No exercise in the arsenal of a martial artist or combat sports competitor is as versatile as sparring.

There are a dozen different exercises you can do against a heavy bag, double end bag, or on the mitts, but none of those is nearly so varied or alive as a good sparring session. You can spar hard, you can play spar, you can spar like you intend to fight, or you can fool around with new ideas. You can substitute head punches with punches to the chest, so that you can spar every day and work your footwork (as Brendan Ingle taught Naseem Hamed to do), or you can spar rarely and hard, saving yourself for fight night, as Nigel Benn did. You could even spar with one hand tied back as Roy Jones Jr.'s father reportedly made him do.

Sparring can just as easily be a confidence building exercise. I once knew a man who was very proud of his sparring sessions with Ricky Hatton. As it turned out, my poor friend was brought into the ring with Hatton when Ricky was having a “fat day” as something of a confidence booster!

Those who appreciate the game because it is a battle of wits rather than a physical endeavour can often prefer sparring to all other exercises in the gym. James Toney, of course, famously refuses to do anything except spar. Which is where he gets both his incredible timing and almost clairvoyant sense of anticipation, but also where his slurred speech came from.

The great Muhammad Ali looked famously awful in his sparring sessions, and it's something which many of the sports writers who saw him preparing for George Foreman commented on. Ali was not utilizing his jab and move tactics, or flurrying on the young men he had brought in to help him to prepare, instead he was getting pushed around and battered by them. Here is a young Larry Holmes lighting Ali up.

There are other men who approach their sparring as a fight, and treat it as their chance to run through the motions exactly as they will on the big night. Mike Tyson was famously ferocious in his sparring sessions and had plenty of experienced heavyweight sparring partners jump out of the ring and quit. Here's Tyson using the exact same move to the ropes, skip off to the side, and lead right hook from a ninety degree angle which appeared in many of his bouts.



You will remember this angling southpaw lead hook as the punch which knocked out both Buster Mathis Jr. and Marvis Frazier, among others.

And, of course, sparring is greatly influenced by your sparring partner. If you're in a gym and working with a fighter you've sparred dozens of times before, you have to find smarter ways to land your techniques which would ordinarily catch other fighters by surprise straight off the bat. Here's Roy Jones Jr. leading with a shoulder shimmy to a lead right, followed by a 1-2-and 3 to the liver while pivoting off. Punching on the pivot is hard, requiring great co-ordination, but can come as the greatest of surprises.

Other fighters—and these are my favorites—treat the sparring as their chance to experiment and play. It might not be the case when a professional fight is imminent, but in many sparring sessions, professionals will show their love of the game when nothing is on the line. You get to see their playful side, their thoughtful side, and creativity which they might not attempt to recreate when their professional career is on the line, but which someone else can learn from and develop into a solid aspect of their game.

Jersey Joe Walcott, perhaps my favorite boxer of all time, was one such fighter. There is a dire shortage of sparring footage of Walcott, indeed there isn't nearly enough professional fight footage of him either. But here is the sort of stuff he used to play with, and which you will hear fighters like Lennox Lewis wax nostalgic about.



Here Walcott (presumerably working on his famously elusive footwork), begins stepping one way, but catches the rope and pulls himself back as the opponent is turning to face him.

Sparring is also a chance to be cheeky. Playing with ideas which are illegal in the ring, but not flat out dangerous. Here's the great (and somewhat round) Roberto Duran, playing with Nigel Benn. Benn has been working hyper-actively to this point, Duran slows him down with a cheeky foot reap which gets a good chuckle out of those present in the gym.

Today, though, I wanted to take a look at a short video which came up on my Youtube recommendations. A video of Sugar Ray Leonard sparring. I do not know if Leonard was preparing for a fight at this time, but the video shows a playful Leonard, complete with Bruce Lee sound effects. It shows some of his habits, some new ideas, and—in a microcosm—the difficulty which Leonard had in reconciling his abilities as a boxer and as a puncher.

Sparring with Sugar Ray Leonard

Firstly, one of Leonard's noticeable habits is that when he is in “boxing mode”, he will circle in one direction (to his left) continuously, almost without a step to his right. On one instance he takes advantage of his established habit, but stepping his back foot across (a fancy Dan method of circling, a bit taboo because you are off balance if you are struck), then his lead foot, but changes direction and hops to an angle out to his right. From here, his partner is at the mercy of whatever Leonard chooses, but Leonard is playing and not fighting, so there is little consequence.



A lovely switch of directions. Great for taking a slight angle before initiating a flurry.

Ray Leonard also displays brilliant anticipation on offense. He knows when he can get his partner to cover up, even if he doesn't throw punches. Here Leonard steps in with a lazily feinted jab, and as his opponent covers, Leonard doubles up in a lever punch going with the left hook to the body then to the head. As his opponent moves to follow him out of the pocket, Leonard angles off and escapes to the left with a right straight. Lovely offensive work. As Leonard's partner continues the chase, Sugar Ray steps in and forces him to cover again, going right into a clinch and defusing the situation.

It seems as though Ray's partner knows him though. He has Ray's timing down and knows his usual tricks. Here Leonard attempts to lure his opponent into counter jabbing so that he can perform the lean back and right straight counter across the top, but he whiffs it.

And here, Leonard repeatedly looks to slip inside the jab and land what Archie Moore called his “lead cross”. Essentially an up-jab from the inside slip. Leonard telegraphs his intent on multiple occasions in a short space of time, and doesn't connect when he is presented the jab to counter.

I mentioned earlier Leonard's difficulty throughout his career in balancing his abilities as a boxer and as a puncher. In this sparring round, Leonard moves his man to the ropes on two occasions to set up the power shots, but most of the time he is out in the open. When you can do it all, it's often hard to decide when you should do what.



Leonard clinches, pushes to the ropes, frees a hand and starts blasting. In the second instance, Leonard smothers his opponent's hands, before ducking in and forcing him to the ropes. A defensive and an offensive application in one round, lovely.

And finally, here's Leonard playing silly beggars and working to get past the lead shoulder and smother punches.

All of this on show in just a few minutes of sparring. The fight is where the fighter comes out, but in the gym—bored of roadwork and bagwork and mittwork, and finally given a chance to improvise—is where the artist creates.

Check out this related story:

Manny Pacquiao: The Man Who Reinvented Boxing