palm-down landing
also produces sprained and broken fingers because the
punch, turned over, tends to land on the second knuck-
les of the middle and forefinger.
5) Never drop your jab. Bring it back along the same path
that you threw it. Dropping the jab is a common fault
among boxers, and it is an especially dangerous one. It
is an invitation to a counterright to the face.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
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Louis’ left. When Louis gave Schmeling a rematch, he
destroyed the German in one round.
STRAIGHT PUNCHES
79
an amateur boxer, and he knew well the British champions
of his day. He also knew the utility of boxing in a bar fight,
as the story shows.
From fiction, we now move on to martial arts (which
can often seem pretty fictional themselves). When I was
about 20 years old, I trained with a quite competent fighter
who taught an eclectic style of street combat that combined
elements of taekwon do, wing chun, and other systems, but
the punches he taught were pure boxing. My trainer had a
lot of good sense and was always willing to learn new tech-
niques that worked.
When I asked him how he came to incorporate boxing
into his fighting , he told me this story. He’d been studying
kung-fu for three years and had become pretty skilled. Then
his cousin, who was a boxer, came to visit, and the two
arranged a friendly sparring session. They were evenly
matched in weight, strength, and age, but as my trainer dis-
covered, not in practical fighting ability. After a few feints,
the boxer threw a hard jab that connected with my trainer’s
head. Here’s how he finished the story: “After I woke up, I
decided that I better learn some boxing.”
And he did.
The left jab is the most useful punch you’ll learn. It is
critical to success in the boxing ring and is just as important
in championship streetfighting. Work hard to develop a jab
that is powerful, fast, and punishing.
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80
already know, you’ll soon discover that you can make your
right so powerful because it combines a short step with a full
waist twist. The straight right is the punch that Sam
Langford was talking about when he spoke of the impor-
tance of “getting your hips into your punches.”
So powerful and effective is the straight right that it is
the culminating knockout punch of many standard combina-
tions, like the one-two and Jack Dempsey’s triple. The punch
can be a bone-breaker to the head and body.
Don’t mistake a straight right for a right cross. The two
terms are too often used interchangeably nowadays, but
they’re not the same. Properly used, the term “right cross”
applies to a counterright—sort of a half straight right and half
right hook—thrown over a left jab. It crosses over the extend-
ed left arm, hence the term “right cross.”
1) Employ a full waist twist with the right. Note how easi-
ly this is done when the right follows a jab. The left puts
your body in the perfect position for getting your hips
into the right. (That’s part of the reason for the boxing
adage, “Never lead with your right.”)
2) Step with the right in coordination with the waist twist,
especially with a straight right, because your step will
be a sliding step, and your weight will be exploding for-
ward into the punch.
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81
Start from your standard Note the full waist twist. The straight right from
stance. another angle.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
82
5) Use the overhand right as a variation of your straight
right. The overhand right should loop more than the
straight right, but never let it turn into a swing. Throw
the overhand right in the same way as the straight right,
with a short step and a full waist twist, but put some
extra power into the overhand right by dropping your
upper body with the punch. An overhand right can be
used at ranges closer than a regular straight right, and it
is also hard to block because of the downward angle at
which it comes crashing into your opponent’s jaw.
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83
SNAP AND STRAIGHT PUNCHING
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
84
candle exercise, but it has worked for lots of people (myself
included). The trouble with the candle exercise is that it’s
hard to punch in any realistic fashion when doing it; one
can’t very well put up a forest of candles at various heights,
then try to extinguish them while shadowboxing.
Perhaps the best and most realistic way to practice snap-
ping your punches is by using visualization. Remember
when I told you to always punch through a point, not at one?
One of the reasons for “seeing” that point beyond your target
is that it helps to put snap into your punches. Punching
through a point creates tremendous follow-through and,
therefore, power in your punches. That follow-through also
naturally results in your punches snapping back from the
point at which you were aiming.
It’s especially important for you to learn to snap your
straight punches. Hooks, because of the muscle groups used
and the powerful spin that launches them (as you’ll learn),
naturally have a lot of follow-through and plenty of snap. It’s
hard to push with a hook, but it’s all too easy to fall into the
bad habit of pushing a jab or straight right. Because straight
punches are the first ones you’ll use in a real fight, as well
as being the punches you’re likely to use most frequently,
you must concentrate on putting snap into your rights and
jabs right from the beginning.
It’s easy to judge the snap in your punches when you
work out on the heavy bag. The bag should “break” when
you hit it: your fist should penetrate into the bag and you
should be able to see the bag “fold” or “break” somewhat
from the impact. (It’s just not enough to get the bag swing-
ing; it has to break.) When the bag breaks in the way that
I’ve described, you’ll know that you’re punching properly,
with speed, follow-through, and powerful snap. Break the
bag in the gym and you’ll be able to break your opponent’s
bones in a fight.
The fact that a competent boxer punches with snap
STRAIGHT PUNCHES
85
crushed the theory of “unbeatable defenses” against punch-
es taught by so-called self-defense experts. It is foolish to try
to knock a boxer off balance by slapping his punching hand,
or seize his punching arm’s wrist (and then subduing the
boxer with a hold, lock, or throw), even though these tech-
niques are taught in certain martial arts.
I hope I offend those know-nothing “experts” when I say
that they must not have had a real punch thrown at them in
anger since the third grade. Maybe they just get beat up a lot.
Such blocking techniques are useless against a fighter who
snaps his punches. In the real world, while the “self-defense
master” reaches for a fist that isn’t there (because the boxer is
already snapping it back), the boxer is sending a power punch
from the other hand at the unprotected side of the “master’s”
anatomy. Easy knockouts are produced this way.
The only sure-fire defense against a punch is to get the
hell out of its way. Better yet, punch first and put your oppo-
nent on the asphalt before he puts you there.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
86
A karate reverse punch
places you at close range.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
88
CHAPTER SEVEN
HOOKS AND
UPPERCUTS
89
mass in motion. (Power disappears from swings because you
have to land them either on the thumb-side or palm-side of
your fist, not with the three-knuckle landing that puts power
on target.) Moreover, landing a punch on your thumb is a
sure ticket to a broken thumb.
For a most effective hook or uppercut, the elbow should
never be opened beyond 90 degrees (usually the angle will
be a lot smaller). Think of keeping your elbow bent sharply
when throwing the inside punches and you’ll hit harder and
much more effectively. The more you open your elbow, the
closer your hooks and uppercuts come to swings. A trained
boxer never uses roundhouse swings.
LEFT HOOK
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90
cles in your chest, shoulder, and arm are brought togeth-
er in the punch.
Here’s how to learn the left hook.
From your stance, twist right. As you turn, let your left
fist go with it, but make sure that your elbow rises laterally with
the punch. When your fist intersects with the midpoint of
your stance, your forearm should be parallel to the floor.
Your fist should be palm-down. The striking surface is the
three-knuckle landing that conveys the full force of the waist
twist to the target. As part of the full waist twist, the heel of
your left foot should rise and your right heel should fall flat
to the floor. In other words, your weight is shifting from left
to right, across the centerline where the hook explodes with
full power and slams through the target.
That’s the left hook—a short, full twisting punch delivered
close-in with a bent elbow. It shoots at your opponent from a
side angle, what military tacticians call an “oblique attack.”
A few tricks can add power to your left hook. First,
whenever possible, step with your hooks. The stepping that
you do with a hook is not a true falling step, but rather a
slight shifting of the feet that helps to move your weight into
the punch.
Second, when you throw the hook, let your left shoul-
der move in in advance of your fist. This allows your pow-
erful shoulder and pectoral muscles to snap the hook in with
even greater speed and destructive power. Leading with the
shoulder is part of the principle of summation of forces that
makes the hook such a savage punch.
The angle of your bent elbow will vary depending on
the distance of the point that you’re punching through. At
extreme close-range infighting, your left arm is going to be
bent until it’s almost closed. At longer range, the angle will
be closer to 90 degrees. The goal, however, is to always use
the three-knuckle landing; that’s the only way to get full
power into your hooks. It’s true that a fighter can land a
RIGHT HOOK
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92
The right hook Hooking around an opponent’s defenses.
