Don't confuse hard and soft skills. Every boxer needs hard skills as the foundation. You will see experienced boxers with their hands down - while we're saying hands back in combination is a hard skill. Someone with a ton of experience knows the moments they can bend the rules. However, they always have hard skills to fall back on for when bending those rules don't work. Don't confuse their bending of rules as their only option. They all have the muscle memory of hard skills to refer back to. 

At our school, we believe that relying solely on soft skills has a ceiling. Continuous progress in the sport comes from having a strong foundation in hard skills combined with soft skills. When Coach Jon trains our pros, 90% of the time is spent on fine-tuning hard skills. Mastery is in the details.