Left Hook Lessons: The Puncher with the Dragon Tattoo
Photo by Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images
Alex Pereira possesses the best left hook in kickboxing. By some metrics, that would make Pereira’s left hook the best punch in combat sports altogether, but there are probably a few boxing analysts here at The Fight Site who might quibble with that last assessment. Regardless, Alex clobbering and clocking his way to the very top of the kickboxing P4P list with such a notorious reputation surrounding his one money punch is a dubious achievement. This is especially true when you consider how many neophyte fans’ sole exposure to Pereira only goes as far as being the guy who knocked out Israel Adesanya (with a left hook, no less). So, is it really that simple? Is Alex Pereira really so unscientific that his favored left hook does all of the heavy lifting on its own?
The answer would be no, in part because it is unfair to attenuate Alex Pereira’s entire technical game to one single punch (he has earned KOs from his right hand as well, mind you!). However, ‘Poatan’ has a particularly educated application of the ‘king of the counters’ and I feel like this is as good a time as any to shed some light on the mechanics and tactics behind the left hook, as well as why Alex Pereira is a sterling example of the left hook’s violent capability. Maybe we’ll even see a few highlight-reel KOs along the way, who knows.
The Most Important Punch
What makes the left hook so special in boxing and kickboxing, anyway? For starters, it is a massively beneficial tool when paired with a decent jab, since the jab can draw an opponent’s guard up, to which the left hook can sneak around the right hand to an opponent’s exposed jawline. Speaking of right hands, in an orthodox vs. orthodox matchup, the left-hooking fighter might also paw and feint their lead hand to encourage an opponent to hand-fight with them, further opening up the left hook landing from a slightly different angle.
Chad Mendes’ pawing guard (some might classify it as a mummy guard) traps and hand-fights with Jose Aldo to encourage jabs, bait counters, and set rhythms. As Mendes feints his way into range, Aldo sits down on a hard rear uppercut. Mendes folds over his lead hip, rolling and smothering the punch. With all of his weight firmly placed on his front leg and his hips loaded, Mendes springs into a left hook counter that drops the featherweight great.
The left hook is also a difficult punch for opponents (particularly southpaws) to see, let alone anticipate. A herding right hand can push an unwitting opponent slightly out of position before a left hook completely intercepts their path of movement. Orthodox fighters have a bit of an advantage here, since they should at least be able to identify when an left-hooking opponent begins rotating their hips to load the punch. Southpaws are more susceptible. In addition, they themselves are also fighting hands with the orthodox left-hooker, meaning the likelihood of a long, left hook curving around their outstretched right arm is high, and they might not see it coming until it is too late.
The appearance of Eddie Alvarez’s left hook was sparse against Rafael Dos Anjos, but I absolutely love the trick he utilized here, only possible for an orthodox fighter against a southpaw. As RDA attempts to pressure Alvarez backward with a 1-2, Eddie sits down on a right uppercut to the body. The punch lands well and it catches RDA reeling a bit, anticipating a level-change, meaning his lead right arm is extended in an early attempt to frame. Alvarez follows the right hand with a left hook around his southpaw opponent’s lead shoulder, then immediately turns his left arm into a cross-armed guard to intercept RDA’s return jabs.
The left hook is an important safety net in exchanges, as well. My friend and colleague Sriram Muralidaran wrote an excellent article on Justin Gaethje’s bruising domination of Tony Ferguson where he dives into the necessity of closing off exchanges opened up by the rear hand, so I’ll keep it brief. With your rear (we’ll say ‘right’ in this instance) hand extended, your chin is automatically moving closer to your opponent. In turn, the right side of your chin is exposed until you retract your extended hand. ‘Closing the door’ is most often done with the left hook to conclude an exchange, because it allows the thrower to hide their chin beneath their lead left shoulder, it threatens opponents attempting to counter the right hand, and it ‘closes’ off the left side of the orthodox fighter’s body. Assuming it is performed correctly, the left side (or closed side) of an orthodox fighter’s body isn’t readily available to be hit, since the chin is guarded and the plane of the fighter’s hips are adjacent to the opponent. This is part of the reason why James Toney’s left hook was so terrific. He would frequently close the door with the left hook and fade off his rear hip, leaving nothing but a small portion of his temple and his back to be hit by an opponent on the closed side.
James Toney doubles up his left hook, and uses his left arm as a frame to control Francisco Dell’Aquila’s head. As Dell’Aquila attempts to clinch, Toney frames across his opponent’s body with his left arm and closes the door with the left hook. Now, his hand, torso, and lead foot are all facing rightward and Toney’s weight is folded onto his rear hip. This is an effective example of protecting the closed side. When he repeats a similar sequence with his left hook moments later, all of his weight is already loaded up for the returning right hand.
