Punching Power and Resonance

This is one of those funny things in which ideas from physics and from professional sports seem to float around together. There's something I've never noticed before which I think I'm seeing watching the new middleweight champion (Pavlik).

In physics resonance means choosing a frequency which maximizes some sort of an effect, like pipes humming or like waiting for a swing to come all the way back before pushing on it again.

The rules of Olympic style boxing favor flurry punching, while it is known that flurry punching is not a reasonable approach to profesional boxing. In fact I once saw a guy trying to box like that land about thirty punches on Duran (on Duran's arms and shoulders) in about three seconds while Duran landed about three on him; the guy was lying in some old lady's lap outside the ring and Duran was standing there laughing....

In fact a boxer overly concerned with ultimate hand speed might encounter the following problem: a right thrown too quickly behind a hard jab might miss or land less than solidly because the adversary's head was still moving away from the jab when the hard punch got there.

Kelly Pavlik has exceptional hand speed. He can block a punch and hit the other guy with the same hand in the same move and you read about Jack Johnson doing that but you don't see it much in modern boxing since most fighters don't have the handspeed to do it. Nonetheless some of Pavlik's combinations appear slow at first blush i.e. the second punch appears to be following the first after the tiniest bit of a pause rather than immediately and the effect seems to be giving the opponent's head time to come BACK and INTO the second punch.

You can see it easily in that Pavlik/Zertuche film on youtube:

http://tinyurl.com/39p7c9

Zertuche was consider a middleweight contender and a dangerous opponent although you wouldn't know it watching the last two minutes of the fight with Pavlik.

I don't really know if this is something they teach boxers or something Pavlik and his crew have figured out on their own or what exactly; like I say I've never noticed it previously.