STRATEGIES, SKILLS AND TECHNIQUES TO BEAT A BOXER
Sparring more than 200 years, Boxing has a long history of being the foremost fighting sport in the West
Question
Which skills should a kungfu student develop to beat a highly skilled Boxer? How to develop these skills? Which strategies would you recommend to apply in fighting Boxers?
-- Sifu Anton Schmich, Shaolin Wahnam Germany
Answer
Some important skills a kungfu student should develop if he wishes to beat a highly skilled Boxer are as follows:
- Being relaxed and focused.
- Ability to correctly judge a Boxer's reach.
- Good stance and body-movement to avoid a Boxer's strikes.
- Good footwork to chase after a Boxer's retreat.
- Adequate coverage to prevent a Boxer's surprise counters.
Some people may be surprised at the above answers. This is probably due to their confusing skills with techniques.
These skills may be developed in the following ways:
- Practice appropriate chi kung exercises to be relaxed and focused.
- Systematically practice with a sparring partner using appropriate techniques to develop good spacing and timing as well as body-movement.
- Systematically practice chasing a Boxer as he retreats taking care to cover him adequately, then defeating him decisively.
- Practice sparring with Boxers, progressing progressively from low-level Boxers to high-level Boxers.
The following strategies are invaluable:
- Do not hand your defeat to a Boxer.
- Exploit his offers.
- Create victory if he does not hand out his defeat.
The following tactics with the appropriate skills are useful:
- Cover and strike.
- Cover, chase and strike.
- Cover, fell and strike.
- Continuous kicks.
- Cover and chin-na.
Techniques that are useful in implementing the above strategies and tactics include the following. The pattern names are in Shaolin terms; Taijiquan practitioners may use the Taijiquan equivalents.
- Bow-Arrow Thread Bridge.
- Single Tiger Emerges from Cave.
- Wave Dragon Back to Cave.
- Golden Leopard Speeds through Forest.
- Fell Tree with Roots.
- White Crane Steps on Snow.
- White Ape Holds Branch.
- Double Bows Tame Tiger.
- Happy Bird Hops up Branch.
All these strategies, tactics and techniques will be taught at the Kungfu against Other Styles Course in the Winter Camp in Janaury 2012 in Norway.
Fighting against Boxers is also an important topic in the Choy-Li-Fatt Course where two other strategies and typical Choy-Li-Fatt techniques will be used.
The two strategies are:
- If there is form, strike the form;
- If there is no form, strike the shadow.
Answering an earlier question I said that for most kungfu practitioners today, kungfu would not be able to match Boxing. This is because there are so many techniques in kungfu that these practitioners do not know the most suitable techniques for this purpose, so they use typical kungfu techniques which are generally not suitable for fighting against Boxing. More significantly, they do not have systematic combat training.
However, if we choose the most suitable techniques and skills as well as tactics and strategies, we can reverse the situation. Boxers will find it hard to match well-trained kungfu practitioners.
During my trip to the United States recently, Anthony Spinicchia brought out the topic of kungfu classics. I mentioned that even when one had access to the classics, he might not understand them. One reason was that important information was merely stated in the classics, but not explained.
The answer here provides a good example. Many people would not understand what is written above, though the writing is actually simple and straight-forward. Shaolin Wahnam students may be able to understand half of it, but those who have attended a kungfu against other martial arts course will understand clearly.
-- Grandmaster Wong Kiew Kit
Covering an opponent adequately is a very important skill when fighting aganst a Boxer
The above discussion is reproduced from the thread 20 Questions for Grandmaster: Choy-Li-Fatt and Kungfu against Other Styles in the Shaolin Wahnam Discussion Forum.
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