Emanuel Navarrete continues boxing’s great tradition of unorthodox ‘rulebreakers’

As if watching a stunt performed on a talent show, with certain boxers there would always come a warning: Don’t Try This at Home. You would find yourself watching someone like Roy Jones Jnr or “Prince” Naseem Hamed assert their dominance in the ring and simultaneously hear a commentator say, “They don’t teach that,” or alternatively, “He’s breaking all the rules.” Yet to the untrained ear, it never made much sense, this nitpicking, these cautionary tales. If they don’t teach brilliance, you thought, what do they teach in boxing gyms? If the rules had indeed been broken by these geniuses, they surely needed revising, perhaps rewriting. 

Of course, when mentioning the breaking of rules, it had nothing to do with any in-ring transgression and more to do with certain rules of style and technique. In truth, save for one brief moment against Montell Griffin in 1997, Jones was not a boxer known to break rules in a competitive sense, and nor was Hamed, whose greatest crime in the ring was body-slamming Cesar Soto and occasionally taking his goading of opponents a little too far. 

Both, however, were undoubtedly rulebreakers in the sense of style, etiquette, and stance. They did things their own way and were two boxers you admired rather than dared to copy. They punched when you were taught not to, from angles you were told don’t exist, and even when they defeated opponents, often spectacularly, there was forever a killjoy somewhere waiting to say: “Yes, but technically they are flawed.”

In the case of Jones and Hamed, a lot of their technical deficiencies – and these certainly existed – were concealed by incredible natural gifts. With Jones, his athleticism, speed, and dynamism were arguably unmatched in his era, whereas few featherweights have ever been able to hit as hard as Hamed with a single punch. These weapons, as rare as they were potent, allowed both Jones and Hamed to take shortcuts, experiment, and know that even if they veered from the course they always had gifts their opponents lacked which they could use to get them out of trouble. We saw this happen numerous times in the careers of both. Sometimes Hamed would encounter a more technically astute and refined opponent only to erase any disparity with just one uppercut or left cross. Jones, meanwhile, would distort his fights altogether, removing them from the realm of a typical boxing match and instead turning them into pure athletic pursuits. He neglected the jab because he didn’t need it. He then said to his opponent, “I will beat you because I am quicker than you and there is nothing you can do about it.” Most of the time, too, he was right. 

Later, when their bodies robbed them of the gifts they once provided, the fall from grace was as swift as it was dramatic. For Hamed, the rot set in once he became only a puncher and abandoned everything he had previously used to facilitate his power, including the respect he had for opponents. For Jones, on the other hand, his sad demise was triggered not only by his ambition running away with itself but also the natural erosion of speed, reflexes and punch resistance, all of which led to the gap between him and his opponents shortening. By the time his prime had passed, Jones, once so alien in the ring, appeared almost normal; human. He stood like the others. He shaped up like the others. He suffered like the others. 

That is the danger with being a stylistic rulebreaker, you see. When it is good, it is good, yet when the tide turns and the body no longer aids a fighter’s individuality, you discover a dearth of backup plans and other ideas. Having spent so long perfecting this trick, it becomes The Trick, and it is hard once it goes, or is figured out, to then relearn other tricks and train parts of the body for so long neglected, forgotten. 

Boxing, it goes without saying, is littered with unconventional styles, approaches, and personalities. It is to some extent what adds to its appeal and what makes the spectacle of two people punching each other – all variations of which we should by now have seen – still such a compelling one to behold. At heavyweight alone we have had Jack Johnson standing tall with his hands down, Rocky Marciano stooping low and swinging blind, Muhammad Ali leaning back and headhunting, and more recently Deontay Wilder content to lose rounds, prepare his right hand, and end matters with one touch when he feels like it. 

Each of those heavyweights had wildly different approaches to the same task and each had styles other boxers tried to mimic only to realise they could (a) not be copied and (b) the process of copying was one fraught with danger. After all, when imitating the style of an unconventional fighter – rather than, say, a more conventional one – you also become inclined to take the kind of shortcuts only special fighters can afford to take, leaving you soon lost and without signposts, unable to get back on track. 

In the end, with both paths treacherous, some boxers choose to mimic, whereas others choose to create. Of the creators, some produce styles we now deem iconic, whereas others produce styles not only unique to them but ones we couldn’t imagine being replicated; ones you would implore a young boxer to avoid at all costs. 

Take a fighter like Carlos Maussa, for example. He was a Colombian welterweight who won a WBA title in 2005, though to this day I am not sure how. Built like Gollum, Maussa possessed arms too long and spindly to generate power – or so it seemed – and had absolutely zero sense of style, stance, or even structure when in the ring. Everything he did appeared off-kilter and wrong, and yet, on the night he fought Vivian Harris in Atlantic City, the sheer audacity and unpredictability of Maussa’s behaviour was what caused Harris, the champion, to malfunction and finally succumb. 

Today, we have someone like Emanuel Navarrete, a Mexican who has won world titles in three weight classes. He, like Maussa, is the very embodiment of unpredictability, yet, unlike Maussa, possesses considerably more talent and demonstrates a greater level of intelligence in what he does in the ring. There is at least some sort of method to Navarette’s madness, in other words, something that becomes increasingly evident with each win. At his best, you almost get why his feet cross from time to time and why his stance often changes on a whim. At his best, you can almost see the sense in launching awkward shots from even more awkward angles and ignoring whatever comes back. 

His style, if that’s the word, is simply a language you must learn to understand, rather than one you immediately recognise and appreciate on account of its familiarity. To watch Navarrete in a ring is to expect Taylor Swift – benign, bland, and basic – and get Captain Beefheart instead. The first thing you feel – long before confusion – is whiplash. 

Because the truth is, nobody really fights like Emanuel Navarrete, nor, when you watch him fight, are you totally convinced the fighter himself knows what he is doing or whether what he is doing will even work. Instead, you just go with the flow, as he does, and you wait for the end result to determine whether the method, and the style, ultimately worked. 

For the most part, it does, too – and has. At 39-2-1 (32), Navarrete’s unique style has been too much for the majority of opponents he has faced and this proved again true on Saturday, when Oscar Valdez, a man Navarrete had already beaten (on points), this time failed to see round seven. That fight was back at super featherweight, where Navarrete belongs, and it was soon noticeable against Valdez how many of his advantages – both stylistic and physical – had returned, having been surrendered earlier this year when Navarrete elected to fight Denys Berinchyk at lightweight; a fight Navarrete lost via split decision. At super featherweight, Navarrete seems most comfortable at the age of 29. It is there he remains a conundrum for every opponent he meets and it is there his flaws, of which there are many, are less likely to be exposed by a bigger spoilsport unwilling to let Navarrete break the rules and get away with it. 

That is perhaps the key when it comes to being a stylistic rulebreaker. You must first be aware of the rules in order to then break them and you must also be aware of the game’s limitations. It is fun while it lasts, certainly, yet a true rulebreaker should understand too that there is a reason breaking rules is not something teachers teach in either schools or boxing gyms. Break the rules, fine, just don’t stick around to get caught.