John Parkes – Who Am I
After putting together this blog and publishing my first post on my top 5 boxers (see it here), I figured I should also do a post on who I am and why I started this blog.
As you might have guessed by now, my name is John Parkes. I'm 28 years old and I'm married with 3 kids, 2 boys and a girl. I'm originally from Scotland but now live in Leeds. All my life I've been interested in almost any sports but have a special love of all things martial arts based. As well as watching martial arts and boxing, I've also done a little training over the years as well. I first started in a traditional Karate background and trained for a few years. The only thing I didn't like about Karate was that it was very rigid. I didn't like that most movements were in a straight line and generally was pretty one dimensional. I then moved onto move freestyle kickboxing which I've been doing ever since.
Although not as traditional I much prefer the free style kickboxing as I personally feel it's more flexible and can be adapted much easier.
Other interests include watching movies, catching up with friends and fishing. If you want to know anything else just ask. You can use the contact us page to send me feedback or ask questions.
John Parkes
www.johnparkes.org
My Top 5 Boxers Ever
My name's John Parkes and this is my personal blog. It will probably be a mix of lots of random comments, however I will try to focus on martial arts related posts. So for my first post I thought I'd share my top 5 boxers of all time. I love boxing; I always have and always will. When watching boxing I want to be entertained, win lose or draw, the fighter will always get my respects if they have made the fight entertaining. For that reason some of my choices may surprise you.
1 – Mike Tyson
People can say what they like about Tyson, sure he has had his troubles both in the ring and out but in my opinion Tyson’s gift was also his downfall. Tyson had nothing to lose, when he first stepped inside the ring he didn’t give a sh*t if he got knocked out, he was in there to do damage to the other guy, if he got hurt win the process it didn’t matter.
Going against a guy, with that kind of fighting style and attitude if almost impossible, most fighters take their time, picking and moving, looking for spaces and split second chances to land a punch. Tyson always had a different approach; Tyson would slowly walk towards opponents, hunched low and moving side to side on the way in, then without a care in the world, once in range he would open up.
The thing I loved most about Mike Tyson was that unlike other fighter who throw jabs and parry punches to set up for one big shot, every punch Tyson through was a knockout punch.
As if that wasn’t good enough, something a lot of people forget is just how good Tyson’s defence was. People remember the knockouts but who remembers just how hard he was to hit? This video is just awesome and is one of my favourite clips.
2- Floyd Mayweather
I know everyone hates Mayweather but as I said, in terms of pure entertainment, they don’t get much better than Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather. His own site is hereHi Considered by many as the pound for pound greatest fighter of all time his skill both in attack and defence are hard to match. He’s been in the ring with the best the sports has had to offer for years and still he is unbeaten. The speed of Mayweathers hands are unbelievable and speed=power! The only thing I don’t like about him is his arrogance, but then without that he wouldn’t be the same fighter. Check out some of his career highlights below.
3 - Joe Calzaghe
Calzaghe didn’t get the respect he deserved until later on in his career. Britain’s only undefeated champion had 46 fights and 46 wins. His own site is here People really sat up and took notice when he defeated Chris Eubank in October 1997 to win the WBO Super Middleweight title although he didn’t start to get the really big pay cheques until nearer the end of his career.
4 – Muhammad Ali
I’ll probably upset a lot of people by having Ali at position 4 but for me I just prefer the flashiness and flair of the guys in position 1-3. He needs no introduction; Muhammad Ali is legend and will always be in the history books as one of the greats.
5 -Sugar Ray Leonard
Last but not least is an amazing and entertaining fighter; Sugar Ray Leonard was famous not only for his fight record but the way in which he went about conducting it. Fast, confident and stylish, he was the first fighter to earn over $100 million in payment.
Thats all for now, leave comments and let me know who your top fighters are.Thanks for reading
John Parkes