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Science Class: The Art of the Southpaw

labBy Jesse “New School” Wright

To all the lefties out there, you know what I’m talking about when I say it’s easy to feel neglected. I was talking to a fellow lefty this weekend when he reminded me of that awkward moment when you first learn a new sport from the coach. All the lefties know exactly how this goes. The coach goes through a demonstration of every mechanical movement in displaying the core fundamentals. Then, at the end, He says “If you’re left handed, just do it with the opposite side.” Thanks Coach! For all the struggle that comes with learning a sport as a southpaw it does come with a world of advantage if done correctly.

Left handedness creates success based on the core concept of utilizing angles. This is not exclusive to just boxing. It gives hockey players a wider array of shot angles, baseball pitchers can open up the strike zone from the other side of the plate and boxers utilize the angles of attack to challenge orthodox fighters. As it pertains to boxing, just fighting southpaw alone isn’t necessarily an advantage. There is an initial awkwardness and lack of comfort in fighting a lefty.

For starters, orthodox fighters simply don’t fight southpaws as often as they do other orthodox fighters. For that reason alone, it’s even a challenge for lefties to fight other lefties. For an orthodox fighter, the struggle follows when the lead foot gets tangled up with the lead foot of the southpaw. It is not as easy to get inside with that lead foot providing an immediate barrier.

Now, it is one thing to just be a southpaw, but it takes a more elaborate skill set to be an effective one. As I stated earlier, the name of the game is angles. The best case scenario for a southpaw is to fight from a position where his right lead foot is always to the outside right of the orthodox fighter’s left foot. Defensively, this allows the southpaw to control an opponent’s lead jab, it nullifies the orthodox fighter’s left hook and maintains an effective distance from the straight right. From this position, the southpaw can effectively jab to the head over the orthodox fighter’s lead hand and follow up with the left straight after opening up the guard with the jab. This is also a great angle for the southpaw to throw a right hook with little threat of being countered.

The really good southpaws will also utilize an angle where the lead right foot sits just inside of the orthodox fighter’s back right foot. It’s rare that this position can be maintained more than a few seconds, but in that amount of time, a lot of damage can be done. Fighters lead shoulder first in order to leave the majority of their body unexposed. From the inside angle, a southpaw has access to the whole body. Just like the outside position discussed earlier, the orthodox fighter’s punches become nullified. When he was younger, Manny Pacquiao made a living on this inside position. His feet were so fluidly synchronized with his hands that he could immediately jump in to this position and string together an eight punch combination before his opponent ever moved out of danger’s way.

The crucial attribute that every southpaw must possess in order to be effective is exceptional foot work. Vasyl Lomachenko ran a clinic on how to fight southpaw in his last fight against Romulo Koasicha. Lomachenko, a southpaw, spent the majority of the fight outside of Koasicha’s lead foot. The only time he switched from that position was when he moved inside over Koasicha’s back foot and opened him up to a flurry of damaging blows. Lomachenko’s foot and hand speed were both so fluid and effective that Koasicha didn’t even seem to see a lot of the punches coming.

The result was a dominant win which saw Lomachenko go untouched. Anybody can be left handed or fight southpaw. There will always be the initial advantage of giving an opponent an unusual look. To be a great southpaw is to understand how to maintain advantages through angles and putting that in to practice. It takes elite foot speed to bring it all together

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