All I hear about from the pro-Conor crowd is that Conor is going to use a multitude of unfamiliar and unorthodox movements that will confuse Mayweather enough that Conor can land. Can anyone point to any specifics?
As in, are there any specific movements or ways to throw punches or feints to set them up that you think would help Conor offensively more than it leaves him open defensively?
I've only seen a little bit of this "awkwardness" and most of it doesn't look too conducive.
Take this movement for example. As I wrote elsewhere, this head movement looks bad. His head is way too forward, his elbows flare out, and he backsteps with his front foot first instead of his back foot, leaving him square. L
This, I have no idea how it's supposed to work in a fight. Has anyone ever seen it done it before? Is it just an exercise?
People try comparing Conor to Maidana, but as I wrote earlier:
You have to know the rules in order to break them. In order to throw a boxer off with unconventional moves, you first have to know what they expect, and then subvert that expectation. People cite Maidana giving Floyd trouble or unconventional boxers like Roy, but the difference is they learned how to box correctly first (or at least conventionally), then added in what they found success with that bent the rules. In fact Maidana actually got better the more conventional he became under Garcia, at least on the outside. But in any case, it's after many many rounds against elite boxers. Knowing what they fall for, knowing what traps work most often, being able to follow their eyes and what feints they fall for, etc.
Otherwise you're not being unconventional, you're just being weird. Weird is not enough. If you put a fencer in there with Floyd, he's going to be weird, but it's not going to be successful. Put a street brawler in there, same thing. A Wing Chun specialist, same thing. Boxing techniques exist as they do because they work best for their own rule set. McGregor isn't going to discover a magical system-breaking anomaly that centuries of formalized participation and innovation didn't pioneer.
Conor may well come out awkward and give Floyd a little bit pause, but Floyd understands enough of the body mechanics in boxing that he'll see where the weight is distributed, see where the head/body is unprotected, and zero in on it time and time again. Just because it's weird doesn't mean its good. So far people are only using the concept and not giving any technical reason for how these movements should work in a boxing match at all.
A few breakdowns that show why you can't compare Maidana's boxing-based unorthodoxy to the awkwardness that comes from unfamiliarity:
So tell me, do people actually have any sense of what these unconventional awkward non-boxing movements that will throw Floyd off are supposed to be, or is it a hollow hypothesis based on wishful thinking?
