How To Cut Off The Ring With Teddy Atlas
For a lot of people new to combat sports, they might look at a fight and automatically think that the fighter moving forward is the one that is winning. This is because people see the fighter moving back and avoiding the person moving forward is running. To be fair, this is the case, some of the time.
Something that a lot of newer combat sports viewers don’t appreciate is the ability to use footwork and make your opponent run into your punches. A fighter that makes you chase them and is able to remain just outside of your punches is super annoying.
In order to actually do this, you need to do more than just follow your moving opponent. You might sometimes hear coaches to tell their fighter to cut off their moving opponent. This is an important skill that requires a more advanced form of footwork and fight IQ to properly pull off.
If you don’t know what we’re talking about, don’t worry. We have one of the best boxing coaches of all time to tell you about this vital boxing skill.
In this video, legendary boxing coach Teddy Atlas goes over how to properly cut the ring.
Who Is Teddy Atlas
If you're a striker and haven’t ever heard of Teddy Atlas before, then you really need to fix that. Teddy Atlas is a boxing coach, analyst and commentator who has been around for decades. He’s worked with countless legends of the sport like Mike Tyson, Micheal Moorer and many others.
Check Out All Of Teddy’s Top-Tier Instructionals! Click Learn More!
How To Cut Off The Ring
The video starts off with Teddy Atlas talking about how often you might see a fight where a fighter is desperately trying to catch their opponent but their opponent is just too good with their footwork to be caught and pinned to a spot.
Eventually the fighter who is chasing loses the fight. This is because the fighter wasn’t effectively cutting off the ring, they were just following their opponent.
Teddy Atlas then goes on to talk about the all time great, Joe Lewis and his famous quote “They can run but they can’t hide” Lewis was great at cutting off the ring and Teddy Atlas mentions specifically Lewis' fights against Billy Conn.
Joe was losing the fight up until the 13th round. Conn was able to use his feet to piece up the aging Lewis but eventually Lewis was able to pin Conn down. This is what gave Lewis the chance to knockout Conn and give himself a great comeback from his highlight reel.
Teddy then goes on to display what proper ring cutting is. The first rule of ring cutting is not to follow the guy. This is because if you are following them, they have all the room in the world to move. If you are following an opponent and they suddenly change direction, you're stuck with all that work you did being useless.
Also if you're following someone, you’ll eventually run into their punches, as they are for user setting traps against you.
Teddy then goes on to talk about trying to be like a linebacker in American Football. You also want to stay directly in front of your opponent if you’re trying to cut them off, just like a linebacker does.
In order to do this you need to move parallel in front of your opponent. While you’re doing this, stay aware that your opponent might stop and throw punches at you at any time. You need to keep in mind the distance while moving.
What you want to do is move around the ring and slowly close into your opponent to limit the space they have to move around. Do this slowly as if you do it too fast your opponent will notice and either counter to move off in a different way to stop you.
Once you close the ring enough, your opponent is going to be stuck and you can get to work.
Learn More From Teddy Atlas
If you like this video from Teddy Atlas and want to learn more from the legend himself, you can check out his complete video series “Footwork-Boxing’s Transit System By Teddy Atlas” available exclusively on Dynamic Striking.