Mike Brown's Boxing Has Come a Long Way in the Last Year

Above, 1976 Olympic boxing gold medalist Howard Davis speaks with great confidence about World Extreme Cagefighting champion Mike Brown's chances of beating Urijah Faber Sunday at WEC 41. Davis and Brown have worked hard at developing Brown's boxing skills, and after recently watching Brown's last three fights, I'm amazed at how much more skillful he is as a boxer than he was even a year ago.

Thanks to having a bunch of episodes of WEC WrekCage on my DVR, I was able to take a look at Brown's fight with Jeff Curran from a year ago, as well as his victory over Faber seven months ago and his successful title defense against Leonard Garcia three months ago. I don't know exactly what Davis and Brown did in the five months between the Curran fight and the Faber fight, but Brown became much, much more effective at landing his big right hand, and I can only assume his work with Davis at American Top Team is a big part of that.

During the Brown-Curran fight, UFC interim heavyweight champion Frank Mir, who was working as the announcer on the fight, made a couple of critical comments about Brown's boxing skills. Although Mir noted that Brown had power in his right hand, he also said that Brown spent so much time loading up his punches that they were easy to avoid.

"Here comes that right hand again," Mir said as Curran ducked under a Brown punch in the second round. "If I can see that from 15 feet away over here, I don't think he's going to hit Jeff Curran with it."

In the third round, as Curran continued to avoid Brown's punches, Mir said of Brown, "At this point his boxing is just a little basic. All those shots are real powerful, and Jeff Curran's seeing them."

Brown used his strength and wrestling skill to win the fight with Curran by unanimous decision, but Mir was correct that when Brown was on his feet, his punches were coming too slowly to connect with a skilled opponent.

And then, of course, we have Brown's wins over Faber and Garcia, both of which were the result of Brown connecting with a huge right hand in the first round. You could make the argument that the right hand that connected with Faber was more a result of catching Faber off-guard than the result of Brown showing improved boxing skills, but I'd still argue that in looking at Brown in those two fights, you can see that his punches are crisper, cleaner, quicker and more fluid than they were in the Curran fight. Brown has obviously improved his boxing over the last year, and that's a big part of why I'm picking him to beat Faber on Sunday.