🥊 Punching above your weight

#091

Jack Ellis
July 13, 2025

I will be honest.

I doubt more than a handful of you will know who Ilia Topuria is.

He is a Georgian-Spanish mixed martial artist who is a multi division champion.

He was the Featherweight champion (66.8kg), and recently he became the Lightweight champion (70.3kg).

The guy is quite literally punching above his weight.

It’s another expression from boxing, used when someone or something is exceeding expectations and competing successfully against stronger or better-equipped opponents.

In everyday English, it’s often used beyond sports. In business, in careers, or even in relationships.

People don’t always say the whole expression.

You might just hear “he’s punching.”

For example, if someone has a partner who is considered far more attractive, people might joke that he’s punching — meaning he’s doing better than expected in the relationship department.

As someone kindly told me on my wedding day.

Punching? Probably

This week’s three tips:

SOMETHING TO AVOID 🫣

🤦🏻‍♀️ “He hadn’t to say it”

This seems logical, but it’s incorrect. Even though “had to” is the past of “have to,” we don’t make the negative by saying “hadn’t to.”

✅ “He didn’t have to say it”

We need to use an auxiliary verb (in this case, “didn’t”) to form the negative in the past.

You didn’t have to get us a present

SOMETHING TO SOUND CONFIDENT 🧐

👔 Business expressions

“Pound for pound”

An idiom used to compare performance, value, or effectiveness relative to size or resources.

It’s about impact per unit, not total size.

Pound for pound, our customer support team is the best in the company—they handle more cases per person than any other department.

This means the team might be smaller or have fewer resources, but in proportion to what they have, they outperform others.

SOMETHING TO WATCH 👀

NEXT STEP ➡️

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