HOW TO WATCH BOXING: DON’T PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD
diminished the opponent has become. Many fighters are excellent at bluffing or showing a poker face. And while it could be obvious to those watching the fight or in the corner that the opponent is ready to be stopped, the fighter who’s in the ascendancy may not fully grasp the reality of the moment. Maybe a fighter can’t go for the stoppage because he’s nursing an injury. As the fighter who’s behind may be an expert at bluffing or showing a poker face, that could also be a case for the one who’s winning. Something physical is stopping him from doing more. Other reasons for playing with one’s food can illustrate a weakness with the dominant fighter. There’s most likely an underlying reason why the fighter isn’t really going for the stoppage despite the weakened state of the opponent. For trainer Stephen Edwards, when he sees a fighter playing with their food, he immediately believes that the situation signals a deficiency with the boxer. Edwards believes that conditioning is the most common problem in this circumstance. “One of the main reasons why people play with their food is past experiences of going for knockouts and not getting them,” said Edwards. “They go for the knockout in a way that they gas themselves out, and then they need a round or two to recover because they are tired. And despite what people might think, the worst feeling for a fighter is not being hurt; it’s being tired. Fighters often don’t want to put themselves in compromising positions when they got a guy hurt.” In these situations, fighters don’t trust their own conditioning. Although they might possess the skills to dominate an opponent, they aren’t as confident with what it may take to succeed in going for the stoppage. Whatever gaps in conditioning a fighter may have, another part of the problem, according to Edwards, may be the overall lack of finishing ability. But he believes that like everything else in boxing, finishing is a skill that can be developed over time. There are fighters who are gifted in this area, but there are others who can improve with the right teaching and preparation. “The first thing you can do to improve a guy’s finishing ability is to improve stamina,” said Edwards. “You do drills where you take the heart rate up and down. You get a fighter to trust his conditioning. If he works in a way where he ups the ante – let’s say that he has to throw 30 or 40 punches in a short time span – that he’s confident that his body will recover and he can get through that without feeling totally depleted. “The second is punch selection. There’s an art to finishing. When the guy gets hurt and he shows you certain things, your punch selection is very, very important when it comes to finishing. “Last but not least, you have to tap into their psyche. To
hook, only for that fighter to come back and win. And even rarer is the case where the fighter plays with his food and loses by stoppage, but it does happen. Campbell-Peden I is perhaps the most infamous example of when playing with your food can backfire. The fight was an IBF junior lightweight eliminator. Entering the fight, Campbell featured a 24-1-1 record and Peden was 22-2. Both had experienced previous setbacks against top-level fighters, with Campbell losing a fight in 2003 to Joel Casamayor and Peden getting stopped at featherweight by Juan Manuel Marquez in 2002. Through the first four rounds, the fight was evenly matched. Campbell may have demonstrated the better one-punch power with right uppercuts to the body and straight right hands, but Peden had more success with combinations and work rate. In the fourth, Campbell ripped a couple of ferocious right uppercuts to the body that helped quell Peden’s momentum in the fight. In the fifth, Campbell started off the round like gangbusters, attacking Peden with menacing straight right hands and short right uppercuts to the head. And unlike in previous rounds, Campbell wouldn’t stop punching. When not throwing power shots, he kept Peden occupied with a constant jab. Campbell was finally putting his punches together. In this round, he displayed his full arsenal: uppercuts to the head and body, whipping right hands, left hooks, jabs and combinations. With 1:45 left in the round, Campbell landed the first of three pulverizing right uppercuts to the head and then followed up with a bruising left hook to the body. At the 1:20 mark, he landed a right uppercut to the head/ right uppercut to the body combination with such ferocity that Peden literally barreled over and looked directly down at the canvas. Peden seemed ready to go. Campbell continued the onslaught. And suddenly, with 50 seconds left in the round, Campbell dropped his hands to his sides, daring Peden to throw back at him. Peden then uncorked a left hook-uppercut hybrid from his skis, literally jumping off the canvas with the punch. The shot detonated on Campbell’s chin and he instantly crashed to the canvas, his body sprawled out by the corner. Although Campbell did beat the count, referee Lou Moret waved the fight off. Peden, who seconds earlier had looked close to being stopped, now had his hands raised as the surprise knockout winner. This was perhaps the quintessential example of playing with one’s food. Campbell was so overconfident in the moment that he gave Peden a free shot. Instead of continuing for the KO, or even a knockdown, Campbell stopped his offensive onslaught to play, to mug to the crowd, to embarrass Peden, to dare him. Peden responded, and Campbell paid the ultimate price.
Sugar Ray Leonard was not one to play with his food ...
... and Gennadiy Golovkin was not one to play at all.
be a finisher, you have to be mean. You have to be a cold- hearted, ruthless kind of guy. You can’t be timid. You can’t be an overthinker when you are a finisher. You’ve got fire finishers and you’ve got cold finishers, but they are all mean. “What I mean by a fire finisher is like a Ray Leonard or an Aaron Pryor, when they just rip off rapid combinations – you know: WAH, WAH, WAH! Terry Norris was one, too. And then you got cold finishers, like Gennadiy Golovkin or Kelly Pavlik. Pavlik was a great finisher, where he was nice and calm, and he comes up on you and knocks your head off. But all finishers are mean-spirited. They have a spite within them to try and get a guy out of there. And you challenge a guy to get that inner spite or inner meanness when they get a guy hurt.” Another possible deficiency for a fighter who plays with his or her food is a lack of trust in their chin. They aren’t confident in their defense when they go for a stoppage. “This is the problem where fighters haven’t found a way to become more intense and more vicious while remaining
defensively responsible,” said Edwards. “So, what they do is stay in the same rhythm or the same mode that they’re in because they don’t understand how to step up the intensity without running into a big shot.” And a final reason could be a simple one: ego. A fighter wants everyone to know that they are in charge, but instead of going for the finish, they decide to drag it out, to dominate further, to embarrass the opponent, to leave no doubt about supremacy in the ring. However, this leaves the possibility that anything could still happen in the fight. CONCEPT IN PRACTICE: NATE CAMPBELL VS. ROBBIE PEDEN I, 2004. There are many fighters who play with their food in boxing. If you watch enough fights, you’ll see that it’s a common occurrence. Occasionally a fighter who plays with his or her food can suffer the ultimate indignity: letting a fighter off the
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