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While the left hook may be the most vaunted punch in boxing, known for both its versatility and fight-ending power, the right hook is it’s weird little cousin. The right hook is a tricky punch to land with both fighters in an orthodox stance, as the lead shoulder hides the chin from a horizontal strike, and the big gloves make it difficult to sneak one through the guard.
If you look at Jack Dempsey’s book, Championship Fighting, he spends a lot of time on the left hook but scarcely mentions the offensive applications of a right hook, save for throwing it to the body or as a sneaker on the clinch break. The punch is largely reserved for infighting in boxing, where one can step inside of his opponent’s stance and move them around, finding angles around the protective lead shoulder or using the head as a wedge to physically pry it open.
The glove size and relative lack of defensive acumen in MMA should make the rear hook a much more viable and versatile strike, but there have historically been other barriers preventing its widespread adoption and tactical development. For much of MMA’s short existence, striking has been built largely around rapid closing of distance. MMA fighters have long relied on giving ground to avoid punches, lacking the comfort and eyes necessary to stay safe in chaotic exchanges.
The elite were always well ahead of the pack in terms of thoughtful striking, but the rank and file fighters mostly maintained this discomfort on the inside, and as a result fights often involved two fighters standing outside punching range and attempting to rush through the gap to get their offense off before the opponent. The overhand, then, was the weapon of choice over the rear hook. Not only does the arching angle of an overhand better attack the parts of a retreating opponent not covered by the lead shoulder, but it’s a much longer strike, able to reach as far as you’re comfortable throwing yourself off balance.
It’s only within the past decade or so that the average prelim-level fighter has developed enough comfort in exchanges that most fights are now more about the logic of successive exchanges and adaptations made between them than about figuring out how to run in from kicking range.
Esteban Ribovics is a great example of these developments in MMA striking and the right hook is one of his favored tools. Ribovics has been fighting for about nine years which would normally put him right around the middle of his prime, but he took several years off from 2017-2019 and 2020-2022, so he likely still has a lot of room to grow.
What caught my eye about Ribovics is that he’s an aggressive, all-out action fighter, but there’s quite a bit of craft in the way he goes about things. His bravado and pugnacity in exchanges means that he’s very open to his opponent’s offense, but to capitalize on it they have to put themselves in position to get hit hard. He spends a lot of time trying to force the fight into a phonebooth and hammering away once he gets there - combine that disposition with a penchant for hooking, and he provides a great study of the right hook’s potential in MMA.
Ribovics is a quick starter and often opens his fights with rapid flurries of hooks. These tend to be most successful when he has his man on the cage with no room to back up - their stance squares as their back hits the cage, removing the lead shoulder blocking the path to the chin and allowing wide right hooks to slot in around their arms.
Ribovics’ footwork in these flurries is interesting too. He’s often fairly careless with his feet and ends up squaring up, relying on his overwhelming offense to scare opponents out of pitching back at him. But now and again he’ll show off some slick setups. His knockdown of Loik Radzhabov above was particularly neat - he enters with a flurry of body and head hooks that square him up and get Radzhabov bending over to avoid the onslaught, but then he subtly steps into southpaw and loads his right hip for a body hook that lands as he’s backstepping right back into orthodox, putting him in position to chase Radzhabov with a leaping right hook as he flees.
His most recent win, a 30-second knockout over Terrance McKinney, came by adding a head kick onto the end of his rush:
Ribovics noticed that McKinney tended to back straight up when faced with combinations and it didn’t take him long to exploit it. He used McKinney’s jab as a trigger to switch to southpaw, then run in with a flurry of hooks, shifting back into orhtodox and finishing with a kick. McKinney ran back to what he thought was a safe distance, only for the headkick to catch him unaware.
It’s not all balls to the wall aggression with Ribovics though, he can set some traps and punish opponents for trying to make him pay.
In Edwin Haislet’s seminal manual on boxing tactics, he devotes far more time to talking about the left hook, but calls the right hook “one of the most dangerous counters in boxing,” pointing out that it’s especially useful against an opponent who’s overreaching and off balance. Ribovics has a good eye for counters and a hard hook is always poised to smack anyone stepping in on him.
