Big Shot Boxing Beginner’s Guide: 13 Knockout Tips, Cheats & Tricks

Looking for a boxing game that promises more fun than bells and whistles, more simplicity than complicated mechanics that may take forever to learn? You might as well give Big Shot Boxing a try. This is a new Android and iOS sports title from Colin Lane Games, where you can take control of a professional boxer, from the time they debut to the time they retire.

There are different ways for you to train your fighter, and when it comes to fight strategy, that’s up to you as well — will you go toe-to-toe and try to knock everyone out, or do you prefer a more conservative approach and like fighting from outside? You can also collect new characters in the game, and probably have a good chuckle, as the game’s creator appears to have based the boxers on many a famous fighter — Floyd Mayweather, Mike Tyson, even first-time pro boxer/MMA superstar Conor McGregor, if you look carefully.

Although this is a much more casual gaming experience than titles such as those from the Real Boxing series, that doesn’t mean that there’s no depth — this is more than just an arcade boxing game with retro-style graphics, as each character has their own strengths and weaknesses, just like you have the option to improve your boxer’s stats in whatever way you wish.

As such, we’re now bringing you a Big Shot Boxing strategy guide where we share some tips and tricks that could help you in your path to becoming a champion. Take note that we will be focusing more on the beginner/intermediate side of things, as these mostly apply to players who are gunning for their first in-game title in Novice difficulty.

1. Choosing A Starting Boxer

When starting up Big Shot Boxing for the first time and starting your career, you will first be asked whether you want to start out in Novice or Pro difficulty. If this is your first time to play the game, you obviously want to be playing in Novice difficulty. Even if the game gives you an in-depth tutorial on what to do and how to fight, you wouldn’t want to overwhelm yourself right from the get-go.

Next, you’ll be asked to choose which fighter you want to control in your career. All in all, there are close to 20 fighters available in Big Shot Boxing, but you’ll be limited to a choice of three fighters if this is your first time to start a career. Don’t worry about your choice of fighter — the differences are merely cosmetic, as all three are all-rounders with slightly-below average skills (ratings of 4/10 for all four stats), all aged 25.

We’d say that was all on purpose, as this allows you free reign to customize your fighters’ stats from scratch, while making sure you’re not getting completely unskilled scrubs.

2. Know How The Punches Work

Big Shot Boxing is an unbelievably simple game in terms of fight mechanics, as all you need to do to perform certain actions in the ring is to tap one of four buttons on the bottom of your screen. On the left half, you have the Block and Uppercut buttons, and on the right half, you have Cross and Jab. There’s no button for clinching or for other types of punches; it’s as bare-bones as you can get.

Tapping on the Jab button, which is on the rightmost corner, doesn’t just allow you to land a quick punch against your opponent, it also allows you to move your fighter forward. The jab, quite obviously, is a low-power punch with high speed and high accuracy. And as the game’s tutorial will helpfully tell you, jabs won’t score you any points with the judges.

If you want to land a punch with even more power, you’ll want to go for the Cross, which is located to the left of the Jab button. Accuracy and power are just about average for this punch type, which will score you some points if you’re able to land successful crosses against your opponent.

Finally, you’ve got the Uppercut button, which is the second button from the left in the bottom menu. This is your highest-power punch, though the obvious drawbacks here are its slow delivery, as well as its low accuracy rate. We’ll be telling you more about the uppercut later on in this guide, but be warned in advance — you don’t want to be spamming your opponents with uppercut attempts!

3. Don’t Forget To Be Defensive

Compared to other fighting sport games, Big Shot Boxing appears to be quite an offensive-oriented one — as it doesn’t really seem to distinguish power punches from regular punches, and doesn’t count jabs in the scoring, it’s hard to tell. But offensive-minded players might have the edge more often than not.

Still, that doesn’t excuse you from not playing defense in this game! That Block button on the extreme left of the bottom menu is there for a purpose, and that’s to allow you to cover up, parry your opponent’s blows, and regain some health.