Not many MMA fighters possess the same brand of anticipatory head movement that Jose Aldo does, but the principle remains the same here. Aldo feints high with his jab and throws a right hand to the body, but the right side of his chin is exposed and he doesn’t close the door behind him. Chad Mendes misses his mark here, but he had the right idea.
Zabit is particularly disciplined in closing the door. He tosses out a noncommittal right hand, and Kattar attempts to counter with a few wide hooks. Note how Zabit’s shoulders squared in the pocket and his weight is folded over his lead leg. Magomedsharipov rotates his torso, taking a slight inward step with his lead foot, and torques into his left hook. The punch finds its mark much quicker than Kattar’s wild shovel hook. Here, Zabit proves here that ‘closing the door’ can serve as both a tactical and a mechanical threat to opponents, as a practiced ‘door-closing’ left hook can often reach its target quicker than an opponent can counter.
If this seems like a very circumlocutory way to arrive at Alex Pereira, you’d be correct, but only because Pereira does the left hook better than almost everybody I listed above by a wide margin (with the sole exception being James Toney). Now that you have seen the principles and mechanics behind the left hook, it will be easier for Pereira to demonstrate these practices in motion.
Setting Them Up & Knocking Them Down
Fighting Alex Pereira must be an awful experience for most people. They know exactly what is coming, but only a select few have been able to stifle the biggest puncher in kickboxing. Even elite opponents are clearly cognizant of the left hook threat, and yet one by one, more elite kickboxers find themselves on the losing end of Alex Pereira’s money punch. The question in analyzing Pereira as a fighter is less “What makes his left hook so good?” and more, “How does he keep finding it?”
The simplest answer would be that he looks for it a lot.
In the opening seconds of his bout against Maycon Silva, Pereira exhibits several different applications of his left hook. A head-body lever opens up another path for the punch. Alex shifts into southpaw while pawing his right hand, loading his hips for a left hook, which he uncorks after taking a smaller shifting step with his left foot, returning to orthodox. Finally, Pereira taps and feints to the outside of Silva’s right glove, insinuating a left hook to his opponent, before opening with a straight right to the body. With Silva’s back to the ropes, he attempts to shuffle off to his right side, which runs him right into Pereira’s left hook.
The potency of Pereira’s left hook is amplified because his pressure is so tricky for opponents to deal with. Most of Alex’s pervading tools for herding an opponent’s direction come from his right side. His footwork is focused around limiting the defensive options of an opponent’s left-sided exits, meaning they often have no choice but to circle directly into the left hook. Against orthodox opponents, Pereira’s position is every bit as important, in which he’ll usually seek to wedge his lead foot toward the centerline of an opponent to catch them with their stance flattened before literally flattening them.
Pereira’s right kick forces Maycon to pull his guard up on his left side, corralling him from an exit along his left side. In circling to his right, Silva tries to hop to the outside of Pereira’s lead leg to attack it with a few outside low kicks. Pereira hop-steps out of range before stepping to the inside angle of Silva’s lead leg (once again, offering Silva’s right side as an exit) with a 1-2-3. Alex’s cross-stepping pivot cuts off the open side, inviting Maycon to continue circling rightward into the left hook.
Pereira will close off an opponent’s right-sided angle with his feet working in combination with his left hook, but it is worth noting how frequently Alex takes offensive and defensive angles to his right side. He uses a hopping outside low kick from his left side to corral and cut off an opponent’s rightward exit, usually to keep them lined up in the arc of his left hook. However, Alex frequently utilizes his ringcutting weapons to shut down advances on the open side, forcing the hand of his opponents toward circling into his left hook on the closed side.
As far as the entries themselves, Pereira is deceptively crafty. He still isn’t particularly comfortable in extended exchanges, but he is able to break opponents down with short, snippy combinations varying in target and tempo. In particular, I really like Pereira’s rhythm changes on entry. His general punching mechanics allow for a deep repertoire of connections (lightly tapping shots, medium power shots, and sitting down on punches), and they manage to play with the anticipatory phase of an exchange in opponents.
Pereira shuffles into range and tosses a right hand upstairs to draw Simon Marcus’ guard up. Note what I mentioned earlier about Alex’s positioning versus orthodox opponents (i.e. the lead foot wedging toward an opponent’s centerline). Alex waits a full beat behind the right hand to land an uppercut-left hook lever, the following two punches occurring a half-beat apart. He even leans his torso over his rear hip as he’s closing the door before exiting the exchange, with the punch almost serving as more of a check hook.
Cribbing from the last man to finish him (Artur Kyshenko), Pereira also favors the right straight to the body, followed by the left hook. To further highlight the quality of Alex’s mechanics, notice how his lead left foot doesn’t need to readjust when the hook is thrown. Instead of taking another small step, Pereira just turns his left foot rightward, and suddenly his lead hip is loaded up for the hook.
Another change of rhythm here. Pereira leads with a jab and follows it on the full beat with a hand trap. The Dutch hand trap + right hook is spaced a half-beat apart, and it breaks Marcus’ posture. Alex pauses another full beat before running Marcus into the closing left hook.
