Details

Published: 23 December 2012

This list is some kind of effort to reveal all hidden illegal or low sportmanship methods that give gain to a certain boxer or handicap his opponent when not met by both sides or by the rules:

• Gloves

Finding the hardest allowed gloves is mandatory job for every boxer and his team. Currently one of the hardest gloves that produce most damage are Cleto Reyes. They are called "puncher gloves" for that reason. Having different hardness of the gloves punching area is because of the ridiculous rules by the organizations that regulate the weight of gloves in ounces, but not the punch impact. So if you wanna cheat or at least to equalize, better choose "the choice of the professionals"!

• Hand Wraps

Remember Antonio Margarito? Well he wasn't the first case, but the most recent and popular one. There was some movie about case like that called "Death on the Ring", which is definitely worth watching. To protect yourself better make sure some of your team is having an eye on the opposite corner while wrapping if possible. The sad thing is that on low level bouts there is absolutely no check done...

• Oils like Coco Butter

Everyone wants to be "slippery". Use some oils for that purpose! They are not regulated and the referee will at most warn you for that! Some of them will protect from cuts too, like Coco Butter. Same Coco butter that Emanuel Steward puts on Wladimir Klitschko and the same Coco Butter, which Lateef Kayote blamed Antonio Tarver for being so slippery on his body shots.

• Trunks High (Profis)

Have watched David Haye?! (click for a guideline)

• Strange Headgear (Amateurs)

It seems that in USA there is pretty much loosely regulation of how the headgear should look like, because you can see people with full gear boxing others with cut gear!

This doesn't means of course that regulations on world wide events are enough (check some amateur championships photos).

• Giving the Back to Punch

Widely used techique that is pretty much "half illegal". Just give your back and whine to the referee "he hit me in the back!".

• Pushing

You remember Amir Khan vs. Lamont Peterson?! Well, taking points for pushing is the most normal thing that a referee should do and any journalist calling this a roberry, adding the ridiculous reasoning that this rule is not so strict in other states, should be considered as narrow minded.

• Clinching

Clinching is not legal, but anyway widely practiced, especially when close distance is not the best choice for the clincher!

• Spitting Mouthpiece

When you are awful tired and getting beaten up, just spit the mouthpiece to buy some time! The cool thing is that the first time you do that there is no point deduction! Sometimes you can get away with that for couple more times!

• Thumbing in the Eyes

Who remembers Steve Cunningham vs. Troy Ross or Lenox Lewis vs. Vitaly Klitschko?!

• Punching on clinch with the hard glove sides

Widely practiced. Punching in the back during clinch is almost "legal"! :)

• Whrestling

Well this one is highly practiced and pretty much "legal" as well ;)

• Pushing with Knee

Good choice, especially with different stances!

• Stepping on the Foot

Great way to pin an faster opponent, that works awesone with diffent stances as well!

• Elbow like Tyson

Mix the hooks with elbows to ensure double damage ;)

• Shoulder

Favorite Amateur move.

• Foot Punch, Tedy Atlas supporting that punch

Punch the feet is also a great strategy to slow down a running target. Tedy Atlas supported that as an idea at his Friday Night Fights show. Considering that he is world class trainer one should ask himself how is he getting away with such comments?!

• Head Butt, king Holyfield

If I was at the place of Tyson I would do something illegal to answer Holyfields nasty headbuts! Maybe not with biting, but at least something!

• Low Blow, king Abner Mares

I am watching no more Abner Mares because of that!

Details

Published: 23 December 2012

One year left by and there was a time to compete again in the High School Boxing Championships, this time held in Münster. I'll start with the last year event when in 2011 we had the most successful year and took two first and two second places. It was very cool time back in the days and you can read that article as well (click). Last year the "lethal people" group was up to 8 fights. This year they added an advanced group for people having up to 14 wins and the "lethal people group" was up to 7 wins.