The tutorial explains that blocking while just standing still is not a good idea, and we’ll have to agree there — blocking wards off MOST, but not all of your opponent’s punches, and you’ll also have to move around to avoid getting hit so often. Simply tap on the Block button (instead of tapping and holding) and that’ll allow you to move backwards, giving you another way to mix in some defense with your offense.

4. Your First Few Fights

By “first few,” we’re referring to the first two or three fights in the game, which shouldn’t be a problem at all for you to win. At this point, you can feel free to experiment with your strategy, and if you want to go ahead and button-mash, you’re free to do so as well — unless you get extremely careless, you’re a cinch to knock the other guy out.

But instead of knocking out your opponent as soon as the first round (which is very doable at this point in Big Shot Boxing), you might as well stretch things out and use those fights as practice for the more difficult matchups. Find which strategy works for you the best, and if you want to have a rematch against one of the bottom three opponents in the rankings, then go for it. As we’ll explain later on, this is something you wouldn’t want to overdo.

5. Stunning Your Opponent / Recovering From A Stun

If you time your crosses and uppercuts well enough, and are able to land those blows on your opponent while he’s perfectly open, you’ve got a solid chance of stunning him. Once your opponent is stunned, you’ll see a yellow bar appear below his green health bar, and that’s going to show you how much time you need to land a cross or an uppercut to knock him down; jabs don’t knock opponents down, even if they’re stunned!

It may take some practice, but you’ll want to make sure you’re timing your blows as well as possible, to increase your chances of stunning your opponent. Knock him down and you’ll get a small bit of health recovered, which, we’d say, is Big Shot Boxing’s way of simulating how momentum shifts to your corner after you knock your opponent down to the canvas.

Now what happens if you get stunned? If you don’t time your blocks properly, or just keep hitting the Block button over and over again, even if the opponent isn’t swinging any punches your way, and if you miss on one cross or uppercut too many, then you will be left vulnerable, and in prime position to be stunned.

Once you see the yellow “Stun!” text on your screen, hit the Block button ASAP and hold down on it until the yellow bar disappears. Be sure you’re fast with your fingers, because if you aren’t, you could be getting knocked down, while essentially giving your opponent a minor health replenishment!

6. Don’t Get Knocked Down Too Often

We should probably rephrase this tip to say, “don’t get knocked down at all,” but let’s face it — you’re going to suffer your share of knockdowns, and it’s easy to get up from them. The game will prompt you to rapidly tap on your screen until you fill up the meter, and we would normally recommend you time your taps so you can get up at the nine-count, allowing you to recoup the most health in the process.

Again, this isn’t hard to do at all, but unless you knocked your opponent out, a knockdown will always result in you losing the round, 10-8, with multiple knockdowns in the same round knocking things down to 10-7.

7. There’s Really No Need To Rush Through For A Quick KO

We get it — knockouts are fun, and it’s much better to end a fight quickly rather than slug it out for all four rounds and pick up the win via points. But at the moment, there are no extra rewards or incentives for ending the fight via KO.

A KO win earns you just as much money as a decision win, and since going for broke and trying to end the fight via knockout will likely leave you more vulnerable to be stunned or knocked down by your opponent, there will be times when you’ll be much better off playing it safe and picking your punches wisely. That’s especially true, if you’re in the middle of the third round and beyond and holding on to a safe lead over your opponent.

8. Watch Out For The Flash Knockdown

More often than not, you will have a chance to recover when you get stunned by your opponent. But in Big Shot Boxing, there is such a thing as a “flash knockdown,” which is designated by the word “Flash” that appears when you stun your opponent, or when your opponent stuns you. This is a knockdown which you cannot recover from simply by covering up — you just have to take the knockdown as it comes, and rapidly tap on your screen as usual to get back up.