SHOVEL HOOKS
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94
Launch the left shovel from inside, with the
elbow pressed close to your hip.
UPPERCUTS
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Use uppercuts at close range.
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
98
with a bent elbow, but they depend on a move different from
those you’ve already learned for their power. The great
advantage of uppercuts is that they can be used at the clos-
est range. Even when standing nose-to-nose there’s room for
an uppercut.
The key to a powerful uppercut is the upward surge
(a.k.a. the hip hunch, et al.), a way to get weight and your
hips into the punch. Master that move in the same way that
you mastered the falling step for straight punches and the
waist twist for hooks, and you’ll put bone-breaking power
into your uppercuts.
Since the uppercut is usually a right, let’s start with that.
Put yourself in the same infighting range and stance that you
used to learn the shovel hooks. Now, keep this principle in
mind: for a right uppercut, you’re going to surge on your left side.
In other words, uppercuts get their power from a move on the
side opposite from the punching hand. So in order to throw
your right uppercut, your left hip must surge upward. Along
with the movement of your left hip (one that “gets your hips
into the punch”), your left shoulder should fly up and back.
(That little backward movement of the shoulder imparts a
waist twist that adds power to the punch.)
The initial movement of the upward surge on your left
side will cause your bent right arm to dip. Completing the
upward surge will cause that same right arm to shoot straight
up, and that’s an uppercut. The palm of your uppercutting
right should face you as it explodes through it’s target. Of
course, you must hit with the three-knuckle landing for full
power, but that’s very easy to do with an uppercut.
Left uppercuts can be tricky and few fighters learn how
to throw effective ones, but that’s what makes them especially
deadly: all uppercuts, slicing in from straight underneath, are
hard to avoid because of their angle of attack, but left upper-
cuts tend to explode out of a an especially unexpected angle. So
take the time and effort to develop a sound left uppercut.
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100
the jab-uppercut combination, you close the distance before
throwing the uppercut). At the extremely close infighting
ranges where most streetfighters and martial artists are so
uncomfortable, your elbows will be almost closed when you
throw uppercuts; the position of your arm will be as if
you’ve just completed curling a dumbbell (an advantage,
because your biceps contracted in that position is at its max-
imum strength and the arm muscle adds even more power to
the punch). Uppercuts to the body will demand that you
open your elbow more, but rarely will a good uppercut come
from an arm opened even 90 degrees. Beyond that, upper-
cuts become swings, the “long uppercuts” and “bolo punch-
es” that a serious fighter should never use. (Bolo punches are
flashy and damned ineffective. Leave them to the show-offs
when you’re engaged in the serious business of fighting.)
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102
ing close in. Martial arts that rely on kicking are most handi-
capped on the inside. Moreover, many martial arts teach the
technique of backing away from an opponent moving into
infighting range. That’s the worst possible move against an
infighter. If someone tries it against you, thank God for stu-
pid people and follow right after him—and keep punching.
Your best weapons for infighting are hooks and upper-
cuts. Use regular hooks to punch around an opponent’s
defenses, use shovel hooks to his head and body inside of his
arms, and use uppercuts to shoot up under his attempts to
protect himself. You may be able to get in an overhand right,
but for the most part, you won’t have room for straight
punches and falling steps.
The trick is getting into infighting range. The techniques
of slipping and footwork that will put you inside an oppo-
nent’s defenses will be covered in another chapter, but let’s
look at a Lesson from the Champs for an unusual, but effec-
tive, way to put yourself within infighting range.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
COMBINATIONS AND
RELATED MATTERS
DOUBLES
105
doesn’t necessarily master them) as part of his early training.
These combinations have been proven in combat. They
work. That’s why I teach them here.
The standard combinations use either two or three
punches. There are combinations of four and even five
punches (Dempsey mentions one of the latter in his book),
but they are more idiosyncratic, the sort of things that suit a
particular fighter, but aren’t standard. Beyond three punches
it’s hard to predict things. Who’s going to stand still and let
you hit him with your two hooks, three rights, and an upper-
cut? When you read about eight- and fourteen-punch combi-
nations, you’re reading pure fiction.
Double Jab
This combination seems simple enough. It’s just what it
sounds like—two left jabs, one following right after the
other—but you may be surprised to discover the subtleties
involved in a double jab.
For example, the most common way to use the double
jab is to punch twice at the same target, usually the head.
The thinking is that if the first punch doesn’t land, the sec-
ond one will, and it usually does if you follow fast enough.
The combination should go very fast—SNAP! SNAP!—with-
out the slightest hesitation. Especially when boxing a fast
and elusive opponent, the double jab is the most effective
way to land your left.
There are other ways to employ the combination. Try
jabbing to one target and then another. Jab to the head and
then the body; the trick is to get your opponent to raise his
hands to defend against the first left, leaving his body open
to the second. Or try the opposite, jabbing to the body first
and throwing a head shot second. The principle is the same:
getting your opponent to move his hands to defend against
one punch, thereby leaving himself open to another punch
to a different part of his body. Use misdirection in your com-
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
106
binations, and keep pumping that jab; you’ll make openings.
No one can protect all of his vulnerable spots all of the time.
One-Two
This is a boxer’s basic knockout combination. It uses the
two straight punches to assist each other, and it takes advan-
tage of the body’s natural movements to protect itself.
The one-two is a left jab to the head followed by a
straight right to the head. The jab is usually aimed a little
high: go for the eyes or the nose. Either spot will cause the
reaction you want: your opponent’s head will tilt back a lit-
tle on the fulcrum of his neck and then BAM! The right
crashes home on his chin and he’s stunned, falling, or out.
Well, that’s the plan anyway, but sometimes things don’t
go as planned. You could miss with the jab, but that’s OK. A
fighter, especially an inexperienced one who’s neither taken a
punch in the sparring ring nor learned how to avoid punches
in the right ways, will still tend to tilt his head back in
response to a jab that misses. The right can still do its damage.
You might just as easily land the jab, but not as cleanly
as you would have liked. That’s OK, too. Even a half-assed
jab around the eyes will obscure someone’s vision, making
him less likely to see the right that’s about to take his head
off. Use your thumb with that jab (as instructed in Chapter
9) and your opponent may not see the right, or much of any-
thing else. Even a fair jab to the nose can sting enough to set
up the right very well, thank you (but, of course, it’s always
best to break the nose). Again, the “bad intentions” of even
your imperfect jabs will work against someone who isn’t
used to taking punches. That great advantage of boxing—full-
contact sparring—really does pay off.
Another thing: the right doesn’t have to land cleanly on
the chin. In fact, as you’ll learn, you probably don’t want to
connect to the chin in a streetfight when your hands are
unprotected. The right can still be damned effective when it
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
108
trade a minor indication of the punch to come for a lot of
power in that punch.
Why does hooking off the jab work so well? Again, it’s
a matter of boxers taking advantage of natural reactions to
punches. When a straight jab comes speeding toward your
head, your natural reaction is to stop it: you move your
hands inside and together to block the straight punch.
That, of course, opens you up to punches coming in
from your unprotected side, and that’s exactly what the hook
does. In other words, the jab sets up the hook. That’s how
the boxing combinations work in the real world.
Alternate Hooks
This is a combination for infighting and a pure power
combination—one knockout punch right after another. The full
waist twist of one hook sets up a full twist for the next one.
You may lead with either a right or a left hook and then
follow with the opposite hand, but for clarity, let’s assume
that your left comes first. (Keep in mind that the way your
opponent holds his hands will determine just how you use
your hooks.)
If he has his hands high and close together to protect his
face, you can still hit him in the head by opening up your
hooks a little and punching around his arms at the sides of
his head. Depending on how strong your opponent’s arms
are, you can even use the first hook to sweep his defense out
of the way and then pop his unprotected head with the sec-
ond. This is the technique that John Styers (a Marine Corps
hand-to-hand combat instructor who studied under Biddle)
recommended for the battlefield; he called it “the wheeling
attack” (see Chapter 12 for some notes about Styers’ excel-
lent book, Cold Steel).
