Coach Ian – Week in Review 05/09/2021
Book I’m Reading
The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less than 4 Minutes to Achieve It – Neal Bascomb
Run Streak and Running Goals:
Progress: As of 5/9/21, I’ve now run 538 miles for the year, while maintaining my 129-day run streak.
Share of the Week 1:
Share of the Week 2:
The name of the game is to hit and not get hit. Dreamland’s own, Chris Washington (4-0) does this better than anyone. How many times did you see him get hit clean in this clip?
Boxing Highlights:
Canelo Alvarez vs Billy Joe Saunders:
Bigger ring, but the same outcome that we expected. A few people mentioned that Canelo once had trouble with Erislandy Lara’s movement and that Billy Joe Saunders could present the same kind of trouble. Back then, Canelo wasn’t too great at cutting the ring off. 7 years later, Canelo at 30 years old is at the peak of his career and has seen everything. He had a nice feint to set up his left hook to the body to force Saunders in the other direction. He has a nice guard and head movement while coming forward and rarely is forced to step backwards, and can easily move into a closer range than his opponents find comfortable. That pressure set up his right hook to the temple and to the body – those were shots that Saunders always shook his head at, but were doing damage early in the fight.
Billy Joe Saunders gained some momentum in the middle rounds, landing a few left crosses to get Canelo’s attention. He started to drop his hands and let his hands go a bit more often. Saunders had a false sense of confidence and Canelo eventually found his counter uppercut when Saunders lunged in with a hook. It was a perfect punch, and I’m guessing it fractured his orbital bone and may have done additional damage to his eye as well.
One thing I didn’t understand from Billy Joe Saunders was the positioning of his lead hand. Typically in orthodox – southpaw matchups, I tell our fighters to control the lead hand and keep the upper position on your opponent’s lead hand. This puts you in a position to parry and counter with the lead hand. I haven’t watched much of Billy Joe Saunders in the past, but he seems to keep a high guard often. When he dropped his lead, he was relying on trying to sneak his jab in between Canelo’s guard instead. When you use this strategy, your lead foot tends to move towards in the inside of your opponent’s lead foot, which also isn’t recommended. Certain fighters have gotten away with this (Lomachenko), but overall it isn’t recommended and it didn’t really work against Canelo. He only landed 18% of his jabs, and that was supposed to be his key weapon. Just an observation I had that wasn’t discussed on the broadcast…
Anyways, incredible performance by Canelo. I had the fight 79-73, with Saunders only winning 1 round. I don’t see Caleb Plant or GGG beating him..
This Week at Dreamland Boxing:
Our classes have been increased to 17 people per class. Also, open gym hours have been extended from 9:30AM to 12:30PM and a Beginner’s Boxing Class on Saturdays at noon with Coach Eric. See the full updates here.
Dreamland Boxing has re-opened for outdoor classes. Classes will be capped and there will be no waitlist for classes. Come join me on Fridays at 4:30PM for a workout!
Also, I have continued to host our virtual boxing sessions. Thank you to our members for keeping your memberships active and continuing to support our gym during this time. And I’m personally glad to have been able to aid in your boxing development all year!
Our virtual practices this week featured the following:
- Breaking down the Andy Ruiz – Chris Arreola, Michael Conlan – Ionut Baluta, and Katie Taylor – Natasha Jonas fights
- Chopping right hands
- Body weight circuits
- Kettlebell Single-Arm Swings and Turkish Get-Ups
- And more!
You can find a full list of drills if you are a current Dreamland Boxing member in the Premium Drills section of my website.
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