Talk:John Jackson (English boxer)

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The nature of the English Championship, pre-1800

In the absence of any central organising body (and perhaps more importantly in the absence of a belt), it isn’t always straightforward to determine exactly who was champion from what dates during the early period of prizefighting. (This issue is also complicated by the fact that sometimes the word ‘champion’ is used in contemporary sources in what would seem to be rather a looser way than the word would be interpreted in the modern day.)

If we take the example of John Jackson, conventionally considered to have been champion from 1795-1800, he only fought three fights (with record WLW) and the only one of those fights in which he could have won the English Championship was his third fight, the victory over Mendoza in 1795.

So, Mendoza was evidently the English Champion until 1795 (when he lost to Jackson), and the only fights in which Mendoza could have originally won the title are his two fights against Warr in 1792 and 1794. However, if you look at those three fights, Mendoza-Warr I, Mendoza-Warr II and Jackson-Mendoza, none of the contemporary accounts state that they were ‘for the championship’. Indeed, I’m not convinced that many of the earlier bouts (e.g. those of Johnson) which are generally accepted these days as having been ‘for the championship’ are specifically described as such in contemporary accounts.

Prior to about 1800 the reality seems to have been that ‘the championship’ was determined entirely by public consensus – which may have only emerged some time after specific results. This explains why it is so rare that contemporary accounts of boxing during that period (or the later writing of Pierce Egan, when describing this period) ever describe a particular fight as having been anticipated as a battle for the championship, or as someone having specifically become champion directly after a victory. This being the case, the whole idea of specific pre-1800 bouts being ‘for the championship’ (in the modern sense of that term) is probably completely anachronistic. See also, for example, Mendoza’s own autobiography and the complete lack of any mention of particular fights having been ‘for the championship’.

Anyone who has read a lot of prizefighter biographies on Wikipedia will be aware that there is a lot of anachronistic prose present – at one end of the spectrum there used to be plenty of incorrect mention of weight-category championships which simply did not exist at the time (derived ultimately from the very flawed ‘cyberboxingzone’ website), but at the other end of the spectrum there is frequent reference to specific victories having been by ‘knockout’ (an unknown concept at the time, as pretty much all fights ended approximately in that way), to fighters having ‘turned pro’ (they are almost all known to have had other regular jobs), to the existence of ‘promoters’ (really, in an era when the sport was illegal?), etc, etc. All of this illustrates the great difficulty that we sometimes have in shaking off the trappings of modern-day boxing – which, in terms of its organisation, was entirely different to prizefighting in almost every way.

So, this note is essentially a request that editors consider quite carefully whether it is actually useful to describe specific pre-1800 fights as having been ‘for the championship’. It seems that it would be far more useful to locate contemporary source material to directly support the idea that specific fighters were recognised as champion at a particular time. E.g. in many cases it may be more appropriate to omit reference to ‘Fighter X fought Fighter Y in a battle for the English championship’, and instead to say ‘After this victory Fighter Y seems to have begun to be recognised as English Champion’ and provide contemporary sources as references.

[I have cross-posted this note in the talk sections for Johnson, Brain, Mendoza and Jackson. Hopefully it is useful.] Axad12 (talk) 06:01, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Multiple changes to sources and text of article

There was a recurring problem throughout this article that it used solely 2^nd and 3^rd hand reference sources such as blogposts, Facebook and other websites (none of which are really admissible on Wikipedia) rather than pointing to the page references in the authoritative original 18^th and 19^th century contemporary (or near contemporary) sources. I’ve gone through the whole article and added the contemporary references as External Links and re-done the references to authoritative sources only. The use of 2^nd and 3^rd hand sources also meant that various claims had been made in the text which are not substantiated within the contemporary source material. I therefore made various changes and alterations, as listed below…    

Article used to say that Jackson was born in ‘Worcestershire or London’. Boxiana (1830) makes it clear that he was born in London but that his family was originally from Worcestershire. Changed accordingly. Altered birthdate to 1768 as per the authoritative reference source Pugilistica.

Article used to state that Jackson became a boxer against his parents’ wishes. There doesn’t seem to be any contemporary evidence to back this up, it seems to be just the (perhaps not unreasonable, but nonetheless unsourced) guesswork of a blogposter. Therefore removed.

Removed reference to Jackson having been the 17^th champion. The early history of prizefighting is too confused to allow such exactitude and, in fairness, no one ever uses the expression ‘the xth champion’ anyway (e.g. not in the way that people do actually describe a president as the xth president of the USA). Similarly removed reference to Mendoza having been the 16^th champion. Certainly no one was using that sort of description of champions during the prizefighting era.

