hard shot when you work the body. It just needs to hit the right spot. It doesn’t matter if you tap one round the back or if you really sink one in. It’s about finding the right space and also disguising what you do. In my last fight in March, against Oreste Bernabe Nieva, I just placed it around the back. I tapped him to the head a few times, which brought his arms up, and then I just sunk it in right under his elbow.’ Body punching has been in the Butler armoury ever since he stepped into the ring, and he is following in the footsteps of another Ellesmere Port native, Paul ‘Livewire’ Lloyd, who himself was a fearsome body puncher. ‘The Baby Faced Assassin’ was utilising the body shot even before he was a teenager. ‘I’ve liked using the body shot since I was eleven years old. I had it drilled it into me that no one liked body shots. I remember my dad telling me that eleven year old kids wouldn’t be able to take them kind of punches, and the amount of kids I made throw up with those shots was unbelievable.’ The body punching style hasn’t always fared well in the amateur game, and Butler feels his style often worked against him in those days. ‘The fact that I went to the body so often didn’t work for me as an amateur because of the computer scoring. It didn’t suit me one bit and it was a nightmare. I had fights where I’d be drilling them to the body and then after the second round, I’d walk back to my corner and I’d be ahead or behind by one point. I remember I’d be thinking to myself, ‘what the hell is that all about?’ So a move to the pro game was always going to suit my body punching much better.’ The shot that put Butler on the radar of body shot aficionados
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was the chilling left hook to the floating rib that almost scythed John Donnelly in half, during their vacant British superflyweight title fight at Liverpool’s Olympia Theatre. ‘When I fought Donnelly I always knew I’d get him to the body but I thought it’d be somewhere around the sixth or seventh round. Obviously, I got him early and I knew when it landed that the fight was over. You can train your body all day long and you can be hit with a medicine ball as many times as you want, but nothing can train a fighter to absorb a body shot.’ So why has the body shot seemingly been out of fashion for so long? Butler’s trainer Anthony Farnell attributes it to the fact that the skill is not being taught as it should be in gyms. ‘It’s always been there, but people have been neglecting it. One of the reasons may be that it is a very technical shot to throw. It’s also a risky shot, as you’ve got to stand in the pocket, right in front of the opponent, so you need to learn not to get caught when in close.’ When speaking to fighters and trainers, there appears to be one main theme when it comes to body punching. The essence of it appears to be making sure that your opponent doesn’t see what’s coming, as Farnell explains. ‘A main factor in a body shot is definitely disguising it. I’ve been caught by massive body shots before and not been hurt because I’ve seen them coming. I’ve also been caught by little taps that I didn’t see coming and it was agony. If you see a shot coming then you can tense up and it lessens the impact, so to me it’s all about disguising the punch. People think body punching is just in-fighting, but it’s much more technical than that. Julio Cesar Chavez and Mike McCallum were two of the best at it. McCallum would thud
in those shots to the same place every time. Chavez wasn’t an out and out banger, but he’d hit you in the same place all the time as well. I remember him fighting Andy Holligan where he threw that left hook to the body and it landed in the same spot every time. It just broke Andy down and that can be so disheartening.’ On Saturday 17th May we saw a phenomenal seven knockdowns from body shots in two fights at two different venues in Britain. First up was Callum Smith, who faced off with Tobias Webb and, after the most difficult round of his career, the prospect managed to readjust and use a concentrated body assault to break down his opponent. Smith, just like Butler, believes that body punching is an art form and he looks for is the right punch rather than throwing blindly to the body. ‘I’m looking for gaps really. Joe [Gallagher] always tells me to look for the space. You see a lot of fighters now throwing body shots like they do on the pads and they end up hitting the elbows. If you land them right, you can hurt anyone with them, even great body punchers like Ricky Hatton who got stopped in his final fight with a great body shot’. Smith also stresses the importance of ensuring the opponent is not expecting the shot. ‘To me, the most important thing is disguising it and making sure you don’t go hell for leather and, again, it’s important to hit them when they’re not expecting it. It’s the punches you don’t see that do the damage. There’s an art to body punching, you have to stand in the pocket and risk being hit yourself.’ One of the aspects that delight boxing fans is the delayed reaction when a body shot lands. That split second when