If you’re inside your opponent’s arms, you can strike
either to the head or body. Shovel hooks will work best
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110
inside, but if you want to use regular hooks, it’s easy to set
one up by leading with a shovel hook. Dig a left shovel to the
body and your torso and feet will be in perfect position to
follow with a right hook to the head.
Double Uppercuts
This is yet another combination for infighting. With this
combo, the uppercuts are thrown with alternate hands. You
may start with either hand, although the right leads more
often than the left. Double uppercuts, both usually aimed at
the chin, take advantage of a fighter’s natural tendency to
expect an outside hook or overhand right after an uppercut.
Surprise your opponent with an upward surge that’ll drive
his jaw through the top of his skull.
TRIPLES
One-Two-Three
This is the most basic triple and perhaps the most effec-
tive. Simply add a left hook on to your one-two and you’ll
have the one-two-three combination. The combo takes
advantage of your opponent’s natural reaction to two straight
punches: he brings his guard forward and together, leaving
him open to the left hooking in from the side. The hook
tends to be very powerful: it uses the forward momentum of
the first two punches and the full waist twist that comes off
the right. Your finishing left can hit either the head or the
body, whichever seems more vulnerable.
Jab-Right-Jab
This is another offspring of the one-two. Follow your
straight right with another jab. All the punches should fly
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
112
straight at your opponent’s head. This is one of the best com-
binations for long-distance sharpshooting.
Jab-Hook-Right
Add a straight right (or a right hook if you’re inside)
when you hook off a jab and you’ll have this combination.
The consecutive lefts usually set up the right very nicely; it
explodes from an unexpected side.
Triple Jab
This combination is all about speed. Deliver three fast
jabs to the same target and at least one of them is going to
land, maybe more. Triple jabs work well against a bobbing
and weaving crouch fighter: aim for that bouncing head (and
maybe try to stick a thumb in his eye when you land—qual-
ity, not quantity). Another variation of the triple jab is to fire
head-body-head shots: the second punch draws down the
guard, setting up the third. But remember—FAST! Keep
pumping that jab and you’re certain to connect.
Double Shift
The final triple I’ll teach is another advanced technique.
Learn it well and you’ll have a sure fire knockout combina-
tion tucked away in your arsenal, like a sawed-off shotgun
hidden under the table.
Remember the Fitzsimmons shift (the “killing shift”)
described in Chapter 4? The principle of shifting involves step-
ping forward with the foot on the same side as the hand that’s
punching and changing stance in order to make the second
punch of a combination more powerful than the first. The dou-
ble shift extends this technique to a three-punch combination.
Lead with a standard left jab to the head, then throw a
right hook to the head, but step forward (take a full stride, not a
falling step) with your right as you launch the right. Now
you’re in southpaw stance. From there, shoot a straight left (not
a jab, but a straight right reversed) and shift again, striding for-
ward with your left foot as you throw the left-hand punch.
Shifting back and forth will impart unbelievable force to
that final left. If either of the first two punches of this com-
bination connect, then great! (The stepping right hook can be
vicious.) However, it’s just as good—if not better—if your
adversary avoids the first two punches by retreating. Go right
after him and nail him with that last left. Lights out.
That’s right. When you use the double shift, you want
your opponent to retreat from the first two punches, and you
want him to retreat straight back. A smart boxer (and let’s
hope that includes you) should never avoid a series of punch-
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
114
es by moving straight back, but lots of karate types learn just
that method as a way of avoiding blows. The double shift can
work wonders in a fight against them.
The Button
Boxers refer to the point of the chin as “the button.”
Press that button with a hard punch and your opponent is
liable to go down—and maybe out. The jaw acts as a lever
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
116
was also the greatest heavyweight champion of all time.
Ketchel was one of the great middleweights, a ferocious
puncher with whirlwind aggressiveness. As Johnson dis-
posed of one “Great White Hope” after another, Ketchel
decided to cash in on the color of his skin and take a crack
at the big man. Ketchel had beaten heavyweights before, so
why should Johnson be any different?
Ketchel held his own for much of the fight. Johnson, a
master of defensive fighting, seemed content to jab, avoid
punches, and look good for the cameras. Many thought that
he was carrying Ketchel to ensure a long enough bout for the
movies and that Ketchel was in on the fix.
Whatever the facts, Ketchel spotted an opening in the
12th round and took his shot at glory. Johnson launched an
overhand right that dropped Johnson on the seat of his pants.
He seemed more surprised than hurt. The heavyweight
promptly popped back up. Ketchel attacked again, but
Johnson was ready this time: he caught the middleweight
coming in with a right uppercut to the mouth. Ketchel fell,
out cold, and rightfully so—Johnson’s punch had hit so hard
that four of Ketchel’s front teeth were imbedded in the
heavyweight’s glove!
What would have happened to Johnson if he hadn’t
been wearing gloves?
Temple
When Cassius Clay knocked out Sonny Liston with his
“phantom punch” in 1965, there was really nothing “phantom”
about the punch at all: it was a surprise right to a sensitive part
of the skull, and the punch would have dropped anyone.
The temple is one of the thinner parts of the skull, and it
is a terminus of nerves and blood vessels. That’s what makes it
a knockout spot. But because it is still bone, you may want to
think twice before hitting it full force with unprotected fists.
How well your hands will hold up depends on their condition.
The Nose
In my opinion, the nose is the best target for a punch in both
the boxing ring and the street. It’s easy to break someone’s nose
and put some real hurt on him. Take away a broken nose from a
fight and you’ll think twice about fighting the guy who broke it a
second time. Additionally, if the fight goes long, a broken nose
will severely impede your opponent’s breathing. A good break
(the nasal bone, not just the cartilage) opens up what I like to call
“the blood faucet,” and the sight of all that blood scares the shit
out of most guys who think they’re tough. Against the typical
tough-guy wannabe, breaking his nose ends the fight right there.
The Ear
Take your finger and press the tip into the hollow where
your ear meets your jaw. Hurts, doesn’t it? That’s because
there are a lot of nerves there, and that’s why the ears are such
good knockout spots. Hit the ear itself and it’s easy to cause
bleeding, shock, or even a broken eardrum (try a slap instead
of a fist for the last). The ears are more good targets for hooks.
The Neck
The neck abounds in knockout spots, with the throat
being the primary killing target for a life-or-death streetfight.
Crush a man’s windpipe and he’ll choke to death. That’s
why a fighter instinctively drops his chin to protect his
throat when he falls into his stance.
The back of the neck is an illegal target (the foul is
called a “rabbit punch”) in the ring, something that should
tell you how dangerous a knockout spot it is for a street fight.
If you get a shot at the back of the neck, take it.
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The Arms
Punches to the arms are not going to produce knock-
outs, but they are useful in setting up a knockout.
Adversaries with weak arms that are not used to taking
punches (and that includes plenty of “muscle boys” with
biceps for show and little else) will lose their will to fight
when you hit them hard on the arms. Pound their arms and
they can’t punch. Tire their arms with your battering and
they can’t hold up their hands to defend themselves.
Solar Plexus
Stand up straight and find the spot just under the lower
tip of your breastbone (sternum). That’s the solar plexus. The
major nerves that control the diaphragm run through this
spot. Always protect your solar plexus by dropping your
chest and rounding your shoulders when in a fighting stance.
A thick layer of muscle (remember those sit-ups!) helps, too.
The solar plexus gained fame as a knockout spot when
Bob Fitzsimmons knocked out Jim Corbett in 1897 to take
the heavyweight title. Fitzsimmons said he “invented” the
“solar plexus punch,” but in fact it had been a target since
the days of the bare-knucklers. They called it “the mark.”
Fitz used a left to the solar plexus after a shift to take out
Corbett. That’s still a good technique both for boxing and
streetfighting; the shift just seems to put your left into the
proper position for a solar plexus shot. However, ordinary
shovel hooks inside can work just as well.
Another way to attack the solar plexus is by means of a
straight right to the body.
If you’ve ever been knocked out by a solar plexus
punch, or have seen someone knocked out that way, you
know that it produces very different effects than a head shot.
You won’t black out or see stars, and you may be fully con-
scious as you fall, but you won’t be able to breathe and you’ll
lose control of your legs. Of course, if someone wants to
stomp on your head then, it’s easy. Be advised.
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CHAPTER NINE
121
Blocking with the hand.
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Blocking with the elbow.
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124
Cross guards or cross blocks are espe- From the cross block, counter with a
cially useful against wide swings, hook inside the swing
which are just the kind of punches a
brawler uses.
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126
To block an opponent’s blows,
Moore would crouch and cross his arms
over each other in front of his body.
Forearms and the top of Moore’s head
were the only targets left over. The Old
Mongoose could then let an overly aggres-
sive opponent punch himself out on those
forearms. Meanwhile, Moore would peer
over his defense, protected like an
armadillo in its armor, until an opening for
a knockout counterpunch showed up;
Moore had a record 147 knockouts.
Archie Moore was able to use his
armadillo defense because he was so
The armadillo de-
clever. Other fighters have adopted the
fense. If the opponent
technique, too. Gene Fullmer, for exam-
moves to attack your
ple, middleweight champion in the late
body, he also places
1950s, was a slugger. He was no artful
himself in your punch-
defensive fighter who had a number of
ing range.
equally useful ways to avoid an oppo-
nent’s punches. He was a bull.
Fullmer learned to cross his arms,
armadillo-style, and wade in where he could do damage with
savage hooks. He took some punches to be sure, but he could
take a punch too. His style wasn’t pretty, but it certainly
worked for him. It might work for you, too, against the typ-
ical light puncher in a street fight.
SLIPPING
Slipping outside.
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Slipping outside is safer: It puts you out of range of your
opponent’s punches (unless he throws a backhand), but it
also makes it more difficult for you to counterpunch. Slip
outside a left jab and it’s easy to fire a counter straight right
up the middle, inside of his jab. Or you can swing up from
the slip and counter around the jab with a left hook.
Otherwise, you’ll have to change facing in order to counter-
punch, and that will slow your counterattack.
So we see that each way of slipping has its own pros and
cons. The only way to know instantly—and that’s the speed
you’ll need to know in a real fight—which way to slip is to
practice slipping punches during your sparring sessions. (But
proceed slowly: it’s hard to slip punches the first time you
try.) An excellent exercise to learn how to slip punches is to
have your sparring partner throw slow punches at you as you
slip them, and then gradually increase the speed. Once you
are skilled at slipping punches in the exercise, you’re then
ready to slip them in free-form, full-contact sparring.
DUCKING
FOOTWORK
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that will keep you on your feet and fighting, whether in the
ring or on the street.
First, keep it simple. Notice that there are no complex
movements involved in sidestepping. Your feet can easily
and naturally slide right out of your stance. Fancy footwork
looks pretty—if you’re dancing—but you’re preparing to tan-
gle, not tango. All those hops, skips, and jumps that work so
smoothly when you’re warmed up and moving on the flat
surfaces of the gym are liable to send you tumbling to the
ground if you try them in an alley or a crowded bar, and
that’s how fancy fighters get stomped.
Second, always use sliding steps. Remember that both
feet slide out of the way when sidestepping. Sliding steps
(aka shuffling steps) keep your feet underneath your body
and your weight on the ground. Leaping looks good in the
movies, but, again, it’s a sure way to find yourself on the
ground in the real world. Sliding steps also allow you to get
full weight into your punches.
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karate, for example, teach straight-ahead attacks. Those
reverse punches and side kicks can indeed do a lot of dam-
age—if they land—but only a paralyzed moron is going to
stand straight and still and let himself get hit. Real people in
real fights do their damnedest to get out of the way. In other
words, real people in real fights fight from angles, so it
makes sense to practice angles in the gym.
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That brings us to our seventh rule of footwork: don’t
avoid attacks by backing up in a straight line. It’s common for
someone inexperienced with full-contact fighting to back
straight away from an attack. Karate-types seem especially
prone to this mistake.
Straight backing-up is the worst method of defense.
Think of how the double shift suckers someone who tries
that into a final knockout punch. It’s just as easy to simply
bore in and keep your weight exploding into straight punch-
es against someone who backs away from your attacks.
The only time to back away from an attack is when
using a desperation move known as the “sway-back.” To
sway-back, you shift your body straight back, letting your
weight fall onto your rear foot, the heel of which falls to the
floor. The sway-back is a natural move that slides your body
straight back a few inches and, you hope, just out of range of
your opponent’s attack. Use the reverse momentum of the
sway-back to then pop forward, pushing off with your rear
foot and putting weight into your counterpunches.
The automatic counterattacks illustrated with both the
sidestep and the sway-back show the eighth rule of foot-
work: move in and out. Attack in flurries. Move in, do your
damage, and then get out. If your opponent drops, good, but
if not, move in from another angle and do more damage.
Repeat as necessary until he does go down.
Offensive and defensive fighting should work together;
neither is complete without the other. You’ll need to punch
and avoid punches in order to fight like a champion.
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136
not to oppose the punches—not to meet force with direct
counterforce—but rather to go along with the force in order
to steal some of it. (Of course, it’s better to have the force
miss you entirely by evading the punch.)
Sometimes—maybe a lot of the time in a streetfight—you
won’t have to bother with rolling with punches. Because of
the full-contact training of a boxer, your body will be so hard-
ened and your psyche so inured to pain that you can ignore
the fly swats the average tough-guy wannabe will throw at
you. Few fighters who haven’t boxed (including many trained
martial artists) know how to get their weight into their blows.
They simply can’t hit hard because they arm punch. It’s not
difficult to move right through their feeble defenses and
pound away with your own bone-breaking power.
139
FOUL PUNCHES
(AND OTHER ARM AND HAND BLOWS)
The Chopper
Remember the bare-knuckle boxers who competed
under the London Prize Ring Rules? Their bouts often ended
up in long matches of endurance because the fighter’s unpro-
tected fists couldn’t stand up for long to repeated power
punches. Even when their knuckles were swollen and smart-
ing, though, the bare-knucklers still knew how to throw
knockout blows: they used the “chopper.”
The chopper is better known to martial artists as the
“hammer fist.” The striking surface is the fleshy part on the
pinkie side of the fist. In the same way that you’d pound on
a table, you’ll pound on your opponent with the chopper in
a streetfight.
There are two standard ways to supplement your box-
ing skills with the chopper.
First, chop with the chopper. Smash down from your
guard position, chopping from your elbow and simultane-
ously dropping your weight into the blow. The most likely
opportunity to use the chopper in this way occurs when
your opponent is fighting from a crouch and has moved in
close. Instead of trying to straighten him out with upper-
cuts (as you would in the ring), chop at your adversary’s
vulnerable spots on the back of his head and neck. A chop-
per brought down on a collarbone can break it if you hit
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140
hard enough, and a broken collarbone ends a fight right
away in my experience.
A second way to use the chopper employs the princi-
ples you’ve already learned for delivering hooks. Hold your
hands in an inside guard position. Throw a short left shov-
el hook, but instead of landing the punch with the standard
three knuckles, twist your forearm sharply as your hand
approaches the target so that the blow lands on the chop-
per surface.
Practice the chopper hook on the heavy bag and see
how useful it can be for infighting. The blows should be very
short (about three to five inches) and snappy. These kinds of
choppers won’t have anything like the power of a good shov-
el hook, but they can still do some serious damage.
Rabbit Punches
No, the boxing ring hasn’t been invaded by the animal
forms of kung fu and other martial arts. Rabbit punches are
punches that hit the back of your opponent’s neck.
