Tape Study: Advanced Distortion and Leading (Patreon)

• LMA Curriculum

In this video, watch how Shakur Stevenson and Giorgio Petrosyan use their lead hands to not only distort their opponents' perceptions but also to have their opponents distort their own perceptions.

Stevenson not only puts his hand in front of Shuichiro Yoshino's eyes but also touches his lead glove, affecting his proprioception. When Yoshino's lead glove is touched, he either raises his glove to block—blocking his own vision—or ducks his head while blocking—effectively making himself blind.

The gloves are like sensors for boxers, and by constantly touching your opponent's gloves, you feed them information.

Watch Stevenson's eyes, he's taking it all on. His gaze is continuously on his opponent. For Yoshino, his eyes are either behind Stevenson's glove, his own gloves, or looking at the ground while punching blind. During the six rounds, he barely saw Stevenson and would charge onto counters or duck into uppercuts.

Once Stevenson took away his opponent's eyes, it was no longer a dangerous fight, which allowed him to be more aggressive and finish his opponent in six rounds.

Stevenson claims he's an exciting fighter who's willing to stand in the line of fire, but if you're good enough, you can stand in the line of fire while making your opponent shoot blanks.

Both Petrosyan and Stevenson use their lead hands to gauge their opponents' reactions. Once they realize the response against jabs or the loss of perception is to cover up, they'll keep touching the gloves to keep their opponents' gloves up.

The downside to constantly keeping your hands up is that you can't see. For defense, keeping a clear line of sight is more important than keeping your guard up.

Since Mike Zambidis likes to keep his guard up, Petrosyan made sure he kept his guard up. With his eyes covered, it was easy for Petrosyan to kick and knee Zambidis but also to use his gloves like handles to steer him out of the way.

Since keeping your guard high means you can't see, you have to lower your guard to see your opponent, which exposes your head. Stevenson and Petrosyan would capitalize on those moments to strike the head, which would cause their opponents to shell up again.

Moreover, keeping your guard high might mean blocking headshots, but you're still getting hit. A blocked punch still does damage. You're also not fighting back if you're only blocking. If you're not fighting back, there's no reason for your opponent to stop hitting you. Furthermore, this only acts as an effective shield because of the boxing gloves. With MMA gloves or no gloves, it's no longer as effective.

Keeping your guard high and not being hit directly in the head is better than nothing, but it's not much more than nothing because you're still not scoring. You're only reducing how much your opponent scores. But now your two main attack weapons are preoccupied, along with your eyes.

Some fighters, like those who rely on a high guard, rely less on perception and more on rhythm to attack and defend because they often can't see.

Rhythm is a pattern of movement over time. If you break up your opponent's rhythm or your own, their ability to respond becomes constrained. They can't see and don't know what to expect.

As I explained previously, perception is so much more than just vision. For example, you can place a novice cook and a great cook in the same kitchen, and though they can see the same things, their perceptions of their surroundings will be vastly different. This is because perception includes intangibles beyond just sight, like experience.

Likewise, some fighters cannot perceive as well without pattern. They might also use their movement patterns to elicit expected patterns in return: If I do this, you do that. Pattern for them works much like experience does for the seasoned cook. It's how they perceive their environment.

Perception is also expectations, and movement patterns help some fighters perceive. It's similar to how some people cannot concentrate without some ritualistic movement. Just as humans are creatures of habit, fighters are creatures of patterns. It's their eyes, sensors, flow, and concentration. But when you break that pattern by putting your glove in their face, touching their glove, or breaking up how you attack them, thereby undermining their expectations, they can no longer process their environment. As a result, their conscious and unconscious decision-making can't function. When you can no longer perceive your environment (no longer process information) and are under threat, you resort to your most predictable responses: fight, flight, or freeze.

For Zambidis and Yoshino, their response was to fight. They became coiled rubber bands. As soon as Petrosyan and Stevenson released tension, their opponents attacked. Knowing when they would attack made it easy for Petrosyan and Stevenson to counter and dodge.

For the most part, Petrosyan and Stevenson dictated when their opponents would freeze and when they would fight: Hit them, make them miss, and counter.

For Stevenson, his fight with Yoshino was so lopsided, with Yoshino taking all the damage and offering no effective offense, the referee mercifully called the fight. It was no longer competitive or a contest, just a beating.

In summary, your goal is to attack your opponent's eyes and control their movement while using your eyes to defend and adapt.

– Sam