After 9 months staying out of the ring it was time to check in the Saarland championships. All went fine there and you can also check that article (cilck). Couple of weeks later I had another ring entrance, which found it's way to my blog (click). I won't get into many details there, just to mention the information that you should extract from those couple of sentences - I was fit to go :)

My weight was definitely an issue as I came around several kilos above the limit. There are numerous of factors that led to this. The first one is that after the Saarland Championship my weighting machine went down. As those championships were couple of months before I didn't thought that I'll gain that much weight, considering that I made the weight there easy and had perfect diet going on. In the couple months distance I've trained hard as usual and didn't noticed at all that my weight increased that much, as I had no fats nor pain in the joints after climbing, which are my criterias for weight gain besides the scales. This was about three weeks before the bout and besides some light diet there was no time do drop weight radically as this would harm the training effects. Sweat suit was unpacked and put in my luggage.

Anyway, as we arrived I and checked in my weight was, as expected, above the limit. The others were good so everyone had a nice kebap meal, while I was looking and smelling with a small fruit juice in front of me. Besides that it was cool to meet the old faces again - an year later. Kinda shared the same thought of Cologne's trainer, who asked "how long will you be a students?!" :)

Had some nice sweat session after the advise of Meilnger (Middleweight monster) to be easy to have some weight tomorrow, although I was not supposed to fight, which I've learned just after the session, because the brackets came up too late (11 pm).

Sweat Session before sleep - priceless! :)

Next day 7 o'clock good morning! Went to get some eat and was just told while sitting on the table that I must make weight, because I was going to fight that day, despite the plan released yesterday! I wanna mention that besides this and some few other chaotic decisions the oragnization was at high level and I am thankful for that. But to meet the requirements now I ran to my sauna suit some nice short sweat session! Made weight short before 8 am. So I enjoyed a lot of water and nice meal immediately after then back to sleep! There was not a lot time to sleep because Ricarda was sceduled to fight at 10:30 and then Sarah's cousin and my eventual opponent had to fight at about 11 o'clock. Also my second eventual opponents had to eliminate themselves to fight me next in the afternoon.

We warmed up Ricarda to fight and she did well by winning by TKO. Not much to say here - was business as usual :)

Ricarda banging as usual :)

Then was time for the other two bouts in my weight class. Sarah's cousin started good, but lost totally his composure and faded as the rounds went by, so his opponent took the split decision victory. So pretty bad beat for the locals as he was representing the local university. It was pretty interesing as both elimination bouts were Aachen vs. Muenster and both of them were won by Aachen. This including the second bout where my opponent for evening took an easy win over the other hometown boy. I retired to listen some music, shopping and spent some time with the team as usual, while we all were awaiting for Anton to make his first ring entrance in the afternoon, followed by Wai Lap.

Anton was pretty nervous for his bout. Definitely self underestimating. Pretty normal situation for anyone having his first fight. We warmed him up and tried to build up some confidence in him. Then he entered the ring and made pretty good fight. Took some heavy shots pretty well, was counted for that and also made some nice shots. Shortly before the bell rang in the second round the referee stopped the fight and gave the win to his opponent. We were pretty disturbed, because Anton wasn't taking any shots right at that moment and could easy do the third round. The referee replied arrogantly "he was loosing anyway!". Yeah, what an argument! What and idiot! The boy is training every day for months, waiting anxious for his first ring entrance and then to loose unrightfully by TKO, just because "he was loosing anyway"! What a robbery! Anton was disappointed as well, but what can he do? We told him he fought well, and he did so!

Anton exchanging with bad odds

It was time for Wai Lap to do some businness. And he did it! In a tough fight he took the win! I wish you could see the relief in his eyes - the whole sweating, bruises, boold, pain... All payed off! Unfortunately I have no front picture, but if there was some, it wouldn't capture it all!

Great to see teammate winning!

While all this happened I was warming up for my first fight. I had made already a game plan what to do and it was consisting mainly of body shots and ground standing with tight guard. I was also wondering how I'll do with the conditioning after making the weight in the morning, but it was all fine. The plan was also all fine. My opponent had a hard head and although I gave him great shots to think of, I think I mostly hurt him with the body shots. Overall it was a tough fight and I am happy I did it :)

Leading right - what a beauty!