Rabbit punches are illegal in the ring because the back
of the neck is an especially vulnerable part of the human
anatomy. There are three nerve nexuses around the rabbit
punch region: the seventh vertebra, the neck itself, and the
base of the skull. Hand blows to any of those points can pro-
duce knockouts, or worse.
In the ring, rabbit punches usually occur by accident
when a wide hook loops around a fighter’s head or when a
fighter tries to duck a straight punch that is coming in from
a downward angle.
In a streetfight, there might be numerous opportunities
for deliberate rabbit punches. Be creative. Rocky Marciano
once won a championship fight by knocking out Ezzard
Charles with a downward right hook to Charles’ exposed
neck. The same sort of punch would likely work just as well
in a bar, even if you’re not Rocky Marciano.
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ever, it’s sometimes better to strike the lower abdomen (any-
where in the region between the navel and the crotch). That
section of the human anatomy is the weak part of the abdom-
inal wall, where the muscle is thin and weak (which is why
hernias occur there). Against out of shape opponents, hard
punches to the lower gut work especially well, as their lack
of muscle tone makes them unable to take a punch there.
One warning about using punches to the lower
abdomen: if you hit someone wearing one of those huge
metal belt buckles, you can hurt your hand on the contrap-
tion. If you’re fighting an urban cowboy, watch it.
ELBOWS
Blows from the elbows are also outlawed in the ring for the
very good reason that they are such effective weapons. Elbows
can easily cause cuts and knockouts, so allowing elbows in the
ring would take too much of the sport out of boxing.
Therefore, elbows should be among your primary
weapons in a street fight.
One of the best features of elbows is that they can cut
like knives, and because elbows are almost all bone, hard
and sharp, they tend to cut your opponent without injury to
yourself. Drawing a little blood (even in the age of AIDS) is
one of the surest ways to drain the fight out of an attacker or
at least leave him with the scars that will discourage him
from picking fights in the future.
When I was a teenager first learning how to box, one of
my more experienced sparring partners showed me a trick
that I could get away with in the ring. He threw a left hook
counterpunch inside of my straight right. As I’d learned to
do, I moved my head inside of the hook so that the punch
would loop around my head, but he snapped his forearm up
against his upper arm and hit me just above my right eye.
The point of the elbow caught me under my headgear. I saw
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practice using elbows whenever I hit the heavy bag. You
should, too.
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146
found that even his powerful combinations couldn’t do the
job against the champion, for Jeffries was that rarity of the
ring, an “iron man.” He could absorb unbelievable amounts
of punishment without falling.
When he got a rematch in 1902, Fitz decided to load his
gloves.
Because power alone hadn’t been sufficient against the
Iron Man, Fitzsimmons planned to slice the champion to rib-
bons. To “sharpen” his gloves, Fitz soaked the bandages that
he wrapped his hands with in plaster of paris and then let
them harden. The cemented wraps formed a hard, sharp
shell that the light leather gloves used in those days did little
to cushion.
Through six rounds, Fitzsimmons slashed at Jeffries.
The champ’s face soon leaked blood from a dozen different
cuts. In the seventh, the challenger topped off a combination
with a right that caught Jeffries over the right eye. The plas-
ter-powered punch laid open a piece of the champion’s
scalp, causing blood to gush forth and blind him.
These days the fight would be stopped at once, but
fighters fought in those days, especially when they were the
likes of James J. Jeffries.
As he sat in his corner between rounds, the Iron Man
knew that even he could rust: he was effectively blind in one
eye, and his strength was bleeding away from cuts. He had
to act swiftly and surely if he was going to retain his title.
When the eighth round began, Jeffries charged the chal-
lenger, pinning him in a corner. The champ feinted a left to
the head, and Fitz raised his right to block the punch. Jeffries
exploded with a left hook to the liver. The challenger’s
breath disappeared, and his legs went slack. Try as he might,
Fitzsimmons couldn’t rise before the referee tolled 10.
Despite loaded gloves of a particularly dangerous sort
and despite wounds that would have destroyed anyone but
an Iron Man, Jim Jeffries was the better man in that fight.
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inconspicuous weapons available. It’s the perfect weapon for
a boxing-trained streetfighter. I highly recommend both
loaded gloves and hand packs of all types.
Eye Gouges
Poking, ripping, or gouging out an eye is, understand-
ably, outlawed in the boxing ring. It’s hard to fight very
well when you’re blind, and that fact is exactly what
makes eye gouges ideal weapons for serious hand-to-hand
combat. Note that I said serious combat. Commando and
high-level karate training teach that the two easiest ways
to kill a man with one’s bare hands are to 1) crush his
windpipe and 2) use a thumb to poke through his eyeball,
past the thin bone at the back of the eye socket and into
the brain. Such techniques are nice to know in the unlike-
ly event that you have to kill or be killed in a streetfight,
but the problem with commando fighting and the killer
karate techniques is that you have to kill if you use them.
It’s the old difference between uncontrollable systems and
boxing, which is controllable.
Despite the rules against eye gouges, they’re used all the
time in the ring. Boxers, of course, don’t use gouges to kill,
just to blind temporarily. In the ring, boxers gouge eyes by
means of “thumbing.” When a fighter’s career is ruined
because of a detached retina (it happened to Sugar Ray
Leonard, among others), it’s almost always because he was
thumbed. Entire careers have been built on the judicious
employment of thumbing (most notably, that of former
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a gentleman. Jackson won the bare-knuckle heavyweight
crown in 1795 from the first Jewish champion, Daniel
Mendoza. Only 5’7” and 160 pounds, Mendoza succeeded
because of his speed and boxing skills, especially a fast left
jab with which he peppered the faces of his opponents.
Although he knew he couldn’t match the champ’s
artistry, Jackson was more than six feet tall, outweighed
Mendoza by more than 40 pounds, and was enormously
strong (he could write his name legibly while holding the
pen at arm’s length and with a 72-pound weight tied to his
little finger). Naturally, when the fight began, Jackson used
his left to seize Mendoza by his long black hair and then used
that gorilla grip to hold the champ still while he pummeled
the smaller man with rights.
The bout was an easy knockout for Jackson. Thereafter,
most bare-knucklers entered the ring with shaven heads.
Jackson’s “gentlemanly” method of holding and hitting
is readily adaptable to a streetfight. If you’re fighting some
long-haired punk, grab a handful and pound him (it’s easier
if you’re taller than your opponent). A good grip on a coat
collar or bunched-up shirt works just as well. Just make sure
that your grip is strong, or he’s liable to pull away from you.
In my experience, the best technique is to use your holding
arm (usually the left, unless you’re a southpaw) to jerk the
target off balance quickly and then immediately throw hard
straight rights at his unprotected face. If you can punch even
a little bit, that’s usually the end of the fight right there.
Head Butts
Half or more of the cuts that occur in boxing matches
are a result of head butts. That alone should tell you how
useful head butts can be in a streetfight. Head butts work so
well because the head is hard. Remember the bare-knuck-
ler’s trick of allowing an opponent to land a hard punch on
the top of one’s head in order to break his knuckles?
Biting
God, in His infinite wisdom, had the good sense not to
fashion man with fangs. Human beings are aggressive and
dangerous enough without the kind of armament that wolves
and tigers tote around their neighborhoods scaring the hell
out of the less toothed.
Nevertheless, your teeth are among your natural
weapons. Children bite, and those primates most closely relat-
ed to man, gorillas and chimpanzees, rely more on biting in a
fight than they do on their fantastic strength. Your teeth aren’t
capable of inflicting the wounds that an ape’s canines can pro-
duce, but they can still be damned dangerous in a streetfight.
Use your teeth when locked in a clinch or in the closest
infighting. A vicious bite to an opponent’s hand or arm will
almost always cause such pain that he will release his hold
on you at once. If you’re locked head to head and can’t get
the distance for a punch, try sinking your teeth deep into
your opponent’s trapezius muscle or neck and then rip away
with a twist of your head: again, the pain should cause him
to pull away, and you’ll make plenty of room for a knockout
combination. Biting off a piece of his ear is another option.
