A middleweight to defeat James J. Corbett

He wrote an article to the effect that whites were no match for blacks in boxing, at least heavyweight boxing, and that they would be the future of the sport. It's out there. I don't have the time to dig it up. Perhaps later.

Oh, and he also drew the color line... tho he was willing to fight Johnson once Jack got the title.

 

That is not exactly the same thing as being afraid of black boxers now is it.

Whatever the case, he fought the most dangerous one who was contemporaneous with him, so if he was afraid he didn't show it!

 

Quite a long list, as it would include most decent, modern SMWs - and probably a few middleweight champions too, if they don't have to cut down to 160, but are allowed to weigh in at 170. But just to name a few of the most obvious ones, that haven't already been mentioned:
Patterson
Ward
Calzaghe
Maske
Stevenson

 

A good prediction involves as few assumptions as possible.

You are making a house of cards of assumptions here!

 

Read the fight clips. Its was a war with bombs traded. Hardly a fix.

 

I think that people need to look at the difference between Corbett's results against middleweight sized fighters, and his results against cruiserweight sized fighters.

I know that some of these guys were green or shot, but lets look at the results.

He arguably looses a decision against Jack Burke while he is green himself, then he stops Choynski, McCaffrey, Mitchell, and McCoy, mostly fairly quickly!

There is obviously his loss to Bob Fitzsimmons, but I think that most people would agree that Fitzsimmons was the most dangerous puncher of the era, even in the heavyweight division.

Now when we look at his results against cruiserweigth sized fighters (say Killrain, Jackson, Sullivan, Sharkey or whoever) he is sometimes losing, but even when he wins it is in a prolonged fight.

The pattern seems to be that he made quick work of middleweights, and super middleweights, but had tough assignments against the better cruiserweigth sized fighters.

We have seen it enough times where a fighter is a wrecker at one weight, but not so much at another.

 

I don't think a lot of people are buying into the equivalency of talent and quality between this Corbett's era and those that followed.

 

OK, then how did the equivalency diverge, and how have you established this?

You are assuming the superiority of era A over era B.

You are then assuming based upon that, that you would get certain outcomes that are not supported by history.

I could just as easily assume that Corbett's era was superior, and that Kid McCoy would have beaten say Michael Moorer, because I had thrown any checks and balances out of the window!