The Art Of Cutting The Ring With Teddy Atlas
Ring generalship is one of the most important aspects of boxing. It is the way boxing bouts are usually determined. By looking at who is the ring general in a fight, we can tell who’s got the upper hand.
But what is ring generalship? Ring generalship is simply the way a fighter controls the ring through pace and action; when a boxer controls the ring, he can manage to play the bout on his terms and usually decide the way it will go - it can be a fast pace fight, a brawl, a technical fight and so on.
What if one fighter controls the pace and the other controls the action? This will result in a weird situation where no one controls the ring until one boxer can handle both the action and the pace to decide how the bout will look.
Many boxers lack the understanding of what they can do to control the ring, which creates a situation where many fighters fall into their opponent’s game despite being “better.”
Some tactics we should keep in mind when looking to control the ring are:
- Cutting the ring
- Establishing the jab
- Establish good positioning
- Controlling the clinch
- Feinting
- “Taking and Giving ground” intentionally
In this video, Teddy Atlas shows us how to properly cut the ring so you can keep your opponents on the ropes.
Who Is Teddy Atlas
Teddy Atlas is one of those old-school teachers who shows you something new every time you learn from him. Teddy has worked with countless world champions, including Mike Tyson back in the day. Teddy enjoys real boxing, which is dictated by technique and heart, something that we lack in the age of conditioning; this leads him to do everything that he can to share his knowledge and show the world what real boxing is.
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Cutting The Ring Like A Pro
Teddy starts the video by asking us a simple question - how many times have you seen one fighter chasing his opponents but cannot get to them? The answer is usually -A lot; one boxer is just using his legs to move around the ring to deny any chance of the pursuer getting him; this leads a lot of the time to a disappointing loss.
So why does it happen? Because the pursuer doesn't know how to cut the ring! Cutting the ring will enable us to lock our opponent down and take the space in the ring away from him. The idea of cutting the ring has been around forever, but still, fighters don’t know how to do it, so Teddy will make it simple for us and explain it in a way that we all can understand and implement immediately.
Before we start the explanation, Teddy begins with a quote by the fantastic Joe Louis “They can run, but they cannot hide,” which he showcased in his fight against Billy Conn.He was out boxed in this fight but still managed to win the bout in the 13th round by knockout; he did it by controlling the ring, cutting it down, and shrinking it until Billy had nowhere else to hide from him. When they got to the corner, Joe finished Billy with an iconic KO victory.
To explain how to cut the ring, Teddy uses the analogy of a linebacker in football - he says that we should never follow the guy we are facing because we will not catch him; we will walk right into his punches.
If we want to get to a guy, we must cut him off by not following him directly but instead moving sideways in a parallel movement, not giving him the option to circle away from us, and this way, we can lock him down.
Remember that as long as we keep the opponent in front of us, we stop him from circling as he will bump into us if he tries to run away. This way, we can cut the ring effectively. But notice that he can stop and surprise you with an attack at any moment so don't be naive here, control the ring, and stay alert, so we don’t give him any chance of taking the lead in the fight.
Now that we know we need to stay alert, we will shrink the ring by cutting it and moving forward so the opponent can’t run away from us and push him to the corner with no escape, here he cannot hide and you can start working.
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