If reading that last paragraph made you a little queasy,
don’t feel weak. Biting has limited usefulness in a fight, but
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152
it can be extraordinarily effective in the right situations. The
trouble with biting is to overcome a civilized person’s squea-
mishness about taking a chunk of flesh out of another
human being and tasting his blood. There’s no way to pre-
pare for it other than to plan scenarios in your mind, visual-
ize yourself doing it, and cultivate your abilities in controlled
bloodthirstiness for the desperate situations you may
encounter in a real fight.
Kicking
Despite the fact that kicking is the primary means of
attack in many Oriental martial arts, I hold the opinion that
kicking is rarely of much utility in a streetfight.
Part of that opinion, I realize, is pure prejudice. I’ve
been trained in basic karate kicks (front, side, roundhouse),
but I was never very good at any of them for a variety of rea-
sons: natural lack of flexibility in my legs, original training in
using my hands alone when boxing, and a fundamental lack
of interest in kicking someone in the head when I know that
I can knock him out with a punch. My overall lack of respect
for kicking is also based on experience. I’ve used kicks effec-
tively against dogs (which are built low to the ground), but
never against people, and I’ve only seen a karate kick used
effectively once in a streetfight—well, really it was a bar—
but in that instance, a kick to the knee blew out the joint and
ended the fight right then and there.
From what I’ve seen, then, most martial arts kicking is
fancy acrobatics, suitable for show and exercise but, at best
of limited use in a fight and, at worst, positively dangerous
to the kicker. The kind of spinning kicks that cause you to
turn your back on an opponent can be suicidal.
My final objections to kicking in a streetfight are based
on physical principle. I’ve already mentioned the danger of
turning your back on an opponent, but that problem is lim-
ited to only a few kicks. Every kick, however, violates a fun-
damental rule of sound fighting: it breaks your balance.
Standing on one foot necessarily places you off balance (in
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154
fact, one of the best times to hit a “killer karate” type is when
he tries to kick—he’ll go down).
For all that criticism, there are uses for kicking in a street
fight. I practice the low sidekick to the knee or shin as sug-
gested by the Fairbairn-Applegate-Styers school of hand-to-
hand fighting; but that’s more in preparation for dealing with
a knife than anything else. If you have lots of training in kick-
ing, you can combine boxing punches with your already devel-
oped skills. The French fighting style of savate is based on just
such a combination of kicking and punching. Practice combi-
nations of kicks and punches against the heavy bag and when
sparring, but keep those kicks low. The groin should be your
highest target, and it’s better to kick no higher than the knee.
If you want to kick someone in the head, knock him down
first. That kind of bar-floor stomping can be very effective.
WRESTLING
Clinching
Incredible as it may seem, even some professional box-
ers never learn how to clinch well. That’s why once they get
hurt, they often get knocked out. Of course, we’d all like to
punch so hard, so fast, so often, and so effectively that we’d
never need to clinch. But real fights don’t always go the way
we’d like.
There are two reasons why you may need to clinch.
The first, and most common, is self-protection. If you
take a hard punch or combination, you’ll sometimes need a
few seconds to recover before returning fire. The way to do
that is to “tie up” your opponent’s arms in a clinch so that he
can’t continue punching. There are various ways to clinch
and you’ll no doubt develop your own through trial and error
in the sparring ring.
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156
I have found that the most effective means of tying up
a fighter’s arms is to slip inside and then loop your arms over
your opponent’s and clamp his wrists or forearms under
your arms. A cruder way to clinch is simply to grab your
opponent in a bear hug, always over his arms (leaving his
arms free is asking to get hit). The bear hug is best used
when you are heavier and stronger than the man you’re
fighting, in which case you shouldn’t be in trouble in the
first place!
The second reason for clinching is because you’ve land-
ed a few punches and no longer want to pound your oppo-
nent. Such occurrences are not at all uncommon in the sort
of dustups you’re liable to get into on the street.
Cross-Buttock Throw
The strange and old-fashioned name of this maneuver
may give away the fact that it was developed in the old
London Prize Ring. The cross-buttock was the favorite take-
down of the bare-knucklers. Here’s how it’s done.
Wait until your opponent’s hands are low. Lead with
your left and seize his right wrist with your left hand.
Keeping your right elbow low, slip your arm around your
adversary’s neck. Jump with both feet, turning a little to
your left, so that your right foot ends up past his right and
your back is turned toward your opponent. Using your hips
as a fulcrum, bend your legs, pull hard with both arms, and
lever your opponent to the ground with a violent throw.
Practice this take-down slowly in the ring or on a
padded mat. You’ll soon get the hang of it and be able to put
an opponent on the ground without having to knock him out.
The cross-buttock throw also proved its utility outside the
prize ring in genuine survival situations. My favorite example
involves another of my heroes, Sir Richard Francis Burton
(1821-1890). Burton was a master in many fields—expert
swordsman, a linguist who spoke 45 languages, poet, and
Coat-sleeve Hold
This technique was recommended as practical for the
street by both Bob Fitzsimmons and Jack Dempsey, and they
ought to know.
The coat-sleeve hold is very simple to execute, but it can
only be used if your opponent is wearing a coat or jacket that
is partially unbuttoned. All you have to do is grasp the fab-
ric of the jacket by the lapels or collar and pull it open and
down so that the coat covers your opponent’s arms, thereby
using his own clothing to pin his arms to his body. Now he
can’t punch you, and he can’t block your punches.
How hard can it be to hit a human heavy bag?
Belt Grab
This technique can be used as a relatively nonviolent
means of control or as a knockout move for more serious
combat. The belt grab works just like you’d expect it to: use
your left hand to grasp the adversary by his belt (or, if he’s
not wearing a belt, you can grab the waistband of his pants).
By holding your opponent here, you control his center of
gravity and, therefore, his balance. Pull him forward with
your left and nail him with your right. If you want to mere-
ly control him, push the heel of your right hand against his
chin: it’s easy to throw him around, as long as you keep him
CHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING
158
off-balance (so that he can’t swing effectively at you). If you
want to put your opponent down and out, replace the right-
hand push with a hard straight right of a HOTHB to the face.
Repeat as necessary.
TRAINING:
ROADWORK, GYMWORK,
AND FLOORWORK
161
arduous of any athlete, but lots of conditioning programs can
be tough: marathon running, football two-a-days, swimming,
and other such demanding sports. The big difference
between boxing training and the rest is that boxing training
is training for combat.
Just as you’ve already learned the ins and outs of box-
ing by means of “Lessons from the Champs,” so should you
follow the champs’ training tips. The methods of condition-
ing developed during the many decades of boxing since
James Figg claimed the championship are proven effective
for battle. Use them and always keep in mind one essential
quality of boxing training: it’s hard work. Fighters refer to
their training in terms of work—workouts, floorwork, gym-
work, roadwork. Work, then, is what your exercise program
must be: treat your training like play and you’ll only be fit
for fun and games, not for the serious business of a real fight.
Approach each training period with a workmanlike attitude.
ROADWORK
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162
rooms, and (thank God!) no “health clubs” full of yuppies
and their bizarre mating rituals. You can run anywhere, and
you should.
Second, running builds wind or “aerobic fitness” as it
has been renamed in modern scientific jargon. It’s still wind,
and you still need it for a fight.
Now, no doubt some of you may protest, “Of course, a
boxer, fighting three-minute rounds in the ring, needs road-
work, but why do I need to build wind for a streetfight that
lasts a few seconds?”
To that I reply: “I wouldn’t guess you’ve been in many
street fights.” You see, it is true that few fights last even 30
seconds, but you’d be surprised at how winded you can get
during that time while throwing and taking punches.
Strength vanishes rapidly—by the second—in a fight, even
when you’re in top condition. But when you’re out of shape,
it’s gone before you know it, and then it’s too late for you.
