What makes a fighter

Q: Do you fi nd it difficult to recover from a big fight? THAT sort of thing can be difficult to recover from! How do these two disciplines differ in terms of preparing, fueling and recovery? A: A big difference is the strongman requires energy in much smaller bursts up to 90 seconds max, as opposed to 3 x 5 min rounds. Both require high energy carbs fats protein, with strongman I could literally eat anything with no restrictions.

Once I made the switch to MMA I dropped from kg to kg, fortunately my knowledge about nutrition has improved since and I work with a great team. As a four-round preliminary boy he made it a practice to sit at ringside in his ring clothes, before and after his own fights in order to study the others on the card. One day we were talking in the Uptown Gym in Harlem.

He was explaining how he had learned to fight by watching others and fighting others, and I asked him from whom, among those he had fought, he had learned the most.

Why, he showed me how you can make a man butt open his own eye. Fritzie was smart. He had fought Kid Gavilan twice. When he does that you know the right hand is dead, and you how the hook is coming. He remembered the night he fought Artie Levine in Cleveland in November of Levine had a dozen pounds on him and so Robinson was fighting it the way you should fight it, moving and throwing no more than combinations and piling up the points.

Robinson got up at nine, and in the next round he knocked Levine out. He has never forgotten this, however, but the fear that Robinson knows is the limited fear that inspires a degree of caution and out of this gives birth to inspired performance. Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription. Saturday, November 13, Follow Us:. Classic Column: What makes a good fighter? Facebook RingTV.

Official Product. That means staying out of trouble when you are not in the ring or training. Marvin Hagler was one of the greatest fighters of the s and '80's, and despite his muscular build and powerful punching, he was not a world-class athlete like some of the opponents he faced.

He made up for that by training hard and having the discipline to get the the most out of his ability source: Sweetscience.

Call it guts or call it courage. It's one of the most underestimated characteristics that all boxers need. When you get into the ring, you face an opponent who is trying to hit you with hard punches and hurt you. You know this in advance.

It takes guts to get in the ring and fight knowing you are going to get hit. It takes even more guts to keep fighting with discipline and precision after you have gotten hurt. Few fighters ever showed more guts than Muhammad Ali in the ring. He earned a title fight against Sonny Liston in , and he was considered a huge underdog because Liston was so big and strong and hit so hard.

Ali, known as Cassius Clay at the time, won that fight and a subsequent rematch. In a series of three fights with archrival Joe Frazier, Ali absorbed many brutal punches and won two of the the three bouts. Ali knocked out powerful champion George Foreman in a bout that many critics thought would end up with Ali flat on his back and severely injured. Ali had many of the skills mentioned in earlier slides, and guts may have been his greatest attribute. Critics may laugh at that self-important nickname, but there is quite a bit of truth behind it.

Watch two skilled boxers in the ring, and it's about employing a strategy and using your strengths against your opponent's weaknesses. This takes intelligence. You have to know what your opponent is going to do in the ring and you have to figure out strategies that will allow you to perform at a very high level. If you are not thinking four or five moves ahead—as a chessmaster will do—you are not giving yourself the best chance to win.

You must understand what your opponent is trying to do in order to be at your best.