How Roberto Duran countered the Jab
Countering the jab is an extremely important aspect of your boxing, why? Because the jab is the most commonly thrown punch so you have to develop some form of defence and counter attack to this punch, if you don’t you are in for a long night and a very likely loss.
The ability to counter the jab means you can take away the punch which is most being thrown at you, by doing this you are taking away a high percentage of your opponents game, this also makes your opponents attack much more predictable since they are no longer using the jab as often as they would if they are worried about the counter shot coming back at them.
One person who was very versatile at countering the jab was none other than one of the greatest fighters in history, Roberto Duran…
Duran is sometimes seen as a wild man, a man who liked to brawl and whilst that may be true to an extent – he certainly was crazy inside the ring and loved a good scrap, there was far more to his game and he was in reality a very smart fighter who many strings to his bow. Duran could do it all, there wasn’t a better inside fighter in the game but he was just as comfortable fighting at range countering the jab as he was sitting inside and countering you with uppercuts.
It is always good practice to have more than a couple of ways of defending the jab, if you only use one or two it becomes pretty predictable for your opponent to then plan a counter to your counter. Duran mixed his counters up well and like everyone he had a favourite – being the right hand over the top of the incoming jab. In the video below we can see five counters Duran used, this does not include the more common counters most use such as the catch and shoot(catch the jab with your back hand and counter with your own jab) or the parry and jab over the top(using the lead hand) as these are standard counters and I wanted to demonstrate Duran’s ability to counter the jab in more inventive ways. Study greats like Roberto Duran and it will help you become a more skilled boxer.
The counters Roberto Duran used in the video are:
- Inside Slip, Screw Jab
- Outside Slip, Right Cross
- Pull back, Right Uppercut
- Outside Slip, Right Hook Body
- Slip inside, Right Cross Body