Take note, however, that the fact there are flash knockdowns means that it’s more important than ever not to ignore the defensive aspect of boxing. This could also mean a quick, easy, and humiliating loss as you move closer to the top, as the top-ranked fighters can knock you down so hard that you might not be able to get up after dropping to the canvas, no matter how quickly you tap!

9. A Guide To The Stats / Which Stats Should You Focus On

Now that we’ve given you a good number of fight tips and tricks, let’s move on to the stats — there are only four in Big Shot Boxing, and as you see them in the upper left of your screen in the gym menu, these are Health, Power, Chin, and Recovery. As you earn more prize money from your fights, you can improve each of these stats after a fight, though the cost to improve a stat will progressively increase as the rating goes up.

As we explained earlier, all three options for starting fighter will have identical ratings of 4/10 across all four stats, giving you an all-rounder whom you can customize as you keep winning matches. But which stats should you ideally focus on, if you’re trying to win your first championship as quickly as possible?

Since Big Shot Boxing tends to be quite offensive-oriented, as mentioned, Power should be the first stat to work on, for more quick and easy KO wins, especially against less-talented opponents. Power, quite obviously, is the measure of your punches’ strength. After Power, you can then move on to Chin, which determines your ability to withstand damage from your opponents without getting knocked down/knocked out. This should be next, as it will definitely be in your best interests to avoid hitting the canvas.

Health would ideally be your third out of the four stats to work on — like Power, this is self-explanatory, as this determines how long it takes before that green bar gets wiped out completely. Lastly, work on Recovery, as this determines how long it takes for you to get your health back in between rounds, or even during rounds.

10. Don’t Upgrade One Stat At All The Others’ Expense

One important thing to remember when training your boxer in the Gym screen is that it’s not a wise idea to focus on one stat EXCLUSIVELY (i.e. getting your Power to 10/10, while leaving all the other stats as is) and working your way through the others. You’ll still want to improve three out of the four stats, or all of them, as equally as possible, while leaving the one stat you want to focus on ahead of the others.

For example, after four training sessions, you can end up at a point where Power is at 6/10, Chin 5/10, Health 5/10, and Recovery 4/10. After eight sessions, it would still be fine if Power is at 7 or 8/10, followed by Chin 6/10, Health 5 or 6/10, and Recovery 5/10.

11. Grinding Is Not Really An Option In The Game

Many games will allow you to replay previously completed levels if you’re trying to stock up on certain resources, or on currency. Unfortunately, there are limits on the amount and kind of grinding you can do in Big Shot Boxing. For example, you can only have rematches or matches against the one or two boxers ahead of you in the ranks, or the one or two boxers immediately below you.

There’s no option in the game to “bully” your way (for lack of a better term) to more money and more training/stat upgrades by beating someone who’s in the bottom three of the rankings, even if you’re ranked 14th or better, for example. The game would be just too easy to beat if you could grind it out against all the boxers, including those that are much weaker than you.

12. A Brief Explanation Of How Your Boxer Ages

Another reason why grinding doesn’t work in Big Shot Boxing is the fact that your boxer goes through an aging process. In Big Shot Boxing, it appears to be one year per three fights completed, win or lose. So if your boxer starts out at the age of 25, he’ll be 35 by the time he’s completed the 30th fight of his career.

It’ll still be better if you reach the top of the rankings while your boxer is 31-32 or younger (again, assuming his starting age is 25), just as it is in the real world!

13. Watch Ad Videos Whenever Possible

While you can’t really have too many rematches in Big Shot Boxing, lest your boxer age too much by fighting too often, there is, quite fortunately, a way for you to earn some easy money. On occasion, the game will ask you if you want to watch an ad video for an extra $4,000 — make sure to watch these ad videos when the opportunity arises, as you’ll need that money for upgrading and improving your boxer!

But remember that the operative word above is “occasional” — ad video offers seem to only appear at specific points of your boxer’s career, as there’s no feature that allows you to watch ad videos on demand. Again, that might be because the game will just be too easy if you had an option to watch tons of videos to stack up on your in-game currency.