Short Range Power – the Phantom Punch

On May 25th, 1965, in Lewiston, Maine,  Muhammad Ali  beat Sonny Liston for the second time. Again there was controversy, this time it was related to the ‘phantom punch’. Ali finished the fight, in the first round, with a short chopping straight right, which knocked Liston down for somewhere between 12 and 17 seconds, while the referee flapped around losing control as Ali stood over Liston shaking his fist. The ref was informed of time Liston had spent on the mat and stopped the fight, declaring Ali winner by knockout.

The straight right that tagged Liston was known as the ‘phantom punch’ as many missed it completely, others said it didn’t land at all. Many believed the fight was fixed, for a variety of reasons, one of which was that many believed the punch was not hard enough to knock Liston out. In slow-motion, it’s clear the short right hit Liston plum on the jaw as he is regaining balance from a lunging jab, he had trouble landing punches in both fights. The clip clearly shows a jarring, shaking of Liston’s head which appears to be sufficient to knock him out.

Steve Morris explains that a knockout occurs when the reticular activating system, responsible for controlling consciousness is disrupted.

The disruption of the reticular activating system occurs through the violent rotation of the brain on the brainstem. In most cases, this rotation is very obvious, whether it occurs through twisting, moving side to side or through the head being violently snapped back

The slow-motion clip indicates a rotation of Liston’s head, the ambiguity concerning the efficacy of the phantom punch is to do with the assumption that a bigger punch is required to cause a knockout. Big punchers tend to throw the kitchen sink at their opponents, Tyson, Marciano and others of that ilk certainly did. But if the opponent is off balance when hit, less force is required to rotate the head, and so cause a knockout.

In 1965 there were still those that believed Ali was unable to punch hard, he was retreating when he threw it and given the short range of the phantom punch it’s easy to understand how people didn’t believe their own eyes. Ali himself claimed the punch, which he called the anchor punch, was too quick for the eye to see.

A short punch on the retreat does not have the obvious power of a Tyson blockbuster, but the phantom punch was not the only time Ali was able to knockdown or knockout an opponent while going backwards. The highlight clip shows a few examples, while Anderson Silva did something very similar to Forest Griffin recently. I suppose people find it difficult to believe that it’s possible to generate power while going backwards, let alone short range power.

Baddest man on the planet

Both Tyson and Fedor have been dubbed ‘baddest man on the planet’ but while both were or are top of their respective games they are very different men. Last night I watched documentaries on each of the ‘Worlds baddest’ and while one rose and faded the other continues to rise and looks unlikely to fade in anything like the same way. Nevertheless there are interesting parallels.

By the time Tyson became the youngest ever World Champion he had a fantastic team around him. Cus D’Amato had taken him out of reform school and away from his troubled neighbourhood in New York and with Kevin Rooney and Teddy Atlas was guiding his boxing potential. After D’Amato died Rooney took responsibility for Tysons training, resulting in his distinctive style that brought him success and fame.

Tyson’s Peek-a-Boo style allowed him to slip and weave his way in close, avoiding his opponents punches, allowing his devastating speed, power, and aggression to wreck the other fighter. In the documentary “The Tyson Story” Kevin Rooney  time and again mentions how Tyson, right from the start threw punches with ‘Bad Intention’. That’s the phrase he uses; ‘Bad Intention’. You only have to watch him training to see that while the knockouts are dripping with bad intention.

For me this ‘Bad Intention’ is the overriding similarity between Tyson and Fedor. If you watch Fedor training the same ‘Bad Intention’ is evident and again he’s dripping with ‘Bad Intention’ in the ring. In the documentary ‘Baddest man on the planet’ Fedor says he trains “relentlessly, like an engine”. He has a strong team around him practicing with his trainer Aleksander Michkov for many years, he is comfortable with his surroundings and just gets on with it. His aggressive style re-wrote ground and pound in MMA.

Outside the arena there are similarities, both literally fought their way out of poverty, both liked to fight as kids but I can’t see Fedor fading the way Tyson faded, he just doesn’t have the distractions. Tyson faded because of those distractions and sacking Rooney was clearly a mistake, he changed his fighting style and became a beatable fighter, and then there were the frustrations boiling over with inexcusable results in and out of the ring.

Despite the inexcusable side to Tyson the ‘Bad Intention’ in the punches, training and the fights is key; besides Fedor has shown that these inexcusable outcomes are NOT inevitable. Regardless, this ‘Bad Inntention’ is the type of thing you get from Steve Morris’s assertion to ‘Watch the Fight’ take it, absorb it and use it in training. This ‘Bad Intention’ attitude can then be taken from training into the fight if you have one, in either a sporting or in self-defence setting. In essence you’re preparing properly and you will improve.

Absorbing the impression

In last weeks post about creating an impression of the early years Tyson I tried to get over how I attempted to achieve this rather abstract concept. It’s not easy to describe, almost by definition, because describing the process requires you to be left brained about a right brain activity. While, of course, the left and right hemisphere’s of the brain interact through the course of our everyday lives, the left hemisphere is dominant.

This is essential to enable us to complete our regular tasks, although at certain times the dominant side can interfere where it’s not wanted. An obvious example is when we’re under pressure, the left hemisphere can bully its way to the fore when really the right side is better placed to take control.

I’m really thinking of sporting examples, Tim Henman was a  great tennis player but toward the end of big matches you could see him tightening up and not going for the ‘big shots’. It was almost as if he was trying to consciously control what he was doing, when really he needed to let go and just play. The irony is, that letting go and just playing his game is probably what got him into the good position in a match.

In times of stress when snap judgements are required the subconscious is really set up to draw on our experience and to make a rapid decisions. This is part of the survival mechanism if only we were to work with these cognitions, see the Blink post. Of course, if the stress response is too severe we can become too aroused for anything other than fight, flight or freeze.

When not under stress we can relax the conscious left brain and allow the right brain to have more of a say. This is a very natural process and we all do this on a daily basis, when we are drifting off to sleep, or start to daydream. Any creative process involves fanciful right brain activity, but often though default left brain will butt in to rubbish that creativity with its logical criticism.

In terms of absorbing the impression you may want to build of Tyson you really do have to let the right side get fanciful, become child-like. This always reminds me of a TV program I watched as a kid. It was of a schoolboy who dreamed of playing cricket for England. It really struck a chord with me because I used to behave so much like the hero of the program. He’d be walking down the street with radio/tv commentary going on in his head as he struck the winning runs.

I’m not suggesting you actively embed a commentary of you destroying fighters in a Tyson-esque manner, although that might work, rather it’s that kind of daydream mind you need to activate in order to absorb the essence of Tyson. Open up and soak up the impression of him you get from watching clips like those in the previous post, then take that feeling and use it in training. It’s amazing how you can feel like you ARE Tyson.

I image my brain as a sponge, mopping up the essence of Tyson, this may or may not be appropriate for you, it’s a pretty personal experience.

It may sound ridiculous, but suspend belief, don’t listen to Mr Logic Left-brain, and give it a go. It’s not an immediate thing, and it does take some effort to try to extrapolate from watching to doing, but it’s a great tool and can help you improve if you give it a good go.

Watching and creating an impression

An essential part of the Morris Method involves watching the fight. Rather than being a passive observer, enjoying the entertainment or supporting a favourite fighter, the idea is to take key components from superior fighters and to use these in your training. Steve Morris encourages you to watch, empathise and take the impression of relevant aspects.

Watch the fight, empathise and take the impression. What on earth does that mean? The first fighter I watched in this in mind was Tyson, early years Tyson. I watched both his fights and clips of him training. The training clips are easier, perhaps, because you can get an idea of the physical aspects he was addressing, without being distracted by the raw power, speed and aggression on display in his fights. A very obvious feature of Tysons fights is the force he delivers, which generally knocked the other fighter senseless. A second noticeable feature is that the other bloke tended to be bigger, requiring Tyson to get in close to finish the opponent off.

The Force generated by Tyson, and anyone for that matter, is simple physics, F=ma, force equals mass multiplied by acceleration while his general tactic was to use evasion skills to get to his opponent to deliver the force. In an earlier post I included a great Tyson training clip, which I’ll embed below as it’s a great example of the kind of training Tyson used to accomplish these two key requirements of success, for him.

Throughout the clip you can see training designed to enhance force delivered via the two variables, mass and acceleration. Lots of speed work and use of the head to shift the mass into the target, thereby producing massive force. But the head movement was for more than just moving mass,  his head movement enabled evasive tactics. So from watching clips of Tyson training and fighting we can analyze and start to use these features in our training. We can begin to empathise with what he needed to do and how he achieved it and what it did to his opponents.

Now through this process it’s possible to build a useable impression of Tyson, of his speed, force, evasion and the obvious aggression. With a bit of imagionation you can use this impression to ‘become’ Tyson on the bag for the duration of that bag work, or similar. Using the personal impression you have built from watching the clips, using his training examples. In effect you take the essence of Tyson on display in the clips and using it in your training.

It’s difficult to describe, and I probably haven’t done a very good job, but while this process requires some lateral logic and a certain amount of trusting the subconscious mind it can help in a number of ways. An obvious example would be to call on the Tyson aggression to ramp up a lame bagwork session. Alternatively, you could apply the manner in which he uses his head in evasion drills, which does not mean simply repeat a particular drill but to perform it as Tyson would have.

If I think of Tyson now I imagine him doing the drill with the swinging weight which he evades with a lateral head movement and a punch. It’s fast aggressive and powerful and can get me going! There’s far more to watching a fight than entertainment.

Superfrau and more bow bending

As mentioned in the previous post, we ‘created’ a Superfrau strike. It’s not easy to describe, but I will try.

1. The front (left) leg is on the toes, with the left side of the hip pushed forward and arm up, in guard, facing the bad guy.
2. This position is adopted after moving from a fighting position that Steve Morris favours, which has the back in a concave shape. Meaning that the c-shape has been bent back on itself.
3. The leg is thrust down and backward a little, ensuring the hip is pushed back on the left side.
4. This action forces the shoulder and arm forward, driving the fist to the target.
5. In essence, we bend the bow of the back

George St.Pierre used a very similar action to fire in a jab in his recent fight with BJ Penn. At the start of the 3rd round with 4.50 on the clock he hits Penn with a Superfrau! Kinda….

Now, one person that benefitted from ‘bending the bow’ was Tyson, certainly in the early years. Here’s a clip of him training, there are a lot of instances when he’s bending and releasing the bows in his back and across the shoulders. The clip should give a clear illustration of this concept.