The Problem with Over-Reliance on Power Punching

Power punches in professional boxing often score big knockouts and get the viral highlights online but there is caveats with them.

Not every fight can be a homerun knockout ending with a Marquez nuclear right hand counter bomb on Manny Pacquiao or a baseball bat pulled out of his pocket right-hand straight counter from Daniel Dubois on Anthony Joshua.

The fights can often have back and forth exchanges and flows to them and sure power punching is important, but so is accurate sharp jabs, feints, counters to keep an opponent off balance, as well as defense, parrying punches and blocking shots.

Sometimes what you see in professional boxing is a world title contender and in some cases world champions who have great power and knockout ability start to over rely on that as time goes on and almost forget their boxing brains completely and abandon their boxing at times all together.

The Problem with Over-Reliance on Power Punching

Often times this is detrimental to a fighter’s development or even to his world title run in the sport.

Two key instances of this that come to mind are Ricky Hatton and Gennady Golovkin.

Both Hall of Famers (Golovkin next year) and had great boxing skills and on their rise to stardom often were subtle in their work before using big power punches and power bombs.

Once they both won the world title though both at times seemed to neglect their defences in boxing and rely too much on their power.

This resulted in both getting caught by punches they never should have in their careers as time went on and being in wars that didn’t need to be in, in fire fights they could have made easier fights for themselves.

Power punching should not be relied on by itself.