Yarde's trainer has a self-devised boxing system & school of thought

[dranoel]

You can do drills all of the time. But when you can't adapt to the certain variations of another human being thinking and punching you, you will have a hard time adjusting to the reality.

Throwing a left hook perfectly is great in practice,
but as soon as the moment comes when that left hook is supposed to shine life gives you touches of the opposing glove, or misses. Things can mentally turn grim pretty quickly. When you don't have confidence and when you don't hit those mental road blocks of a real world fight. Sparring isn't to practice all techniques, it's to understand the nature of what is given and you're simulating those moments and decision making processes while adjusting to all sort of possibilities and variance.

[otrocubiche]

when will we start hearing about the lucky jab that got him down?

[Motofan]

You can do drills all of the time. But when you can't adapt to the certain variations of another human being thinking and punching you, you will have a hard time adjusting to the reality.

Throwing a left hook perfectly is great in practice,
but as soon as the moment comes when that left hook is supposed to shine life gives you touches of the opposing glove, or misses. Things can mentally turn grim pretty quickly. When you don't have confidence and when you don't hit those mental road blocks of a real world fight. Sparring isn't to practice all techniques, it's to understand the nature of what is given and you're simulating those moments and decision making processes while adjusting to all sort of possibilities and variance.

Jesus, I'm glad somebody said it. The idea of not sparring is absurd. I think some people speaking against it here need to remember that not all sparring is two guys going to war to prepare for a fight while shortening their careers. It rarely is. Watch actual pros spar. Good pros. They will get someone similar to their opponent in front of them so the look isn't new when they enter the ring and are usually working on a particular tactic for the fight each sparring session. The idea that you just eventually know how to fight so you can forgo sparring good opponents and just hit mitts and do drills instead is so ****** it's indefensible.

[Scipio2009]

Yep. This isn't anything new to MMA. Several MMA guys aren't sparring before fights anymore. Thats where I first heard of it & looked into it a lil more & thought hey they might be onto something. And I think they are.

Again at a certain level. I think sparring is HIGHLY beneficial to people learning combat sports up til you are a world class guy. Idk that I think its a good thing to never spar & then just go into your pro debut never knowing what its like to be hit.

That's fair. Still, he's sparred a bit; just not enough to so mean anything

[Scipio2009]

You can do drills all of the time. But when you can't adapt to the certain variations of another human being thinking and punching you, you will have a hard time adjusting to the reality.

Throwing a left hook perfectly is great in practice,
but as soon as the moment comes when that left hook is supposed to shine life gives you touches of the opposing glove, or misses. Things can mentally turn grim pretty quickly. When you don't have confidence and when you don't hit those mental road blocks of a real world fight. Sparring isn't to practice all techniques, it's to understand the nature of what is given and you're simulating those moments and decision making processes while adjusting to all sort of possibilities and variance.

The technique is the technique; get it perfect, so that you couldn't miss it if you tried, and then take that technique into the fight.

If you throw a left hook perfect on the mitts, and then **** it up in sparring because you're working with a different style or **** sparring partner, that work won't help you in the fight.

That's why you drill with actually good/active mittwork. Get the technique perfect, and then program in all of the proper responses into muscle memory.

You're throwing a right hand, hook, right hand, and you drill all of the ways you could get to that shot; catch on the glove before, catch on the shoulder before, slip the jab before, cut the jab with your own before, etc.

Some sparring could help confirm that the programming is done properly, but you might not need 100s of rounds of sparring.

That's the chance Tunde Ajayi, Anthony Yarde, and his camp have taken, and it was almost good enough to have Yarde knock out Sergey Kovalev in the 8th round to win a world title.

Yarde was missing a touch of experience at the top level, but he wasn't really missing anything that he could've picked up getting his brains beat in during heavy sparring in his pro career.

[Scipio2009]

Jesus, I'm glad somebody said it. The idea of not sparring is absurd. I think some people speaking against it here need to remember that not all sparring is two guys going to war to prepare for a fight while shortening their careers. It rarely is. Watch actual pros spar. Good pros. They will get someone similar to their opponent in front of them so the look isn't new when they enter the ring and are usually working on a particular tactic for the fight each sparring session. The idea that you just eventually know how to fight so you can forgo sparring good opponents and just hit mitts and do drills instead is so ****** it's indefensible.

The Ajayi system is different, for good or bad. He's come through with it with Junior Saba, a bit ago, and now Anthony Yarde. And, intellectually, it's a pretty straightforward system.

Rather than you, as a fighter, figuring out the trips/traps over thousands of rounds of sparring, Ajayi's system gives you the answers on the front end, with let's say a hundred rounds to check that you've been told the truth.

