Ok, when a trainer hitches a ride with one of his boxers to a gym for said boxer to spar, he shouldn’t tell the story of some dude that had a brain aneurysm and died while sparring. I don’t want to hear that shit before I get in the ring. Are you f-ing kidding me!
Ok rant over. Onto the action. Got some more of the tall athletic heavyweight:
- Did 3 rounds with the timer on 30 sec breaks. This means I likely have the endurance for competition.
- I went with the approach of staying on the outside, working my lateral movement and waiting for him to come to me. It worked in that I got hit a lot less and utilized less energy. But I felt like I was doing terribly because my punch output was so low. I guess his was lower too though.
- My lateral movement was great. Circle right, abrupt change left, change again, do a stutter step and pretend to change but continue. When he comes forward, one step back and out to the side. By doing all the above I made him “chase” me for 2 rounds. He expended more energy and his feet were rarely set.
- After two rounds of his trainer explaining how I made him chase me he finally started cutting the ring off.
- I realized one reason I got out boxed on the inside our last time sparring: I was dropping down to punch his body and he was killing me with uppercuts. When a guy is 5 inches taller than you, you don’t need to drop down…
- Now that I’m not squatting down on the inside I catch him with body hooks when he exits the side, a lot . Need to follow with hooks to the head.
- Landed lots of body punches. Hooks and straight rights.
- On the bad side, I ate a number of combos and some of my hooks missed so wide it was embarrassing.
- Nose swelled up and bled, big bruise on the bridge and kind of a small knot. Can’t tell if he dinged the hard cartilage or it’s just swelling, unfortunately it takes so long for nasal swelling to subside, and with future weeks of sparring, I probably won’t know for a couple months.
- On one hand I’m pondering my trainer’s decision to continually throw me in with a guy 30 lbs heavier. On the other hand I’m enjoying that he’s forcing me to develop my defenses and toughness, and I do like working with a super tall guy.