When throwing the rear hand, the lead shoulder is naturally pulled back away from the chin, leaving an opening for the horizontal right hook that would otherwise fall on the shoulder. By moving second with it, Ribovics can get outside his opponent’s punch and walk them into his own. He also has a fairly consistent intercepting jab that he’ll use to poke over top of his opponent’s straight right and bounce their head into the path of his right hook.
The limited range of the right hook makes it suitable as an offensive tool only in close range engagements, but even when it falls short, Ribovics finds it a useful setup tool. He’ll wing the right hook at opponents standing in front of them and if they pull back or it falls short, Ribovics will shift forward into southpaw and follow up with more hooks:
The committed left hook thrown at such a close opponent usually draws a defensive reaction, convincing them to throw up a guard or back away. Then the shift takes him outside their stance, allowing his left to split the guard down the middle, and putting him in position to follow up with the right hook again. He’ll also use this on the counter, where it’s particularly effective as opponents are often not expecting a combination coming back at them after committing to a strike - an opponent caught by surprise will tend to give ground, allowing Ribovics to fill the space with his shift and crack them.
Ribovics will often just switch stances on the spot too, hopping into southpaw with his man right in front of him, which puts the right hand outside their lead shoulder and conceals the hook from their view. There’s obvious dangers to this approach, since a shift requires momentarily taking your feet out of position, and with the opponent right in front of you it gives them a chance to capitalize. But if it works, they suddenly find themselves in an exchange with an opponent in a different stance who now has different weapons than they were expecting.
Ribovics has made it work though, and he does a good job at being ready to react as soon as his feet are set. The shift will often draw the opponent into attacking, and Ribovics uses that as a bait by slipping and countering with the sneaky right hook as they enter. However, he left his face wide open to Kamuela Kirk’s left hook several times switching stances on the spot like this, and it seems only by luck that they didn’t connect harder.
While Ribovics spends most of his time in orthodox with the occasional shift into southpaw during exchanges, he’ll sometimes work directly out of a southpaw stance. When he’s in southpaw, his entire game is about baiting his man to run into the right hook.
If you look at Jack Dempsey’s book, Championship Fighting, he spends a lot of time on the left hook but scarcely mentions the offensive applications of a right hook, save for throwing it to the body or as a sneaker on the clinch break. The punch is largely reserved for infighting in boxing, where one can step inside of his opponent’s stance and move them around, finding angles around the protective lead shoulder or using the head as a wedge to physically pry it open.
The glove size and relative lack of defensive acumen in MMA should make the rear hook a much more viable and versatile strike, but there have historically been other barriers preventing its widespread adoption and tactical development. For much of MMA’s short existence, striking has been built largely around rapid closing of distance. MMA fighters have long relied on giving ground to avoid punches, lacking the comfort and eyes necessary to stay safe in chaotic exchanges.
The elite were always well ahead of the pack in terms of thoughtful striking, but the rank and file fighters mostly maintained this discomfort on the inside, and as a result fights often involved two fighters standing outside punching range and attempting to rush through the gap to get their offense off before the opponent. The overhand, then, was the weapon of choice over the rear hook. Not only does the arching angle of an overhand better attack the parts of a retreating opponent not covered by the lead shoulder, but it’s a much longer strike, able to reach as far as you’re comfortable throwing yourself off balance.
It’s only within the past decade or so that the average prelim-level fighter has developed enough comfort in exchanges that most fights are now more about the logic of successive exchanges and adaptations made between them than about figuring out how to run in from kicking range.
Esteban Ribovics is a great example of these developments in MMA striking and the right hook is one of his favored tools. Ribovics has been fighting for about nine years which would normally put him right around the middle of his prime, but he took several years off from 2017-2019 and 2020-2022, so he likely still has a lot of room to grow.
