Boxing 101: T-rex Arms and the Advantages of Being Small


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For me, it just puts me in the fight mode when I let him know he ain’t gonna do nothing with those little T-rex arms, he’s about to get beat up, I get to punch a senator in the face and he’s gonna feel it and he’s gonna be upset about it and he can do something about it Saturday night. It’s called swing, swing, swing baby. (Keith Thurman)

It's been a week ago and we know the results. The fighting senator's t-rex arms prevailed. Like I said earlier, Just after the fight I thought Thurman won and thankfully he did not, else I would have lost a $50 bet. But it was really a close fight, the problem with Thurman is that he did not make a push earlier. If he had the same state in rounds 8 to 10 like what he had in rounds 11 and 12 it would have been a more favorable bout for him. Pacman although not as strong in his earlier years have proven that he can still last and dominate a 12 rounder at the age of 40. Just on this fact alone we can say that his conditioning was really top notch and Thurman was aware of that. I did not dare to say that he was lax, but compare to Manny it was evident that he fell behind in this aspect of his training.

Together with great conditioning Pacman is also a more stable fighter compared to Thurman. And this is proven even in his earlier fights with bigger opponents. Margarito, Hatton, Diaz - these guys are just some of the many fighters that was preyed upon by Manny's stability and balance. Okay, science time. Now, we're talking about stability and balance BUT what do these things have to do with winning against larger opponents? Let's say we have dominoes horizontally stacked on a table. We have 2 stacked dominoes spaced so that they wouldn't touch each other. One stack has 5 dominoes stacked, the other has 10. We applied force on the table by shaking it. Notice that the one with 10 stacked dominoes will crumble first. The reason behind this is that the center of gravity for the shorter stack is closer to the ground which provided it with more balance and stability. And this is not only true for dominoes but even for sports like boxing. The shorter the opponent the more stable he/she is. This also means that he/she has the potential to execute his/her techniques with more fluidity against a larger opponent. If you had the chance to watch the earlier fights of Mike Tyson on the heavyweight division you would observe that he had this tendency to swing VERY low which was proven effective. He avoided hits, got more stable footing and got a chance execute his technique.

Smaller fighters always tend to close in and this is to devoid the opponent of their range. So what happened to the battle of century between Pacman and Money Mayweather? Just to note Mayweather has a more than 10 cm reach over Pacman. And he capitalize it really well. Mayweather kited Pacquiao, he avoided staying close most of the time, and that was smart. Although the 'fight of the century' was not as exciting and sensational as it should be, there was no doubt that Floyd won the fight. He stuck to his aces until the very end and won. Although there's a very little chance for a re-match, I just hope that there will be one.

At the end of the day, advantage is just an advantage. Both small and large fighters have their own. It will only be decided on how or who will use it effectively. If God has given you an ace and you do not love and nurture it, then victory would be very difficult.



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“If you work hard in training, the fight is easy.” -Manny Pacquiao

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