Coach Ian – Week in Review 02/27/2022
Book I’m Reading
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
Featured Article: Tapering for Boxing: Winding Down Before a Fight
Share of the Week:
Tommy’s speaking engagement at the Let Your Life Speak event @ Adobe
Tommy Moreno is an amateur fighter out of Dreamland Boxing. His story is incredible, and I wanted to share his speaking engagement at Adobe from 2018. He shares his story of overcoming adversity, going down the wrong path, and then being granted a second chance. Today, he’s a model of discipline and doing things the right way.
Recap of the Fights:
This past weekend, there were a few upsets, such as Fernando Martinez defeating Jerwin Ancajas and Hector Garcia beating Chris Colbert. Then there was the one that should have happened: Jack Catterall should have been awarded a decision over Josh Taylor.
My thoughts on select fights from the weekend:
Jack Catterall vs Josh Taylor: Jack Catterall won this fight. Clearly. Josh Taylor rushed his attack and overshot his jab and right hand. Jack Catterall gave Josh Taylor trouble with his movement, lined up his 2 all night, and smothered Josh Taylors attack and clinched whenever on the inside. He had the fight in the bag the moment he scored his knockdown.
That being said… I really felt like the announcers were off in their breakdowns of this fight so I wanted to add a few points.
- Jack Catterall missed the opportunity to make a statement: It was a huge mistake for Jack Catterall to take his foot off the gas after his knockdown. Who knows, maybe he was tired. But I noticed in the championship rounds, his corner was telling him “9 more minutes,” and then “6 more minutes”.
Jack certainly fought the last few minutes as if he only needed to stay up right to win the fight. While that was true on my scorecard, you can’t assume that fighting in the defending champion’s hometown.
- “Josh Taylor didn’t make adjustments”: The commentators kept saying this, and it wasn’t true. In the early rounds, Josh Taylor would often overshoot his jab or his 1-2 and end up over Jack Catterall’s body, resulting in a clinch. After he got knocked down, he made a greater effort to go to the body, particularly by throwing his left hook to the body. Even if this was blocked, he was able to throw more freely before getting tied up.
I had Josh Taylor winning the last few rounds based on him initiating the action and landing those body shots.
Other minor adjustments he made were occasionally shifting orthodox and starting to throw his right hook more often.
- Be Honest With Yourself: Josh Taylor went into the post-fight interviews acting as if he won clearly. He’s going to have a hard time dealing with all the backlash of the decision and how he handled the fight. As I wrote when recapping Mark Salgado’s loss, you lose the opportunity to learn when you lie to yourself about the outcome.
- It’s important to be honest with yourself. You can fight horribly in a win or fight well in a loss. A win can mask deficiencies when fighters get caught up in the echo chamber of their fans and friends telling them they’re the greatest. Losses provide the greatest learning opportunity – one which most fighters decline the moment they start claiming fights are fixed or blaming their coaches. The best fighters can always judge their performance, win or loss, impartially and find things they need to improve on.
Hector Garcia vs Chris Colbert: Wow. Hector Garcia absolutely dominated Chris Colbert from start to finish. I looked up Garcia before the fight, and was impressed that he had plenty of amateur experience and even competed in the 2016 Olympics. He entered the ring 14-0 with 9 knockouts. I didn’t know what to expect but hoped he would put up a good fight.
He put a lot of pressure on Colbert and was difficult to time. But the biggest mistake early, was Colbert deciding to fight fire with fire on the ropes. He sat back on the ropes, or in various corners of the ring, and egged Garcia on. He wasn’t getting the better of it.
I think it really took a toll on him. It went from voluntarily trading blows to involuntarily ending up in those exchanges. His body language looked absolutely awful the second half of the fight. The last two rounds were confusing – his corner threatened to stop the fight and he pleaded for it to continue. Yet in those last two rounds he danced around the ring and absolutely refused to engage. He was apparently content with losing but wanted to save the stoppage loss from his record.
Despite his really poor finish, he handled his loss with grace and took ownership of his poor performance. He seems to still have confidence in his abilities, but just absolutely quit early tonight after he got knocked down. I think his attitude when the going got tough could be telling in the future if he ever found himself needing to dig deep in a fight. But that remains to be seen.
All in all, I think the contrast between the way Colbert owned his loss and the way Josh Taylor denied his made fans somewhat let Chris Colbert slide. Any other night, he’d be cyberbullied about running those last two rounds, but the focus was on Josh Taylor.
This loss raises major questions about Chris Colbert, but I’m interested to see how he responds.
CHRIS COLBERT POST Fight Interview
Health Share of the Week: $50 Off the Oura Ring!
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This Week at Dreamland Boxing:
Coach Ian’s Classes:
As you may know, I am currently donating my time to host virtual online boxing classes for the members of our 501c(3) non-profit boxing gym, Dreamland Boxing. As an active member of Dreamland, you will receive the materials and video recaps of each lesson through my website under the “Premium Drills” section.
Dreamland has also increased its outdoor capacity to 16 students per class, and lifted limits on how many classes you can sign up for in a week. Join me for a class on Fridays at 4:30PM!
Our practices this week featured the following:
- Defense, defense, defense!
- Smothering inside of stepping back
- Footwork
- Bodyweight circuits
- And more!
You can view our full practices here.
Reminder:
You must be a registered member to sign up for a class, you cannot just drop-in! If you are a current member, you will receive a sign-up link to reserve your time slot every Saturday. Reserve right away because slots fill up quick (by Monday)!!
If no slots are available, sign up for the waitlist and you will be notified if any slots open up.
Visit http://www.dreamlandboxing.org or email dreamlandboxing7@gmail.com for more information on how to sign up today!
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