It’s no secret that Mike Tyson is one of the scariest punchers to ever grace the squared circle, and it’s also no secret that he still maintains a decent amount of that power to this day.
Tyson was able to knock his opponents out with such ease and grandeur that it turned him into a cult icon – a status he still maintains in the modern era.
The baddest dude on the planet
Jeffries, who won a bronze medal for Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics before retiring due to injuries in 2012, spoke to Men’s Health about the phenomenon of ‘Iron Mike’.
“You might have seen him when he used to move, he would do continuous slipping,” Jeffries said.
“Reason #1: Keep his opponent thinking. Obviously, standing still in the ring isn’t a winning strategy, but Tyson’s signature side-to-side, borderline-sashaying movement was more dramatic than most fighters of his era.
“If he’s moving like this, now he’s a moving target and it’s harder for his opponent to throw those punches and land them,” Jeffries said.
“Reason #2: Slipping punches. Similarly, Tyson showed an otherworldly talent for making fighters miss—in a split second, he could use his reflexes to duck out of the way, or “slip” them.”
“Reason #3: Power transfer. Now we get to the most critical observation.
“When he was slipping, he was transferring the weight to the opposite foot,” said Jeffries. “So if I’m transferring my weight to the opposite foot—if it’s the front foot—I can always come back for a big power left hook, getting my full weight behind the punch.
“But if you slip to the right, you can always come back with a big right hand. Jeffries concludes the brief clip with a brief demonstration on the bag, including one of his favorite combinations from his pro boxing days. “As you can see, maximum power in that punch,” he concluded. “But not as much as Mike Tyson.”