After the fight we talked with the team about the impressions we had that day and all went to eat something, while I prefered to rest and avoid looking at eating people again. And this was the right decision, because I had to make hard weight again and as it turned out I was about to fight in the first morning session after Wai Lap and Ricarda.

In the morning it was the sauna suit again that helped me do the weigh in. Afterwards as usual, just this time not much eat, because the fight was knocking on the door. I've made my fight plan as usual. This time it was not supposed to be that hard like the first one, so I was pretty chilled. The only concerns was the condition, but it turned out to be a no problem.

So after having a little rest it was a fight time. I streched as usual firstly and slowly started to warm up and went to the hall to look for Wai Lap, who was already warm and ready for rumble. He was supposed to fight against the same opponent he fought last year. So not much to say here, besides wishing him good look and help him to put his gloves on! The fight was tough. Wai Lap was the one having more power in his hands, but his opponent was technically very sound and had very high work rate. Wai Lap did many things surprisingly good, many other things surprisingly wrong, and at the end lost in a close decision, but all of our team was proud of that no matter the result.

What a great battle that was!

Thanks to some delay between the both halls there was enough time to warm up Ricarda for her first bout. She had to fight a iron chin zero technique panzer lady, that had already hard first fight in contrast to Ricarda. Ralf and Eduard warmed Ricarda up, while I was wrapping to step in the ring after her. She entered the ring and immediately after the bell rang it was pretty clear what the fight outcome will be - a TKO win for Ricarda ;)

Chicka :)

Meanwhile, I was warming up for my second and final bout. As said above I was wondering whether the condition will be enough, but never though there might be any other problem besides that.

Warming up the facial muscles :)

I entered the ring and had for first time in my fights and opponent that was smaller than me. I've did sparring with smaller opponents but never on official fight, so I made small technical readjustments. I had already a fight plan build up, consisting of nice technical boxing and pressing forward to see if a close fight might be a good idea. So the first round I started a little bit easy and gained momentum as I noticed that my condition was great, in contrast to what I've expected. Other thing that surprised me that although my opponent was very nervous and tight, he was pretty concious in close fight and had his arms placed well. So I chose to fight in any distance without favoring any.

Overhand right that made my opponent hesitating when putting leverage on the jab, despite landing beautiful

In second round I gained more momentum and in third it was pretty much the same thing. Bell rang and I was happy to be able to push again the high school championships in my weight class!

So after small celebration there we went to have some meal and check out how Muenster looks like. Well, it looks nice! Unfortunately, our trainers had some stuff to do back home so we didn't look too much and the bad thing was we weren't able to come back to the hall to watch the 'A' finals and to say goodbye to all other teams! (sorry for that).

Anyway, I want to thank to the organizers for the hard work in organizing this event. My overall impression was that there were a lot of tough fights held under respect from both sides and in very sportmanship manner. So thanks to all the teams and boxers as well. At last but not least I am very grateful to Eduard and Ralf for leading up the team and to our university of saarland for supporting us. Thanks to Heiko and Bernd from Voelklingen for the perfect training time as well! Thanks to our team for the support as well as special thanks to our 'fans' consisting of Sarah, Marina and her sister. I am very grateful to all my sparring partners like Dima, Sven, Manuel, Hassan, Daniel, Sascha, Ali, Nadia and all others missing in the list!

Under the line I wanna thank for the positive feedback as well and apologize for the huge delay of this article!

Note that there are videos on the way, so check back soon :)

Details

Published: 18 May 2012

I've just watched a trailer to a documentary, that I am looking forward to, called "Split Decision":

http://youtu.be/UIBoxxigYsI

It illustrates some of the split decisions, which I made on my own too and it is worth watching for those who can understand it.

Official website is http://www.herotraitormadness.com/video.html

Gabriel Montoya started an interesting blog series regarding the movie with first part at http://www.maxboxing.com/news/main-lead/brin-jonathon-butlers-split-decision-brings-guillermo-rigondeaux-to-the-screen-pt-1

Details

Published: 11 May 2012

Just watched a video about the cuban boxing kids called "Sons of Cuba" a.k.a."Cuban Punch Up - The Boys who fought for Castro". A video that I can only recommend, and you can see it also online at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAKoujtyPP4