The Secret to Watching a Fight: A Five Part Series

Anyone can watch a boxing fight, but few can live it. 

By employing a few simple strategies you can actually live the fight turning it into an experience.

There are few things in life that can hold the attention of someone like two men or women in a ring trying to knock each other's head off.  Boxing tends to produce extreme responses -- either extreme fascination or extreme disgust.  (I vote for fascination...)

Boxing fans are not just spectators of the sport.  To be a true boxing fan, you need to learn how to live the fight almost to the point of the fighters involved.  Once you reach that level of committment to the match, you will have a much more fulfilling experience when the fight actually happens.  I guarantee that by employing any of the things I'm going to teach you over the course of the next five articles you will not only enjoy every fight you watch a hundred times more, but you will also learn more than you thought possible from the pros.

Part One is going to give you the fundamentals of watching a fight including all of the things you need to look for.  I will give you a checklist to watch for in the fight and I'll show you how to become an active participant in the match rather than just a spectator.  You'll take ownership of a boxer and thoroughly investigate them.  Understanding what I teach in Part One will give you the ability to completely analyze a fight and with practice, there is no reason you can't pick the winner 75% of the time.

Parts Two and Three will show you how to investigate a boxer and we'll use a real life upcoming fight to drive the point home.  I'll show you how to ask the questions that need asking and notice the things about their lives and training that matter when they get in the ring.  Things like mouthing off in the media and missing weight are indicators.  Some of these things come down to basic human psychology, but in the end, they will help you pick and analyse a fight.

Part Four will take you through my analysis of an upcoming fight.  I'll give you the framework to follow in making your own analyses.  I will then encourage you to engage in some pre-fight banter and submit your own analysis of the fight for discussion.

Part Five will be a post fight follow up.  I'll analyze it and pick out the things you should have noticed when watching the fight.  I'm sure this will turn into a good discussion, but the real goal will be to see what the boxers did right and wrong so you can apply these things to your own training.

I had Part One 95% written here about 20 minutes ago when I hit the wrong button on the computer and lost it all.  After swearing for a while and smacking around the heavy bag, I calmed down and realized that despite wasting an hour and half, the second draft should go quicker - so I'm back in my Zen zone.  However, that means you have to wait until tomorrow for Part One.

Until tomorrow....keep training.  If there is anything specific you want me to cover in the next 5 articles, go ahead and leave a comment. 

If you like this post then please consider subscribing to my full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Get all your boxing equipment in the How to Box Store:

• Save to del.ici.ous
• Digg This!
• Stumble It!
• Submit to Facebook