When Ali fought George Foreman in 1974, he needed something special. He decided to use his right hand rather than his left to catch out Foreman. Aware of his limitations he said before the fight “I’m not going to dance, I’m going to knock him down in the 1st round with my right hand”.
Nobody punches with the right hand generally because in a standard boxing stance, the punch has to travel from the back of the stance, right across the body. Normal fighters are trained to react in milliseconds, so this would be picked up by Foreman and leave Ali open to a counter punch from Foreman’s left hand.
Foreman didn’t even practice defending the right-handed attack as this would be an insult to Foreman’s natural ability.
It’s A Bit Like Innovation
I meet many people who say that they “can’t do Innovation”. People get closed off to Art, Creativity and Innovation because they think it requires brand new thinking. This belief is also underlined because someone probably once told them that they weren’t novel or artistic.
Innovation isn’t always brand new – we can take Innovation from history. We can build on other people’s ideas and create something for now; you just have to examine what is required, be prepared to take a risk and ignore others!
PS Ali hit Foreman with his right hand 12 times in the first 3 minutes. Whilst Foreman did not go down, he was shell-shocked and Ali went on to win the title.
BitILike
“In most cases, strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin. A strength in one situation is a weakness in another, yet often the person can't switch gears. It's a very subtle thing to talk about strengths and weaknesses because almost always they're the same thing.” Steve Jobs
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