Slip and Rip With Teddy Atlas
Counter punching is one of the best ways to score points and even a knockout on your opponent. Being able to time your shot perfectly to when your opponent is coming in is a skill that very few strikers will even get the hang of and even less will master. Making your opponent pay for every missed or blocked strike is also a great way to prevent your opponent from striking.
One of the most common counters that you will see in anything that involves striking, Boxing, Muay Thai or MMA, is counters off of slips. First is that it follows the idea that we just mentioned, that being to pun9ish your opponent for their missed shots and mistakes. The second is that when you slip a punch, you are in the best position possible to throw a punch and your hips are loaded, while your opponent has their weight coming forward and the side of their head exposed. This means that you are able to get the maximum amount of power into your punch, at the worst time for your opponent to get hit.
In this video, Famous boxing coach and commentator Teddy Atlas goes over a simple slip and rip combination for boxing or any combat sport. The combination is short and sweet, you’re going to wait for your opponent's jab, slip to the outside of it and fire back with a rear straight and a left hook, provided that both of you are fighting out of an orthodox stance.
Atlas emphasizes the importance of not staying in the same position after finishing a combination, “you’re not going to pose” as he puts it. This is a solid rule to follow after any combination. Like Teddy Atlas says, your opponent might have a good chin, so you have to try like you know they have one. If you land these counter punches and your opponent is an aggressive fighter who has a solid chin , they are probably just going to come forward with reckless abandon, not caring that you just landed a shot that would have taken out some other fighters.
To add this to the drill, Atlas just adds a right hand after the person doing the drill lands the counter punch. This way they are forced to move or else they are going to get countered after their counter.
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There are a few ways that you could move off after landing the left hook. Moving back is what most new fighters go to in terms of evasive movement but this is bad for a number of reasons. First is that you might not have the space and second if you are fighting an aggressive opponent and you keep moving back ,you will run out of space eventually. So moving back is probably the last thing that you want to do, but what other options do you have.
Off of the lead hook there are a few things that are the easiest to do in terms of movement. The first is a simple roll to the lead side, which will get you off the centerline to dodge any punches and a solid angle if you decide to step out with it. You could also treat the lead hook as a check hook and pivot off of it, to get yourself out of the way before your opponent even has a chance to counter. Keep in mind that doing this will take a bit of power off of the hook though.
The third is very simple, just move to the left or right immediately after. It will be easier to move to your lead side after a lead side attack so that might be the direction that you would want to go in because of the momentum.
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