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A Look at Some Great Defensive Fighters

Ring 2By Dave “Madcap” Mroczek

An era is coming to an end, and most boxing fans don’t even realize it. The latest retirement of Floyd Mayweather, JR., this past November’s defeat of long reigning heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, and last November’s pummeling of Bernard Hopkins by Sergey Kovalev are certainly nails in the coffin of this long reigning era. The era of which I speak is the defensive era of the 2000s.

If asked to come up with a list of the most dominant fighters of the 2000s it would read something like this: Wladimir Klitschko, Bernard Hopkins, Floyd Mayweather, JR., and Andre Ward. What these men share in common is they fight in a defense first style, and they each rose to the pinnacle of their respective weight divisions.

While there have been defensive fighters before, it is rare that the best handful of fighters of an era would all use a defensive style. These men have fine-tuned their games, all in different ways, to avoid taking punishment whenever possible. Aggressive fighters, in comparison, are there to beat their opponent up, knock him out, break him down with an accumulation of punches and put on a show for the crowd. The defensive minded man could care less about putting on a show for the crowd. He is there to win a prizefight. He doesn’t place his focus on scoring knockdowns and knocking opponents out, he is looking to slow the fight to his own pace and score points on the judge’s card. He doesn’t need to break his man down with accumulation punching, he will break him down by neutralizing his attack. He would rather out point his man two to one than beat him senseless. He is a sportsman not a brute. He is looking to slow the fight down to his own pace, a slow pace where he can nip and tuck his way to victory while neutralizing his opponent’s strengths.

The problem with this style is that it is not very well received by casual fans. While the boxing faithful will watch the technical skill and mastery of distance it takes to win a boxing match with such a war of attrition, the casual lot will overlook the skill and dedication it takes and sneer at yet another “ballroom dance” of a fight. While it is a lot flashier for spectators to see a fighter steamroll an overmatched opponent, it is infinitely more difficult to out point and completely neutralize a top level talent. While this does make for a winning style, it does not bode well for attracting new fans to the sport.

Another drawback of utilizing this style is that the fighters rarely enjoy much respect from the public during their reigns. I recall Bernard Hopkins being widely disliked during his middleweight and super middleweight days because his style was seen to be boring. It was not until his forties, during his light heavyweight days, and the realization that he had been a top force for twenty years in boxing before fans came forth with the love for Bernard. Wladimir Klitschko had collected an armful of belts and defended the lineal championship several times before fans started giving him the respect he deserved. Wladimir even had a period where he lost his American television contract because he was too boring. Imagine that, the heavyweight championship of the world was not even on TV in America! Andre Ward unified and cleaned out the entire super middleweight division, and made himself the pound for pound king, and still had not made himself into a household name. He became so disenfranchised with the business that he retired in his prime, before returning to the sport more recently. Floyd Mayweather Jr. is the black sheep of this group, he has clearly risen to the top of the sport. While he became the biggest pay per view draw in the game, it took him a very long time to build to that point, and he still retained many detractors.

All of these great defensive champions apply their craft in different ways. The common denominator is that they look to neutralize their opponent as a first priority, then look to strike second. Floyd Mayweather, JR., prefers to remain on the outside in a fight, rarely, if ever, coming forward. That way when his more aggressive opponent is lunging in and trying force the issue, Floyd has his man out of position and can land one of his lightning quick counters, reset to the outside, and do it again and again, never allowing his man close enough to do any damage. Wladimir Klitschko’s style has been described as “grab and jab” and this is not far off.

Klitschko knows that he doesn’t have an elite inside game, so he doesn’t put himself in position to rely on such a weakness. Wlad has a great jab, and a fast right, so instead of trading punches and possibly getting drawn inside, he is content to land one or two punches then clinch, neutralizing his opponents attack. Being such a tall and large heavyweight, Wladimir will lean on his opponent during the fight, and even clobber him with his shoulder on his way into a clinch, causing serious attrition over twelve rounds. Bernard Hopkins liked to stay on the inside and clinch, and seemed to benefit from many “accidental head butts” during his career. Similar in style to Wladimir’s jab and grab, Hopkins would often land a single shot, clinch, then turn his man out of position and land again by hitting on the breaks.

All the while stifling top talent in the many weight divisions he competed in. Andre Ward perhaps engages his opponent more than the above mentioned fighters, but still looks to control the pace. Ward will stand in front of his man for the whole fight in a way that Floyd Mayweather Jr. never would. That being said, Ward will weave together a tapestry of clinches, slips and counterpunches that has baffled the best.

In team sports they say that “defense wins championships”, and this is true of boxing as well, perhaps we could add “defense defends championships” to that mantra? Boxing is always changing, yet always cyclical in a strange way. The 1980s and 1990s gave way to some of the best action fighters the world has yet seen. The 2000s came along and gave us one of the best defensive eras we have ever seen. What will come next? Only time will tell, and fight fans will be watching.

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