Also, you can never guarantee that a fight won’t drag out
well past the half-minute mark (perhaps because someone
other than your original opponent gets involved.) In that
case, you’ll need all the wind you can muster. Finally, even
fights that finish fast can be incredibly stressful—pulse rac-
ing, blood pressure building, adrenaline pumping. Having
your endurance built by running allows you to handle the
physical stress both before and after a real fight.
Roadwork also builds mental toughness. Running on
despite the fire in your lungs produced by oxygen debt is one
of the best ways to develop the fortitude and refusal to give
up that can save your life in a streetfight. Getting out on the
road in all sorts of weather (even when you’re feeling lazy
and would rather relax in a recliner with the remote control
and a cold beer) builds the right kind of mental attitude.
Running long distances is rarely easy for most of us, and
that’s exactly why roadwork builds the mental toughness
necessary for survival on the street.
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Think about running for time instead of for distance. It’s
tempting to become obsessed with how many miles you run
and how fast you run them. Roadwork, remember, is a way
to prepare for a fight; it’s not the fight itself. It’s often better
to plan on 20 or 30 minutes than on three or four miles. Let
your sense of pace determine how fast you run.
GYMWORK
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and rope jumping, require no equipment or equipment of the
sort that you can keep in a drawer. Other equipment, such as
punching bags and sparring gloves, is readily available at
sporting goods stores and can be set up in your basement or
yard. For example, I hang the heavy bag I work out on from
a tree in the backyard. So with a little money and ingenuity,
one can set up an adequate gym just about anywhere.
Heavy Bag
Hitting the heavy bag is the essential exercise to turn
you into a power puncher. You can punch air every day for
a year, and you still won’t know what it’s like to hit hard
against something solid. Then, when you do connect in a real
fight, your wrist will buckle nine times out of ten.
Practice all your punches on the heavy bag, and, in
preparation for streetfighting, you should also practice all the
foul blows (HOTHBs, elbows, and so on) whenever you hit
the bag. As part of my own heavy bag workout, I always prac-
tice the fouls alone after exhausting myself with punches.
Elbows and HOTHBs can be struck against the bag with-
out protection right from the start of your training. But for
punches, especially at the beginning, you’re going to need
some protection for your hands. Start with both training
wraps (re-read the section about hand conditioning in
Chapter 3) and bag gloves. As your fists and wrists become
stronger, use lighter and lighter wraps. Eventually, you may
use bag gloves without wraps, but don’t forget what I said
about injuries to your skin. Don’t forget to practice some-
times while wearing light dress gloves or work gloves of the
sort that you’re liable to be wearing in a streetfight. There’s
no better way to build confidence for the real thing and to get
the feel for what landing a solid punch will be like in a fight.
Heavy bags come in a variety of sizes. The bags you find
most often are 50 to 80 pounds, but ones well over 100
pounds are sometimes used by heavyweights. The heavier
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really hard, having done plenty of her own training): hit the
heavy bag instead.
No matter what schedule you use when you hit the bag,
always hit “with bad intentions.” The only way to become a
power puncher is to practice punching hard. Lackadaisical
work on the heavy bag will lead to bad habits. Bad habits of
laziness and powder puff punching will bring you nothing
but trouble in a streetfight. Bags don’t hit back, but oppo-
nents do. Develop the habit of hitting hard so that they never
get a chance to punch back.
Speed Bag
Most martial arts seem to have picked up the use of the
heavy bag from boxing, but I have yet to see a speed bag in
a dojo. That’s a shame, because punching the speed bag is
among the most beneficial exercises available. If you’re
already working out, add the speed bag to your routine, and
if you’re just beginning, start off right by making the speed
bag one of your basic exercises.
Hitting the speed bag is less a skill-developer than a
pure conditioning exercise. You should spend little time hit-
ting the speed bag with the jabs, hooks, and uppercuts that
are your regular punches for a fight; practice those punches
on the heavy bag instead.
When you do use real punches on the speed bag, think
less about power than about speed and accuracy. The speed
bag is an outstanding way to improve your hand-eye coordi-
nation, especially with the left jab. One excellent exercise is
to set up in your stance in front of the speed bag. Then, slap
the bag to get it moving and try to land a clean jab on the
bouncing target. Think of the bag as the moving head of an
opponent who is trying to avoid your jab. Once landing the
jab becomes easy, try combinations. However, most of your
work on the speed bag will involve arm punches only.
I know! I know! I said never to use arm punches, even in
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ously circling toward your chest, and so on, round and
round. You’ll be hitting the bag in just the same way that
Moe used to hit Curly (not including the eye gouges, nostril
lifts, and nose pulls).
Now of course you’re not going to use a “Three Stooges”
technique in a serious fight (except, perhaps, for the eye
gouges), and that’s exactly the point: your speed bag move-
ments are for exercise only, and damned good exercise they
are. Your arms and shoulders will tire very quickly at first.
Work up to two or three three-minute rounds and you’ll
notice superb stamina in your upper body. Train for longer
and longer continual sessions on the speed bag (10-30 min-
utes) and your arms and shoulders will be as hard as steel.
You won’t build bulk on the speed bag, but you will
build useful muscle—fast, enduring, and hard. Take that kind
of muscle into a streetfight and you’ll emerge the winner.
Shadowboxing
Punching the air and fighting no one more formidable
than your reflection in the mirror may look foolish, but only
to a fool. In fact, shadowboxing is one of the most useful
exercises for a fighter. Jack Dempsey rated shadowboxing as
second only to sparring as preparation for a real fight.
Practitioners of Asian martial arts know the value of
shadowboxing. Karate has its kata, and kung fu has its
“forms,” and what are they but patterned shadowboxing? The
reason I prefer shadowboxing to kata, however, is that shad-
owboxing has no patterns; this makes it more like a real fight.
Gymwork usually begins with shadowboxing.
Shadowboxing is an ideal way to warm-up for the rest of
your workout, but shadowboxing should be much more than
a warm-up.
Use visualization to help get the most out of the exer-
cise. See an opponent in front of you and then fight him!
Employ your imagination to make your shadowboxing as
Sparring
The sparring ring is the closest you’ll come to combat
away from the real thing. Sparring is the exercise that sepa-
rates the merely fit from the fighter. Run, hit the bags, and do
thousands of push-ups and sit-ups; you’ll get into great shape.
But there’s more to fighting than fitness, and, fit as you are,
you won’t be ready for serious fighting unless you spar.
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LESSONS FROM THE CHAMPS #27:
“THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR SPARRING”
Medicine Ball
Getting hit in the gut, as you inevitably will when spar-
ring, isn’t the only way to learn to take body punches. The
medicine ball works almost as well, which is why fighters
strengthen their stomach muscles with the device. An old-
fashioned medicine ball will do more to get you in shape for
the real business of fighting than any “ab machines” on
which you could waste your money.
You’ll need a partner to use the medicine ball in the
standard way. Stand facing each other a few feet apart.
Crouch a little, hold your arms away from your body, drop
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your sternum over your solar plexus, and tense your stomach
muscles as if preparing to take a punch. Your partner then
throws (it’s really more of a push because the ball is so
heavy) the ball with both hands, as if passing a basketball.
He should aim for the muscles of your abdomen, neither
below the belt nor at the chest. Let the ball hit you like a
body punch and then immediately catch it as it falls. Push
the ball back at your partner, who, in the meantime, has pre-
pared himself to take the “punch” from the medicine ball.
Keep it up, back and forth, until you get tired, and you’ll
receive some sound exercise for your arms and shoulders as
they throw the ball. More importantly, you’ll soon develop a
stomach as hard as a steel plate.
FLOORWORK
Push-Ups
Do push-ups slowly. Your muscles will get all the speed
Sit-Ups
Sit-ups are a boxer’s standard stomach strengtheners (in
addition to the medicine ball). If you doubt that your abdom-
inal muscles require lots of work, then you haven’t yet
stepped into the sparring ring and taken hard body shots (the
harder your opponent hits, the stronger your gut must be).
When Muhammad Ali was training for “The Rumble in the
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Jungle” against George Foreman (undoubtedly one of the
hardest punchers to hold the heavyweight title), he did 500
or more consecutive sit-ups every day. That gave Ali the
strength he needed to absorb Foreman’s body punches and
“rope-a-dope” his way to regaining the championship.
Do sit-ups with your knees bent to protect your lower
back from injury. Remember that muscles grow strongest
when exercised slowly; do your sit-ups at the same slow pace
at which you do your push-ups.
Other calisthenics, such as leg raises and side bends,
that will help to build a wall of muscle around your midsec-
tion can supplement the sit-ups in your floorwork. Boxers
frequently use those other stomach strenghteners. Again, use
whatever works for you.
When you feel lazy, consider the punches that will
bounce harmlessly off your abdomen if you do your sit-ups
diligently and simultaneously think about the body shots
that will put you down and out if you let your gut get soft.
The armor around a champion’s middle can be developed to
an astonishing degree; Ali’s “rope-a-dope” is proof of that.
But here’s another point to give you some inspiration: Rocky
Marciano’s stomach was so hard that he used to let his oppo-
nents land body punches. “It tires ‘em out,” said The Rock.
Even if you’ll never take punches of the caliber that
Marciano and Ali had to endure, you can still make your
abdominal muscles as hard as boards if you work hard at
your sit-ups.
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against a wall and press against it with your head from
different angles. Hold the tension in your neck muscles
for six to ten seconds. You should look as if you’re try-
ing to push down the wall with your head.
• For strengthening the hands and wrists, the best all-
around exercise is squeezing hand grips. There are all
kinds of hand grips that you can buy. Most use an
arrangement of springs to provide resistance; others are
made out of rubber. Just as useful is squeezing a ball—
solid rubber, tennis ball, racquet ball, or whatever is
convenient for you. Gene Tunney squeezed foam-rub-
ber balls to build up his brittle hands. Jack Dempsey
squeezed lengths of rubber hose when doing his road-
work. Floyd Patterson recommended the kind of
“Spaldeen” that was used for stickball. Silly Putty, mod-
eling clay, or plastic putties designed for exercise also
make good hand grips. I like to use a variety of hand
grips; it beats boredom and strengthens all the different
muscles and tendons of the hands and forearms.
The best thing about hand grips is that they can be used
anywhere. You can condition your hands and strengthen
your wrists while watching TV or riding the bus—if you’re
smart enough to carry a hand grip. Develop the habit of
keeping a rubber ball in your coat pocket, for example, and
you’ll find yourself getting lots of exercise during time that
might otherwise be wasted; if the hand grip is conveniently
available, you’ll remember to use it during down time. I
know someone who has made it a habit for years to always
carry a hand grip, and he has forearms like Popeye.
“5BX”
If you’re the type who makes the excuse, “I don’t have
time for all those exercises,” then I have a way to ensure that
you do your floorwork. Simply follow the old Royal Canadian
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With a program as short as 10 minutes that gives you a
pretty complete workout (whether 5BX or one you devise
yourself), there’s really no excuse for shirking floorwork.
Push-ups and sit-ups aren’t as much fun as pounding the
bag, but do them anyway. If you aim to be a complete fight-
er, you’ll need a complete workout.
BUILDING MUSCLE
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working your muscles, not the weight, and always exercise
in strict form (to help avoid injury). Remember my advice to
do floorwork slowly; you must lift in the same way.
An especially good piece of muscle-building equipment
is a cable set (aka chest expander). It’s only a pair of handles
with springs or bungee cords in between, but few contrap-
tions are more useful for building fighting muscle. The ten-
sion provided by cables more closely duplicates the kind of
resistance you get from muscle-against-muscle combat. Any
exercise you can do with weights, you can also do with a
cable set. Cables have the added advantages of being both
portable and cheap: I made mine out of bungee cords pur-
chased from an auto parts store and it provides more resis-
tance than any set I’ve seen for sale commercially.
Do all the muscle building you like. Turn yourself into
another Incredible Hulk, but don’t fall into the trap of train-
ing with weights just so that you can lift more weight. If you
can’t put that strength into your punches, it won’t do you
much good in a fight.
185
Finally, let’s face it: reading hand-to-hand combat man-
uals is a hell of a lot of fun.
Have some fun, then, and read some of the books I rec-
ommend and review in this chapter. The chapter is nothing
more nor less than an annotated bibliography of unarmed
mayhem. My emphasis is on books that provide useful and
practical techniques and advice applicable to a real-world
fight. I have also stressed books that teach skills comple-
mentary to a boxing style of fighting.
The list that follows is not meant to be exhaustive;
rather it is selective. There’s plenty of crap written that
claims to tell you how to fight, but most of that stuff is about
how not to fight. I’ve chosen the good stuff. Learn something
worthwhile and enjoy.
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186
right mind-set can be the essential difference between the
winner and the loser of a streetfight.
A deserving classic of its genre, Kill or Get Killed
receives my highest recommendation. Buy it, read it, and
practice the techniques it teaches. It may save your life.
techniques can still prove useful for any fighter.
championship fighting.
stories add some additional zest to this book.
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188
Combat Judo was the term applied to the eclectic mix of
wrestling, boxing, jujutsu, and brawling taught to American
servicemen during World War II. Cosneck was a collegiate
wrestling champ who also studied martial arts. He was one of
Jack Dempsey’s assistants in developing and teaching practi-
cal methods of hand-to-hand combat to the Coast Guard.
Because of Cosnek’s wrestling background, the book
puts heavy emphasis on breaks and releases, holds and
locks, and throws and trips. But Cosnek also includes a chart
of nerve centers and other vulnerable spots on the human
body, which he recommends attacking by means of a “hack”
(edge of the hand) or “jab” (punch with middle-finger knuck-
le protruding from the fist). All the techniques are clearly
shown in black and white photos.
Cosnek’s book is among the best sources for grappling
moves to add to your streetfighting repertoire.
mend it too highly.
Delay is surrender!” No wonder he was so dangerous.
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Fong, Leo. The Theory and Practice of Knockout Punching.
Stockton, Cali.: Koinonia Publications, 1977.
This book is especially good for the martial artist who
wants to add some boxing to his fighting skills. Fong was both
an amateur boxing champion and a master of sil-lum (the
Cantonese name for shao-lin) kung fu. He very specifically
explains why a boxer’s punches with weight behind them are
the most effective knockout hand blows in a real fight.
Fong covers both principles and techniques. He shows
how to use the falling step (he calls it the “gliding step”) for
maximum power punches. For each technique, Fong pro-
vides a number of practical exercises designed to develop
more powerful punches.
think of on your own.
your hand-to-hand arsenal.
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192
least as much about how to stay out of fights as he does about
what to do once you’re in one, and those lessons may be the
most valuable of all in the book.
is mostly awareness and commitment.” I couldn’t agree more.
Marciano’s trainer, Charley Goldman.
Neff’s book.
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194
me as especially accessible, perhaps because Patterson showed
himself to be a smart trainer after he retired from the ring.
grate boxing skills into their style.
Barroom Brawling too highly.
rope jumping, and the like, then this is the book for you.
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196
Styers was a Marine and a student of Colonel Biddle.
His book grew out of a series of articles published in
Leatherneck magazine for the hand-to-hand education of
Marines during World War II.
Most of the book deals with bayonet, knife, and stick
fighting, but Styers does include a short and very much to-
the-point section on unarmed combat. The techniques he
teaches are vicious and eminently practical.
Styers divides his bare-handed attacks into three types:
a straight smash with the hand, a “wheeling” attack with the
fists and elbows, and a kicking lead. The first two are easily
adaptable to boxing skills. The wheeling attack, in particular,
is really just a slightly modified Fitzsimmons shift.
The combat skills in Styers’ book are for battlefield combat.
They will maim and kill; therefore, they are just the stuff for a
life-or-death streetfight. Styers’ techniques are easy to learn, and
I strongly suggest that you learn them. I also suggest that you pay
attention to cultivating the do-or-die, take-no-prisoners attitude
that Styers (good Marine that he was) emphasizes so strongly.
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