Alex Pereira’s guard is worth noting as a contributing factor towards the potency of his boxing. As seen in the clip above, Alex will use traditional Dutch hand traps to strip the guard of his opponents, but his pawing, palms-out long guard goes a step further in ensuring that his opponents will continually need to readjust and hand-fight for their own sight-lines. It almost resembles George Foreman’s leverage guard, in which the outward-facing gloves are an active part of Pereira’s offensive and defensive integration. An outstretched glove can be a jab, a parry, a vision obstruction, a hand trap, or a left hook, while traditional blocks are eschewed in favor of smothering and posting on the inside of an opponent’s shoulders before riding the return fire off his own lead shoulder.
It is almost certainly an oversimplification to say, but Pereira’s left hook works as well as it does because he understands how to accomplish several things at once with it. Truthfully, there isn’t a ton of diversity within Pereira’s game, but there doesn’t need to be, because all of the pieces inform a boxing skillset that is fundamentally sound. This is a bit of an aside, but Alex Pereira stands as a shining example of why extensive training in a combat discipline tangential to your primary sport can pay dividends. I don’t think Pereira’s punching mechanics, tactical acuity, or comfort in exchanges would be quite so polish if it weren’t for his time in professional boxing.
So, how do you bypass the left hook?
Despite the infamous ending to their fight, Israel Adesanya had a lot of the right ideas in defusing Pereira’s left hook. Adesanya did his best to remain outside of the left hook’s arc, meaning that the punch (usually thrown tight) needed to widen in order to catch Izzy, who remained just outside of Pereira’s punching range.
Adesanya converts his jab into a collar-tie and clutches Pereira while posting on the inside of his opponent’s lead shoulder, smothering the punch.
Trapping the left hook while angling toward the opponent’s closed side is a viable strategy, as well. Adesanya throws a shifting hand-trap into the southpaw stance that opens up his rear hand (his left) to the ‘open side’, or Pereira’s body.
The best approach that anybody has had against Alex Pereira came from K-1 kickboxing legend, Artur Kyshenko, who put forth a Herculean display of toughness and bravery against the Brazilian. As the last person to knock Alex Pereira out (one of only two), Kyshenko’s gameplan centered around punishing his opponent for regularly seeking his favorite punch.
Kyshenko made an effort to actively counter Alex Pereira’s left hook, ducking under the punch and firing in combination to the body. Artur frequently threw his right hand and proactively wove off to the open side, angling off to the opposite side of the left hook.
Another solid response to an opponent closing the door is ripping to the body. As Pereira attempts a check hook, he’s doing the right things in terms of mechanics, but he wasn’t anticipating Kyshenko coming underneath the hook and responding in combination. Alex leans off his rear hip, protecting his chin, but his torso is prime real estate for Artur.
This exchange is worth highlighting because it represents some of the drawbacks of Pereira’s shell guard. Kyshenko takes an angle with his counterjab and manages to catch Alex leaning all the way back with his right hand before clocking him with a left hook of his own. While it allows for a solid first layer of defense, Alex doesn’t pair it with the head movement or trunk rotation of James Toney. Thus, when fighters pressure past Pereira’s lead hand, they can find openings.
Conversely, you could just hook with the hooker. No one is suggesting you should, but the option is available if you so desire.
Pereira sees Abena’s right hand coming, so he uses his own right hand to impede Abena’s vision while his left hand obstructs the path of the punch, similar to Eddie Alvarez’s trick against RDA. Alex slips just outside of the punch and simultaneously turns his lead foot toward Abena’s centerline. Now he owns the positional advantage here in the battle of the hooks (notice how Abena’s rear foot is literally off the ground), and thus his lead hand, torso, and lead foot will all be facing rightward after the punch is thrown. The arc of Pereira’s left hook is much tighter and he repeats the same fadeaway check mechanics from the Marcus clip.
Conclusion
A wiser man than myself by the name of Jack Slack once argued that the left hook is the only punch a boxer truly needs in their arsenal. If this is true and genuinely skillful fighting is measured by the depth of the tools in place, rather than the diversity of weapons, then I can honestly say that Alex Pereira is one of the most skillful punchers I’ve seen compete in the sport of kickboxing. Throughout his current winning streak, Pereira has left behind an increasingly impressive stack of bodies in his wake and the only man to survive to the final bell (Simon Marcus) was left bruised and beaten by the end of both fights. However, I don’t want the narrative surrounding Pereira and his famed left hook of doom to occlude his technical and mechanical savvy. He is a surprisingly tricky fighter, and there is quite a bit to learn and study in his fight catalogue, especially regarding his most important punch. Until Artur Kyshenko returns to fighting the best kickboxers in the world, Alex Pereira will likely continue his ironfisted reign for the foreseeable future, one left hook at a time.