Last week was the birth anniversary of a boxer named Tony Canzoneri. Canzoneri was one of Boxing’s first three weight world champions, winning titles in the Featherweight, Lightweight and Light Welterweight divisions. Born in 1908, Canzoneri was already considered the best boxer in the world by the age of 23.

Tony Canzoneri was known for his slick boxing ability, possessing excellent upper body movement he was a very craft fighter who displayed shrewd ring IQ. Canzoneri was always trying to set traps and in the video below we can see one example of how he did this.

I’ve written in the past about the need to be unpredictable – a good boxer will pick up on any patterns you have and then set traps for you and counter punch you. In the clip below we see Canzoneri countering his opponents jab with the inside slip and right hand over the top – essentially this is the cross counter. Canzoneri does this two times in a row, before getting into a clinch and then for the third time he counters the opponents jab with the cross counter, we do see here though that the opponents jab looks like it half landed on Canzoneri.

Now the opponent may well be thinking that he keeps countering with the right hand but he is one step behind because he throws another jab – Canzoneri though doesn’t counter with the cross counter this, instead of using the inside slip with the right hand over the top he uses the inside slip with a left to the head(an uppercut which lands just underneath the chin) and follows up with the right hand causing the knockdown. Now his opponent may have suspected a cross counter was coming which was why he threw the jab and the cross but Canzoneri upset those plans by countering with the uppercut and cross instead.

This is an example of being one step ahead and setting a trap for the opponent – make the opponent think you are going to do one thing ie the cross counter but do something different ie the lead uppercut. Both the cross counter and lead uppercut came off the same inside slip movement, an excellent tactic by Canzoneri which caught his opponent out.