What caught my eye about Ribovics is that he’s an aggressive, all-out action fighter, but there’s quite a bit of craft in the way he goes about things. His bravado and pugnacity in exchanges means that he’s very open to his opponent’s offense, but to capitalize on it they have to put themselves in position to get hit hard. He spends a lot of time trying to force the fight into a phonebooth and hammering away once he gets there - combine that disposition with a penchant for hooking, and he provides a great study of the right hook’s potential in MMA.
Ribovics is a quick starter and often opens his fights with rapid flurries of hooks. These tend to be most successful when he has his man on the cage with no room to back up - their stance squares as their back hits the cage, removing the lead shoulder blocking the path to the chin and allowing wide right hooks to slot in around their arms.
Ribovics’ footwork in these flurries is interesting too. He’s often fairly careless with his feet and ends up squaring up, relying on his overwhelming offense to scare opponents out of pitching back at him. But now and again he’ll show off some slick setups. His knockdown of Loik Radzhabov above was particularly neat - he enters with a flurry of body and head hooks that square him up and get Radzhabov bending over to avoid the onslaught, but then he subtly steps into southpaw and loads his right hip for a body hook that lands as he’s backstepping right back into orthodox, putting him in position to chase Radzhabov with a leaping right hook as he flees.
His most recent win, a 30-second knockout over Terrance McKinney, came by adding a head kick onto the end of his rush:
Ribovics noticed that McKinney tended to back straight up when faced with combinations and it didn’t take him long to exploit it. He used McKinney’s jab as a trigger to switch to southpaw, then run in with a flurry of hooks, shifting back into orhtodox and finishing with a kick. McKinney ran back to what he thought was a safe distance, only for the headkick to catch him unaware.
It’s not all balls to the wall aggression with Ribovics though, he can set some traps and punish opponents for trying to make him pay.
In Edwin Haislet’s seminal manual on boxing tactics, he devotes far more time to talking about the left hook, but calls the right hook “one of the most dangerous counters in boxing,” pointing out that it’s especially useful against an opponent who’s overreaching and off balance. Ribovics has a good eye for counters and a hard hook is always poised to smack anyone stepping in on him.
When throwing the rear hand, the lead shoulder is naturally pulled back away from the chin, leaving an opening for the horizontal right hook that would otherwise fall on the shoulder. By moving second with it, Ribovics can get outside his opponent’s punch and walk them into his own. He also has a fairly consistent intercepting jab that he’ll use to poke over top of his opponent’s straight right and bounce their head into the path of his right hook.
The limited range of the right hook makes it suitable as an offensive tool only in close range engagements, but even when it falls short, Ribovics finds it a useful setup tool. He’ll wing the right hook at opponents standing in front of them and if they pull back or it falls short, Ribovics will shift forward into southpaw and follow up with more hooks:
The committed left hook thrown at such a close opponent usually draws a defensive reaction, convincing them to throw up a guard or back away. Then the shift takes him outside their stance, allowing his left to split the guard down the middle, and putting him in position to follow up with the right hook again. He’ll also use this on the counter, where it’s particularly effective as opponents are often not expecting a combination coming back at them after committing to a strike - an opponent caught by surprise will tend to give ground, allowing Ribovics to fill the space with his shift and crack them.
Ribovics will often just switch stances on the spot too, hopping into southpaw with his man right in front of him, which puts the right hand outside their lead shoulder and conceals the hook from their view. There’s obvious dangers to this approach, since a shift requires momentarily taking your feet out of position, and with the opponent right in front of you it gives them a chance to capitalize. But if it works, they suddenly find themselves in an exchange with an opponent in a different stance who now has different weapons than they were expecting.
Ribovics has made it work though, and he does a good job at being ready to react as soon as his feet are set. The shift will often draw the opponent into attacking, and Ribovics uses that as a bait by slipping and countering with the sneaky right hook as they enter. However, he left his face wide open to Kamuela Kirk’s left hook several times switching stances on the spot like this, and it seems only by luck that they didn’t connect harder.
While Ribovics spends most of his time in orthodox with the occasional shift into southpaw during exchanges, he’ll sometimes work directly out of a southpaw stance. When he’s in southpaw, his entire game is about baiting his man to run into the right hook.
