Boxing is on fire at the moment as a sport and his is powered by great fights and often times great knockouts that fans often enjoy.
Everyone who is a boxing fan, old or new to the sport loves the knockouts in boxing. They draw masses of people sometimes to boxing online with the big viral nature of them, some of whom wouldn’t even watch boxing usually.
But they can be avoided by boxers at all levels in professional boxing and head movement has to be one of the most neglected areas of defensive boxing these days.
Gervonta Davis known as ‘Tank’ one of the most proponents of great head movement at the highest level of pound for pound, world championship prize fighting in recent years.
This can be a natural thing for some boxers whom have better reflexes to get out of the way of oncoming punches by watching for a shoulder move before a punch is actually thrown but there are drills in the gym that fighters often use.
Along with working on this with their trainers in pad work on the mitts.
The Importance of Head Movement in Avoiding Knockouts
It always surprises us why fighters particularly lately these days neglect this area of defensive boxing perhaps more than any department of defensive boxing.
It is essential for the modern day professional boxer to have great head movement and if you look at some of the big knockouts in recent times in world title fights, even the Anthony Joshua barbaric knockout by Daniel Dubois last year in 2024, there was basically zero head movement there and was a sitting duck caught square on walking onto a right hand counter.
If you go back to the early days of Mike Tyson his head movement was outstanding and he was always getting out of the way of stuff coming his way while inflicting as much possible damage as he could in a short time frame, and getting out of the way and getting the fight over quickly back in his prime.
Head movement was key to this.
It needs to be used more at the highest level these days in professional boxing and certainly in the heavyweight division more.
Sometimes getting out of the way of a punch can set up a new attack as well, whether a body punch attack or a head shot.
