I follow mixed martial arts with a great deal more relish nowadays than I do boxing. Too many world titles, too much corruption, and too many great fights that don't happen or are signed years too late. But there's certainly one area in which it seems MMA just can't catch up—the nicknames are just a hundred times more imaginative.

I've endured so many Pitbulls and Assassins, often the fighter and the moniker couldn't be further removed from each other. Others have clearly picked their own nickname and then insist that their coaches and training partners have always called them by it.

Meanwhile boxing has had The Hispanic Causing Panic, The Thunder From Down Under, Manos De Piedra—Hands of Stone, Touch of Sleep, The Ding-a-Ling Man, and Smokin' Joe Frazier. But that's the thing about nicknames, the best ones aren't generic and they make you either think or chuckle. Real nicknames aren't always flattering, but people come to own them. Perhaps no nickname was so fitting for a fighter as that of the man we're going to examine today, El Flaco Explosivo.

El Flaco Explosivo

'The Explosive Thin Man', Alexis Arguello's moniker might have been one of the most uniquely fitting in ring history. Arguello, a 5'10 featherweight and lightweight, was never close to muscle bound. But this gangly Nicaraguan was one of the hardest hitters in boxing history. Ring Magazine put Arguello at number twenty on it's list of the hundred greatest punchers of all time. Even more impressive when you consider that Arguello won his first title by going toe-to-toe with, and knocking out, number twelve on that list—Ruben Olivares.

Now the difficulty in boxing is that ideally one wants to hit with weight whenever possible. That means that the feet must drive the bodyweight through the punches. Footwork and punches are entwined. But equally, a great fighter should be able to hit while moving freely. The two are pretty much impossible to accomplish in tandem.

Being an unpredictable, mobile fighter and a heavy hitter means utilizing both pure punches—with the bodyweight—and what Jack Dempsey termed “partial punches”, or weightless arm blows. Arguello could shake a man to his boots with full bodyweight blows when on offence, or he could knock a man out cold with a jolting arm punch at the right time. All the while throwing in graceful combination and pivoting off to different positions in the ring.

Here's the finish of Arguello's second bout with Alfredo Escalera. As someone who is forever singing the praises of hooking off of the jab and still barely ever seeing it, this is a real treat. The jab brings Escalera's right hand forward and the left hook shoots in behind. No strain, no unnecessary effort, just grace.

That was the power I wrote about, but how about those partial punches? Well, here's an instance from Arguello's title fight against Ruben Olivares. Notice as Olivares leaps in with his trademark left hook, Arguello catches him with a short, chopping left hook. It's an arm punch but it catches Olivares flush and sends him to the mat. Reminiscent of Muhammad Ali's famous Anchor Punch, more timing than power. And this happened in Arguello's fights a surprising amount.

Freddie Roach, student of the great Eddie Futch and now one of the most respected trainers in the sport, was asked who his greatest influence was. Roach replied: “Eddie Futch and Alexis Arguello. I was Alexis' sparring partner when I was 18 years old and he had a huge impact on my boxing career as did Eddie.” In Roach's video series he references Arguello, stating that most boxers will react in a fairly predictable way to the punches you end your combinations with. Arguello, he says, was the exception. Roach specifically references Arguello's counter left uppercut as a troubling punch.

The lead uppercut is a weird punch, you see a lot of fighters try to use it and utterly fail. It's most common effective use is as part of a C-cut combination—an overhand forces the opponent to duck, whereupon he is nailed but the lead uppercut from the other hand. It's the old rear hand strikes downward, lead hand strikes upward principle from European fencing manuals brought into the modern era.

But Arguello routinely used the lead uppercut as a counter. Not against ducking opponents either, just as fighters stepped in on him. Here Arguello nails Ruben Olivares as he comes in and immediately shows you why he could get away with it by avoiding the overhand which so often connects when a regular fighter attempts a lead uppercut.

Here he rocks Jose Fernandez's head back with a lead uppercut as the latter steps in, then digs a long right to the body while Fernandez is stunned. Arguello was uncharacteristically eager to get to work that night, one of the few first round knockouts on his record. Ordinarily Arguello would need to warm up before dropping the hammer.

A left uppercut in combination along the ropes finished the bout with Fernandez.

One of the things which made Arguello so effective was his incredible understanding of where his opponent's head was going to be. Arguello could anticipate bobs and slips with a tremendous rate of success, and so had opponent's leaning into his punches and adding force.



The uppercut which stole Ruben Olivares' title.



Arguello jabs non-commitally to draw a counter, knowing that Bobby Chacon's head will be in range to hook as he returns.

In his warm up for a crack at the welterweight division, Arguello met Kevin Rooney—the Cus D'amato student responsible for so much of Mike Tyson's success. Rooney's head movement was as frequent as you'd expect from someone using the peek-a-boo style, yet it took less than a round for Arguello to get his timing down.



Arguello showing his grace on defense.

Against Rooney, that left uppercut showed it's other advantage. While it exposes the uppercutter to overhand rights, it has all the lifting properties of a right uppercut, except the right hand can remain cocked and ready to fire. Arguello would stand his man up out of the crouch with the left uppercut (or by showing him it) and then crack him with the right straight.

In the second round, Rooney was just a punching bag for Arguello. Even with all his training in being elusive, he couldn't find a way around Arguello's punches. Arguello would convince him to move away from one punch, only to eat another. A right straight sent Rooney to the floor for the first time, and he could not beat the count.

During the course of his career, Arguello captured titles at featherweight, super featherweight, and lightweight but was unable to capture a fourth title as a light welterweight. Against Aaron Pryor, Pryor's erratic movement and furious pace proved too much for the thoughtful, methodical Arguello.

Arguello's career was fought amid turmoil in his homeland of Nicaragua, where he was considered a national hero, and for a brief time following his first retirement even fought with the rebels. He is also one of the few boxers about which almost none of his opponents had a bad word to say. Arguello was almost universally considered to be the perfect example of how a boxer should carry himself outside of the ring. This earned him the alternate nickname, The Gentleman of the Ring.

In 2009 Arguello, newly elected mayor of his hometown of Managua, reportedly committed suicide by shooting himself through the heart. A stern reminder that even the most beloved of heroes has his troubles.

A disappointingly low number of Arguello's seventy knockout wins have been caught on film, but every single one is a joy to watch. If you have a moment today, watch at least one—he was simply a cut above most of the fighters you'll ever see, and certainly no-one retained such grace even when swarming for a knockout as The Explosive Thin Man.

Pick up Jack Slack's ebooks at his blog Fights Gone By. Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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