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Crazy Monkey Boxing, or CM Boxing as it is also known as, is a system of boxing developed by Rodney 'Chico' King. Rodney, who runs a Gym in South Africa, developed it to enable people who are not gifted athletes, and who don't have the high level attributes for boxing or MMA, to be able to defend and attack without a high risk of getting hurt.
Crazy Money in its simplest form concentrates on defence of the head. Your arms are kept on top of your head with your forearm and elbows forming a high guard in front of the face. Using rapid movements of the forearms and elbows to ward off punches provides excellent defence against a flurry of attacks with little danger of getting hurt.
Counter attacks are delivered by punching from the top of the head and 'diving into' the punch to generate power and protect the head and jaw from counter attacks. It enables people who don't have the attributes to bob, slip, weave and otherwise defend against punches to concentrate on learning their defence and punching without getting hurt as well as to be able to effectively defend themselves in as little time as possible.
As hopefully will be outlined in the detail below there is much more to CM than this though and it's proving to be a very popular and successfull fighting style.
Summary
There is much to the CM program. Some great information is outlined in the following posts:
Detail
My first encounter with Crazy Monkey was reading rec.martial-arts and coming across this article from Bill Mahoney:
As a boxing-wrestling historian, i think youd be interested in the new trend in MMA. MMA boxing is moving away from modern western boxing. Largely due to smaller gloves sizes.
Check out randy counture, Tito ortiz, and the recent fight between silva and rampage.
Rampage uses a stance where he doesnt pat punches, not even jabs.He keeps his elbows up real high and his head inside his arms as if in a cage. He avoids all silvas punches, til he gases and gets hurt bad.
The particular fight mention between Wanderlei Silva and Rampage Jackson shows Jackson defending Silva's punches using the high guard. Have a look at the animated image snapshots from this fight to get an idea of what it looked like:
Jacob Anderson, in a later reply, notes the similarity of Bill's description and the techniques in the fight to that of Crazy Monkey:
Sounds similar to what Rodney King (from SBG South Africa) recommends in his crazy monkey style of boxing. It's not really similar to my inner picture of bare knuckle boxing where the fighters are pretty erect (right?). Rodney recommends a very hunched over position.
Note that Jacob states that Rodney is from SBG (Straight Blast Gym) in South Africa. Rodney is no longer associated with the SBG and has formed his own group, the Street Tough World Alliance (STWA).
From this pointer to Crazy Monkey a bit of searching led me a few DVD's and more information about the system. Later posts to rec.martial-arts also produced some great testimonials.
Badger South covered some information in this article and provided a tip from one of Rodney's DVD's in another:
I've only been working on the CM for a short while but here's my take. The sinking is really only minimizing the area that your elbows have to cover. Think of bringing your navel as close as possible to your sternum. (for example, you put both your hands on your abs, with your thumbs on your sternum and little fingers on your navel, then you bring the fingers and thumbs towards each other - iow, a crunch.)
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Keep working on it. Your mobility will improve with practice. Have a partner swing an easy kick at your groin - but instead of trying to block, just twist - your thigh will deflect the kick. Don't have to twist much, just enough to deflect - then move in and punch. Soon your partner will not want to kick at you for fear of getting punched. ;-) Remember, just because you have the squared stance and can deflect does -not- mean you should stand still or stop punching. You've got to -move-. Spiral in and out. (out to the power side - in to the weak side.)
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You put a tennis ball down on the floor and face it with the squared stance. Then you step around it. The key is you use the toe-in step, i.e., keep your stepping foot perpendicular to the arc of the circle - the natural tendency is to let your toe angle outward. Then, after you get comfortable using the CM stance and tuck with the stepping around the tennis ball, you shadow box, also.
Badger South proves to be quite enthusiastic about Crazy Monkey and Rodney King's teachings in general. Another post from him outlines why he thinks the concept is good:
It reminds me of the style of Floyd Patterson a bit. I think the main draw of this style of boxing is that it brings up your game an amazing amount if you're only a so-so boxer, and it uses some good strategies, and high-percentage footwork and active blocking, forward facing stance and compact body-structure to maximize whatever natural power you do have.
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Presumably with the CM style as your base, you gain confidence, develop your jab-cross and left hook to the body. Then you can layer your own style on top and mix it up. The neat thing is that most first-timers say it really elevates their game - after a few weeks, any newcomers that you spar with are really reduced to cannon-fodder by it.
As you say the mostly squared hips allows good sprawl, and the high elbows up, tucked chin, compressed body is a good protective cocoon. He says he emphasizes defense first - I like that concept, again for guys who really can't box that well. I also like the concept of punching from the top of the head.
King's style eliminates the bad habits many TMA to MMA converts have of trying to pick off punches with the forward hand, and teaches them to deal with being hit a lot, of course with the protection of gear and the strong defensive mode. Obviously it's not something that a seasoned MMA striker, a Chuck Liddell, would go to, though I believe some say he's familiar with King.
I'll close the rec.martial-arts coverage of Crazy Monkey with two more gems from Badger South. They cover aspects from the 'Sparring 101' DVD which covers CM.
One example is how he talks about footwork. He says 'you'll get a lot of 'footwork' experts who will try to teach you all sorts of footwork, like slide up step and angle step' - all of that is fine, but you need to know some basic footwork that works all the time. He puts a tennis ball on the mat and goes over circling the tennis ball by turning in the foot, squaring up the hips and not crossing the feet.
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Gotta keep that CM tuck… He emphases it in the beginning. His mobility is also excellent and he teaches it well. So no, you're always moving and your foot work is usually too good for the average guy who hasn't trained CM to catch. You gotta keep watching the tape after each workout at first, and you pick up more and more. Watch yourself in the mirror and be sure you have the right posture as you punch. Get some 10oz gloves like they use, too so you can get used to the covering up and stuff and seeing around them, etc.
Rodney has evolved the CM system from what he originally showed on his DVD's. His latest information can be obtained from his website www.mymalife.com. The site contains downloadable documents and videos containing the CM system as well as forums for discussing it. There are STWA coaches worldwide that are trained in teaching the system for live training and Rodney does seminars around the world.
Concerned that people may think that the information on the web and DVD's is all there is to CM, he posted an open letter to the forums and encouraged people to make it available elsewhere.