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In my new and awesome job at The Captury (click) we did realtime markerless motion capture at the boxing class of Uni-Saarland:
Such motion recognition systems are used in Virtual Reality film industry to embody avatars in animations or replace stunt actor with the actual one.
In the context of augmented reality, one can use 3D models to add various effects to punches like explosions when hits land.
For a fights broadcaster this technology enables to precisely keep track of statistics like punches landed with their respective power and area of landing, covering all further judging aspects like ring generalship, effective defense and aggressiveness.
A combat sports trainer can profit from such technology even more by measuring his pupil punch speed, accuracy and cleanness improvements through a training camp cycle.
Furthermore one can analyse the activity levels during sparring, including important physiological factors like energy consumed, or levels of ab absorbed damage.
You can checkout also the "making of" timelapse displaying the full system setup, training and decomposition. Every second of this video equals one minute in live, meaning that we built and removed the system in roughly 30 minutes including the supplement promo video shooting stuff:
Based on our recordings back then I've published a new boxing post analysis video with our new charting tools. At first we show how you can visualize different body angles, which can identify technique and stance related issues. Then we show how you can measure athleticism with plotting various joints speed. Further useful tool is to visualize joint positions over time, like punch trajectory or feet positioning. All of those options are available now in real-time mode as well. Furthermore you can export your analysis as CSV, PNG or Video:
Please visit http://www.thecaptury.com/ for more information about our products.
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Welcome everyone to the recently launched platform for scoring boxing and MMA fights called the FightScore Network. It is a way to let you be the judge of fights and give the result you consider to be correct.
To score a fight, simply register and confirm your registration via email. Then you'll be able to see the add score button, where you can place a score for certain fight! Otherwise you can see scores without registration.
Have a nice scoring!
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We all know the never ending speculations. Who would have won? Ali or Tyson, Johnson or Marciano, Dempsey or Liston? The never ending story, essentially comparing great heavyweights that eventually never met, considered mostly due to a prime time discrepancy. In this article I'll elaborate the topic, whether such a comparisons are substantial all. Let us start with a table of some of the most notable heavyweights in the last century with their weight at their prime time:
| Boxer | Prime | Weight (lbs) | Height (cm) | Reach (cm) |
| Johnson | 1910 | 210 | 184 | 188 |
| Dempsey | 1923 | 188 | 185 | 196 |
| Schmeling | 1931 | 188 | 185 | 193 |
| Louis | 1940 | 200 | 188 | 193 |
| Charles | 1950 | 182 | 183 | 185 |
| Marciano | 1954 | 188 | 179 | 173 |
| Patterson | 1956 | 182 | 183 | 180 |
| Liston | 1963 | 214 | 184 | 213 |
| Frazier | 1971 | 210 | 182 | 185 |
| Ali | 1974 | 215 | 191 | 198 |
| Holmes | 1980 | 215 | 190 | 206 |
| Tyson | 1990 | 220 | 178 | 180 |
| Lewis | 2002 | 245 | 196 | 213 |
| Klitshko | 2012 | 248 | 201 | 201 |
Then I'll draw a curve with the weight progression of heavyweights over the years:
On the weight axis I've drawn the weights in lbs starting of 175 pounds, which was and still is the light heavyweight limit and 265 pounds, which is usually the super heavyweight limit in other combats sports (boxing has no such limit but, anyway no great heavyweight was over that limit at his prime). We clearly see a serious increase with the elapsing time. By watching this comparison one can hardly think of Klitschko or Lennox Lewis facing someone at the size of Floyd Patterson or Ezzard Charles - a head smaller, weighting 65 pounds less. History-wise the majority of heavyweights got over 200 pounds somewhere around the late 60s and 70s with Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali. At that time the lower weight was light heavy, which was as mentioned 175 pounds. The step from 175 to 210, was pretty radical so around the 80s all major boxing regulating organs starting to recognize the so called cruiserweight, which balances the scales at 200 pounds. Nowadays cruiserweight is an established weight division, and there are many heavyweight champions in the recent years, which started from there. However, none of the modern heavyweight great fighters started out of light heavy in contrast to the past, where a lot of heavyweight champions were seeking great matches with light heavyweight champions.
Another huge factor nowadays is the weigh in, which due to promoting and other reasons happens usually around 30 hours before the fight itself. In recent years swallowing up to 20 or even 25 pounds after making the weigh in is a common practice in every championship bout with the purpose of having a weight advantage over the opponent. The plot below shows the weight limits of the corresponding weight class: welter (147), light middle (154), middle (160), super middle (168), light heavy (175) and cruiser (200).
With the orange color I've shown the practice gain of 20-22 pounds. Note that with weight increase the practice gain rises due to the fact of being less percentage of boxers body weight. With red we can see the extreme gain, which some boxers try to make like Chavez Jr. or Victor Ortiz. Often such extreme gains result in a performance drawback, despite being usually a benefit in a boxers early career. Now lets compare both weight plots to compare in which weight class actually would have fit the all time great heavyweights today:
As we can see, it is most likely that today Marciano and Joe Louis would have battled with Gennady Golovkin and Carl Froch, rather than with Klitschko brothers. At this line I'll put this article to rest and will let you make your own conclusions.
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Since I've watched dozens of training videos, I decided to give you a short review of some of them. Unfortunately, there is a lot of crap in internet considering instructional boxing videos. A lot of dickheads who never fought or even trained for real are posting blogs and videos explaining how to box. There are even bullshit websites created for no real purpose, other than to make you click their banners and buy this and that. Here are maybe the most popular videos and series about boxing training with some short comment by myself:
- Title Boxing Series
Maybe the best and most comprehensive guide for boxing. You'll see leading trainers like Freddy Roach, Jeff Fenech, and others explaining the fundamentals in terms of technique, training and so on. I watched all of the episodes and I must say that I've learned a lot from them as a boxer and as someone who is teaching the youngsters this and that.
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GB Masterclass
Great short series, which are free to watch in Vimeo! If you are about to see shortly the fundamentals, this is definitely for you :)
- Everlast
This one tops the most stupid youtube wannabe channels. In this video you'll enjoy a combination of false tips, false training program, false explanations and a little bit of laughing things like the jumping part, where they had no rope for one of the three participants and she had to jump without rope! (ROFL)
Nevertheless, there are rookies that are taking this video for serious. This is dangerous and shows not only the lack of real importance of this video, it shows the negative impact on the beginners.
- Art of Boxing by Jim McCann
As terrible as it gets. Some obese guy explaining bullshit...
- Boxing Training Foundation by Fran Sands
Just disgusted by this one, displaying someone who really doesn't understand a shit of boxing!
My conclusion is that there is no good trainer that will show his real secrets by blogging or vlogging. In fact, no one will even show his advanced techniques. So it's up to you to be able to "steal" different gems from different places. When you go to competition be very aware, what the other corners are doing. When you are watching TV, be very aware, what some commentators like Emanuel Steward, Andre Ward, Paul Malignaggi or Tedy Atlas are saying. Be able to separate important material from the others crap.