You give the fighter all the triggers (what to do when you see a jab, what can you do when you throw a jab from long/mid, etc), get them as sharp on the triggers as possible, and then said fighter riffs based on what they see during the fight.

Yarde will hopefully take a couple more good fights to round out the experience to make another title run, but his career will be his career (and Ajayi has stacked the deck that he makes it out with his brains by leaving very little of him in the sparring ring).

[YoungManRumble]

The Ajayi system is different, for good or bad. He's come through with it with Junior Saba, a bit ago, and now Anthony Yarde. And, intellectually, it's a pretty straightforward system.

Rather than you, as a fighter, figuring out the trips/traps over thousands of rounds of sparring, Ajayi's system gives you the answers on the front end, with let's say a hundred rounds to check that you've been told the truth.

You give the fighter all the triggers (what to do when you see a jab, what can you do when you throw a jab from long/mid, etc), get them as sharp on the triggers as possible, and then said fighter riffs based on what they see during the fight.

Yarde will hopefully take a couple more good fights to round out the experience to make another title run, but his career will be his career (and Ajayi has stacked the deck that he makes it out with his brains by leaving very little of him in the sparring ring).

He's not gonna have many brain cells left if Tunde's best advice in the corner is pound on your chest and take punishment. If he really cared about Yarde's health he would have thrown in the towel in 10th round IMO.

[Eff Pandas]

That's fair. Still, he's sparred a bit; just not enough to so mean anything

I don't buy that. I KNOW hes sparred Andrew Tabiti at Mayweathers before along with plenty others. Id bet hes got thousands of sparring rounds on the books.

[charliepaerker]

No sparring makes sense to a guy like Donald Cerrone who's been in a ton of MMA fights, is getting older, and had troubles with injuries for years. Its different for a boxer, especially one that is barely getting experience at the world level. I'll take proven coaching systems and techniques that legendary coaches have developed over the last 100 years before falling for some inspirational nonsense

[dranoel]

The technique is the technique; get it perfect, so that you couldn't miss it if you tried, and then take that technique into the fight.

If you throw a left hook perfect on the mitts, and then **** it up in sparring because you're working with a different style or **** sparring partner, that work won't help you in the fight.

That's why you drill with actually good/active mittwork. Get the technique perfect, and then program in all of the proper responses into muscle memory.

You're throwing a right hand, hook, right hand, and you drill all of the ways you could get to that shot; catch on the glove before, catch on the shoulder before, slip the jab before, cut the jab with your own before, etc.

Some sparring could help confirm that the programming is done properly, but you might not need 100s of rounds of sparring.

That's the chance Tunde Ajayi, Anthony Yarde, and his camp have taken, and it was almost good enough to have Yarde knock out Sergey Kovalev in the 8th round to win a world title.

Yarde was missing a touch of experience at the top level, but he wasn't really missing anything that he could've picked up getting his brains beat in during heavy sparring in his pro career.

Look I'll be real. No professional boxing guy will give you a perfect hook in a fight lol. No matter how graceful your technique is, driven from the ankle to capture the perfect space moment of kinetic energy. His drill system failed him in the fight quite glaringly. Because its based on an optimal world(lala land)... that that's just where it ended. Yarde won 1 round maybe at the beginning and was out of range absorbing jabs while trying to counter with a left hook. 6 rounds of that! By the 7th he finally took a different approach to slip to the inside giving Kovalev some uncertainty with the newly added slot. And then Kovalev stopped throwing his jab, took body shots and then got to be "almost knocked out". Swimming in Olympics: the difference in determining winning from losing on average is 3 strokes... water boils at 212 degrees F not 211. An almost knock out, while suffering a jab knock out and doing so by thoroughly being out boxed isn't a close fight. There wasn't even a knock down, so almost for me is a stretch. By round 9 Kovalev had adapted by putting together right hooks to his body and face every time Yarde came to the inside. After that the fight was over. Couldn't beat Kovalev on inside or outside range in any trade.This was because his coach's system only works in a perfect world. Kovalev isn't perfect, in fact his responses aren't always optimal. But he's a better professional all around. He can deal with the reality of solving problems in real time. Not by imagining and having a predetermined solution to a fight. That's rigid, and why you'd have Yarde trying to counter aimlessly for 6 rounds LMAO Because he was already thinking in a biased manner, that "this left hook will solve my jab problems", but reality didn't play out that way. He had a perfect hook for a couple of rounds, probably didn't get to factor in fatigue and punishment to the equation though.