Combat CliffNotes: Bakhram Murtazaliev's Swivel Jab

An awkward, offbeat jab that catches opponents by surprise.

Bakhram Murtazaliev recently put himself on my radar by destroying Tim Tszyu as a big underdog, finishing the Aussie scrapper in the third round after knocking him down four times. A lot went into the win, from Murtazaliev’s short counter hooks to catch Tszyu hitting the body, to some crafty lateral movement, and Tszyu’s own defensive woes. But I want to focus on one weapon in particular - Murtazaliev’s awkward, offbeat jab that kept finding its mark clean and hard.

By now everyone knows the jab as the building block of any good style, the most versatile tool in the arsenal of a crafty puncher or a slick speedster - as valuable for setting up hurting work as it is for controlling distance and position. But in the early days of boxing’s history, the lead hand straight was seen as a hurting tool akin to a fencer’s lunge. More a rock smashed through a window than a stone skipped across a pond.

Even the softer sort of jab doesn’t feel fun to take, and there are still fighters who jab to hurt. But nowadays, the jab is seen more as an antecedent to power punches or longer combinations. If your man starts showing you the double jab early, you expect he’ll likely put his rear hand behind it at some point and try to ring your bell, unless you’re fighting Devin Haney. You might even use the rhythm of his jab to time the power punch you expect behind it, catching him exposed. But if he’s trying to ram his rear hand through your face, you’re probably not expecting a jab to follow it. The jab both disguises and signals more committed, hurting blows, but the jab itself is not signaled in the same way.

The lack of a signal that precedes the jab in the same way the jab precedes power punches is a big part of what makes the swivel jab so tricky.

Put simply, a swivel jab is a jab thrown with the trunk rotation and footwork of a lead hook, and it can pretty much take on as many variants as the hook itself. The weight is loaded on the lead leg, often with a fold over the lead hip as if gearing up to uncork a big hook. From there, the weight is either pulled back over the rear foot, using the front-to-back weight transfer to sit down on a powerful jab, or flung forward at the opponent.

Note also that you can cover a good amount of distance while still transferring weight to the back foot through a short hop-step in which the trunk movement takes place before the feet touch down. These mechanics produce a jab that’s difficult to see coming and has an unusual amount of weight transfer behind it.

Swivel jabs commonly follow a rear hand, as the weight transfer of the rear hand loads the lead hip to sit back into a lead hook or jab:

This loaded jab almost always comes as a surprise given its lack of signal. We expect the jab to precede a right hand, but when an opponent falls short with their rear straight, we expect them to leave it at that or try a lead hook. The lead hook as a combination finisher is shorter than the jab and it comes in on an arc, so all we have to do is get out of range and keep our rear hand up by the ear, right?

The surprise factor makes the swivel jab a great tool for covering distance. When an opponent falls short with their rear hand, it’s easy to feel safe and confident on the end of it. A fighter might rock back onto his rear foot or even lean back at the waist, believing an extra couple inches will pull him out of range for anything that comes his way. Both these common responses make it slower to transfer weight into a counter, and that’s where the swivel jab is so useful for closing distance. The rear hand gives the opponent a false sense of distance and safety, often prompting a reaction that makes countering difficult, and the long jab penetrates while taking you closer to the target.

Another benefit of getting back on the jab after opening up with the rear hand is that, like the lead hook, it closes the stance back off and limits exposure to counters.