The Jab . the lost art

Hearns, Holmes, Ali, Tyson, Holyfield, Leonard. All had wonderfull jabs. Everything flowed off the jab wrt Ali, Hearns, Holmes. When Tyson forgot to jab, he lost what I believe made him a terrific boxer.

Today we have Wlad and Floyd to an extent who have excellent jand and can win a fight just with the jab.

Boxers today do not throw it with any authority and it seems to be a lost art. My opinion is that the jab has always been the most effective punch in boxing. Its almost a dying art today.

Thoughts

It depends on style.

Froch has a fantastic jab but you rarely hear about it.

He does. You dont hear much about it because he doesn't use it often enough.

I'd say defense is the lost art in modern day boxing more than anything. I don't know what's being taught in some quarters to the kids these days - more and more hands dangling, no guard fighters seem to be emerging than ever before. Take a punch to land two of your own pleases the fans, but it's not going to prolong careers or show us the kind of virtuosity that we've seen in previous eras.

Think the problemis that amatuer boxing is Poopie. Something akin to teaching kids to pass rather than life skills. by the time anyone gets to pro boxing half of the people there start from scratch. LAck of quality sparring, back in the days lot more fights and everyone learned the hard way and more recently you had top top sparring, now you dont have quality sparring even to make you learn because everyone else is almost as untutored as you.

You just have to look at Lewis and Wlad and how they dominate fights with the jab. I've alwys believed that the jab is the most important in boxing. I recall the Watson/Benn fight and Watson saying prior to their fight that once he establishes his jab in Nigel's face the fight will be won. And from R3, when his jab began to establish itself, the fight was won. A jab always wins.

Well I think you would have to look at the jab comparisons amongst the quality fighters and similar level oppositions.

Like Pavlik, Taylor and Dawson in recent times would be examples of guys that I think had good jabs. They arent all time greats though so its not really fair to compare them to someone like Hearns for example who was just a better boxer.

At heavyweight obviously outside the two Klitschkos theres nobody even remotely close in quality to those guys you mentioned but the likes of Holyfield and Lewis were not that long ago and had good jabs and I believe Wlads jab is one that would be elite amongst any company. Vitali less so but still good and very controlling.

In-fighting is very noticeably missing with a lot of leading fighters.

Catching jabs died out a long time ago. Louis was a master.

In fighting is not as recognisable as it used to be.

It's worth pointing out I think, that when Hearns/Holmes had the best jabs around, few others had a claim to it. There were still Roldan's and the like around. When Pep was impossible to hit there were still face first brawlers around. Didn't Louis fight in the same era as Lamotta? One a master of catching the jab, the other...Lamotta.

We notice all of today's fighters because they're right infront of us, but often only the best of yesteryear because they're the only ones that get remembered. Maybe in afew decades it'll be that nobody uses the shoulder roll anymore when it was pevalent back in 2012, just look at Mayweather...

Floyds jab to the body is probably his second most effective punch

Khan has one of the best jabs in the world, even Bert Sugar (RIP) said it.

John Bloody Wayne wrote:It's worth pointing out I think, that when Hearns/Holmes had the best jabs around, few others had a claim to it. There were still Roldan's and the like around. When Pep was impossible to hit there were still face first brawlers around. Didn't Louis fight in the same era as Lamotta? One a master of catching the jab, the other...Lamotta.

We notice all of today's fighters because they're right infront of us, but often only the best of yesteryear because they're the only ones that get remembered. Maybe in afew decades it'll be that nobody uses the shoulder roll anymore when it was pevalent back in 2012, just look at Mayweather...

A very good point. Nobody seems to mention the average, also ran's & journey men when harping back to the good old days, whether its the black & white era or pre television. Of course every fighter used the shoulder roll!

I always thought De La Hoya looked twice the fighter when jabbing. His tendency to go with the two fisted in-your-face kind of strategy he used against Mosley lost him some key fights in my opinion.

John Bloody Wayne wrote:It's worth pointing out I think, that when Hearns/Holmes had the best jabs around, few others had a claim to it. There were still Roldan's and the like around. When Pep was impossible to hit there were still face first brawlers around. Didn't Louis fight in the same era as Lamotta? One a master of catching the jab, the other...Lamotta.

We notice all of today's fighters because they're right infront of us, but often only the best of yesteryear because they're the only ones that get remembered. Maybe in afew decades it'll be that nobody uses the shoulder roll anymore when it was pevalent back in 2012, just look at Mayweather...

This to me is a brilliant point, how many boxers are renowned to be jabbers? Whenever it's mentioned the names of Holmes, Ali and Hearns pop up but in any era it's usually isolated to a minority whom possessed world class jabs. If we look at the greatest boxers of any era like your Armstrongs, Robinsons, Charles', Durans, Chavez's, Whitakers none of them are known as world class jabbers.

You then have falsehoods said that a jab is the most important punch when it largely depends on the opponent, Vernon Forrest due to his size had a brilliant jab which controlled Mosley twice but against the wild Mayorga he was less effective. Hearns jab could control boxers but it didn't always, in the second round against Hagler he tried utilising it but came up against an opponent who showed it zero respect and simply walked (ran) through it.