CBEB’s

Over at (un)Reasonable Kansans, FtK has posted her thoughts on the Governor Spitzer scandal. She states:

Lord, the only way I’d stand next to my husband like that would be if I’d beat him black and blue before hand[sic] and he wore a sign around his neck that said, “My wife has a mean right hook”.

I like the way she prefaces the threat of violence with, “Lord”. But that’s not really what caught my eye.

Is For the Kids a southpaw? Bragging about her “mean right hook” leads me to believe she is, but I’m not going to pick on FtK; instead, I’m going to give everyone a short boxing lesson (along with a bonus rant/movie review).

There are five punches in boxing. The jab, the straight, the hook, the cross, and the uppercut. One could say there’s six, because there’s a hook-uppercut hybrid known as the “upperhook”, but it’s rarely seen. With the exception of the uppercut, the punch you throw depends on your stance. For example: If you fight orthodox (right-handed), jabs and hooks are thrown with the left, straights and crosses are thrown with your right. The reason it’s called a “cross” is because the punch has to cross your own body before arriving at its target.

Although uppercuts can be thrown with both hands, an orthodox fighter will generally throw uppercuts with the left hand. Timing is crucial in boxing, and the extra milliseconds it takes for a right uppercut to arrive at its target creates more potential to either miss or be countered by a punch that takes less time to connect.

Also, an orthodox fighter can throw right hooks, but they have to be “squared up” (both feet and shoulders at an equal distance from the target). Fighters will sometimes square up during intense inside fighting, but it has a negative effect on balance and creates a larger target, so a good trainer will scold his fighter if he spends too much time squared up.

Okay, today’s lesson is done… on to the rant/movie review. I should give a spoiler alert as well, but I think what I’m doing is more of a public service than it is a spoiler. I just might prevent a few people from wasting time on a shitty movie.

I really like Omar Epps. I’m not big on football movies, but I thought he was great in The Program, and he was fantastic in Takeshi Kitano’s Brother, so it was Omar’s presence in the film Against the Ropes that made me want to watch it.

Against the Ropes is based on the true story of Jackie Kallen, one of boxing’s first female promoters. Omar Epps plays her star fighter, Luther Shaw (who, from what I understand, is supposed to be James Toney).

Further investigation confirmed my suspicions that the film’s writer, Cheryl Edwards, knows nothing about the sport of boxing. Here comes the spoiler…

Omar Epps has a falling out with his promoter (played by Meg Ryan) and during a championship fight, he’s getting his ass kicked. Epps’ character fights southpaw, and his opponent (played by Juan Carlos Hernandez) fights orthodox. Epps is getting schooled by the other fighter when Meg Ryan rushes the ring and starts yelling at Omar to “switch to orthodox”. When he takes her advice, the camera zooms in on his opponent’s face and he’s got this “OMG! What the hell just happened?” look on his face. Then Epps proceeds to open up the proverbial can of whoop-ass on Hernandez, who is apparently helpless against another orthodox fighter.

The casual fight fan may not see the massive problems with this, but that one scene turned a passably mediocre film into quite possibly the worst boxing movie I’ve ever seen. Let me explain…

Never in a million years would an orthodox fighter be confounded by a southpaw switching to a right-handed stance. It would have been more realistic if Epps’ opponent had removed a glove and tried to shake his hand and say, “Thanks for switching to orthodox; now I’ll kick your ass even harder”. Even another southpaw fighter would express relief at his opponent switching to orthodox stance. Furthermore, I’ve watched thousands of fights and I have never seen the course of a fight changed by a fighter simply changing his stance. For the most part, fighters switch stances to play mind games with their opponent, which may or may not lead to an opportunity to land a great punch. I don’t consider myself any type of authority on boxing, but I know as sure as the sun sets in the west that a southpaw fighter switching to orthodox stance would not in any way confuse or befuddle his opponent: if anything, it would have the opposite effect.

What was supposed to be a dramatic climax was rendered laughably stupid, because a movie studio thought that sending a screenwriter to a couple of live boxing matches would result in a believable story. Did this movie even bother to hire a technical adviser?