Who was better - Peter Jackson or James Corbett?

61 rounds is a long time. Both these guys are criminally underrated today. Corbett does look like he belongs in MMA with his choice of ring attire
I feel Jackson should be a top 10 all time heavy even today. Easily the greatest heavyweight pre Jack Johnson

 

All those writers can say what they like,none of them including Fleischer saw Jackson fight! Therefore their opinions are no more valid than anyone' s on here!

 

There is a belief that in the Slavin fight Jackson sustained a broken rib which punctured a lung and possibly led to his later TB?

 

Bob Fitzsimmons said Jackson was better than Corbett or Johnson.

 

He said he was better than anyone else actually.

 

Peter was 36/37 and basically inactive for a long time when Jim Jeffries beat him in 1898, in 3 rounds. At that time, that was probably roughly equivalent of being 46/47 in 2022. It's a tough pick between, Jackson and Corbett, who at 33/34 was still plenty good enough to give Jim Jeffries fits before losing in the 23rd round, and even 3 years later did better against Jeffries than Jackson at the same age.

Overall, mostly from his record and what contemporaries wrote about him, I consider Jackson slightly better than Corbett, but I'm by no means certain of that.

 

Except that Jackson was a dissipated alcoholic in the first stages of TB when he fought Jeffries and was dead inside 3 years! TomSharkey commenting on the fight said Jackson was a shell and he would have been ashamed to fight him at that stage of his life.

 

Peter Jackson is the only heavyweight who never held the lineal title, who I am confident was the best heavyweight in the world at some point.

 

Mostly agree, but with a caveat.

There's all sorts of implicit knowledge that people close to a historical context would have, which we lack. If we are comparing apples to apples within similar eras -- Jackson wasn't that far off from Fleischer's own era -- I'd take Fleischer's opinion as a slightly useful factoid to consider. Not as much, though.

 

John L Sullivan never drew the color line.

He actually drew the Jackson line.

He showed considerable willingness to fight black challengers, before Jackson came along.

As a journalist later in life, he made the following observation:

"When a fighter draws the color line, you can bet your last dollar, that there is some colored fighter that he is deathly afraid of!"

 

Fleischer only saw Jeffries in his last fight in which he was outclassed and humiliated,yet he ranked him number 2 in his all time ratings.He has Schmeling,in his ATG top ten but no Ali,does that make sense to you?

 

Sullivan stated he was once nearly suckered into fighting George Godfrey,but he came to his senses and the fight never happened.Give examples of his"willingness." to fight black men?Name some?
ps He is dead right on his later observation though.

 

I produced a whole thread on this subject once, but I will summarize.

He arranged to fight Godfrey, just before he held the title, but the police stopped the fight.

It is of course possible that he arranged that, but unlikely.

Since he was not the champion, he was under no obligation to either fight Godfrey, or even explain his decision to do otherwise.

His first title defense was originally going to be against a black local level fighter, but the man failed to show.

Later while he was champion, an opponent failed to show up, and the Master of Ceremonies, suggested that Godfrey (who was present) be substituted.

Sullivan reluctantly agreed, while Godfrey declined, but said that he wanted to meet Sullivan at a later date.

Sullivan entertained offers to fight Peter Jackson, shortly after he arrived in the USA, but later turned against the idea.

In the end, he defended his tile against Corbett (the man who had held Peter Jackson to a draw), and bet his entire purse on himself!

 

It makes some sense, yeah. His standards for what makes a good boxer were probably set early, when he was younger. He only saw an old Jeffries, but he likely applied the standards of 1910s boxing to the scrappy historical evidence of Jeffries's reign (bad footage, newspaper accounts, etc.) when rating him, in a way that somebody raised in a multimedia heavy culture wouldn't. Similarly, with Schmeling, it makes sense that he'd rank him over Ali, since Schmeling probably resembled the boxers of Fleischer's youth more than Ali did.

Whether I agree with his ranking is a completely different issue, of course.

 

Narrowly all of Corbetts opponents were top 10 (around the time they fought) and his win against Sullivan (who is, next to Louis, the longest reigning world champion in Heavyweight) is possible the best singe victory next to Schmeling over Louis and Douglas against Tyson, in this division. So he is in my opinion still top 20 of all time.
Jackson could be around place 25. So it is indeed close.