Removed reference to Jackson’s facial features – clearly non-encyclopaedic and unnecessary since the comment was right next to two contemporary portraits of Jackson’s face.

Corrected spelling of ‘Smithham Bottom’ to’ Smitham Bottom’, and added a text link to show that this is in modern-day Coulsdon, South London.

Corrected ‘John’ Ingleston to George Ingleston.

Removed reference (in Jackson vs Ingleston) to the event of suffering a broken leg in a prizefight being ‘not entirely uncommon’. The instance in Jackson-Ingleston is actually pretty much unprecedented in prizefighting history.

Removed reference to ‘winning by knockout’, as all prizefights were effectively won in this fashion (give or take) and there was no such thing as ‘victory by knockout’. Also removed from sidebar.

Removed all references to the heavyweight championship, as there were no weight-based categories at this time (there wouldn’t be until approximately the 1860s). Also altered in sidebar.

Article stated that Futrell/Fewterel was undefeated in 18 previous bouts, whereas contemporary sources (e.g. Pancratia 1812, p79) say that he had won 18 fights but makes no mention of whether he had ever lost. Amended accordingly.

The article claimed that Jackson was a 10-1 outsider to beat Mendoza, but the fight report in The Sporting Magazine (issue for April 1795, the date of the fight) states that bets were 5-4 in Mendoza’s favour. Have adjusted accordingly.

Removed reference to Mendoza’s ‘managers’ asking for a rematch. This is anachronistic. Prizefighters did not have managers. When Mendoza asked for a rematch he did so himself (as the original sources record).

The article stated that Jackson had many amateur fights, but there is no evidence of this in any of the contemporary sources so I’ve removed the comment. Jackson attended a sparring school before becoming a prizefighter, and no doubt had many sparring encounters while running his academy, but none of that counts as ‘amateur fights’. Also removed mention of this from sidebar.

The article stated that Jackson retired after his loss to Ingleston, but there is no evidence to support that in the contemporary sources so I’ve removed this comment. Fair enough he didn’t do much in the 6 years until the fight with Mendoza but he was still involved in the prizefighting scene

Text also used to say that Jackson retired in 1796, shortly after beating Mendoza. There is again no evidence in the contemporary sources to support this claim, he simply went several years without a challenger due to his superiority as a boxer. For example, Mendoza tried to arrange a rematch around 1800/1801, at which point Jackson said he had retired – which appears to have been the first time he'd made any comment on the issue. The problem here is highlighted by the fact that the text in the article used to say that Jackson ‘officially vacated’ in 1796, which would have been impossible in the absence of a sanctioning body. In any event, no fighter was acclaimed as a post-Jackson champion until Jem Belcher in 1800.

It is similarly untrue (as used to be stated in this article) that Tom Owen was champion after Jackson, as is clear in all original contemporary sources and the fact that Owen is never described as English champion in any of them (see discussion on the Tom Owen talk page for further discussion of this point – the idea that Tom Owen was ever champion is an invention of the poorly sourced ‘cyberboxingzone’ website and its attempts to resolve small gaps in the record by proclaiming its own champions 200 years after the event). Please note: in the absence of any sanctioning body, prizefighting champions were not subject to modern rules forcing them to have mandatory defences or to vacate if they did not fight - instead they fought when challenged by another boxer, or waited for such a challenge. If no challenger could find financial backers to support a challenge, a champion could remain unchallenged for a very long time (see, for example, Tom Cribb, champion 1808-1821), because an unsuccessful challenge could cost upwards of 200 guineas in lost stake money. This is the reason why fighters like Jackson and Cribb did not fight for long periods, not because they had retired.

There is some rather confused text in the section on Jackson opening a boxing academy, which suggests that some of the standard rules of prizefighting were invented by Jackson (they were invented by Broughton in 1743). Removed to avoid any confusion on this point.

Removed reference to Byron being Jackson’s ‘friend’, altered to ‘student’.

With regard to the section of the text regarding Jackson being the guardian of the purse for the Pugilistic Club, this is somewhat confused. Jackson regularly used to be responsible for holding the main stakes of a prizefight (e.g. ‘100 guineas a side’ and such like) and would give them to the backers of the winning fighter after a fight. He also used to hold collections for defeated fighters directly after a bout. However, the idea (that used to be stated in the text of this article) that Jackson had a purse in which he placed all money that was wagered by spectators in side-bets is clearly untrue, as this would have been impossible from a practical standpoint, with thousands of people in attendance. Therefore altered the text for the sake of clarity (stakeholder = only the stakes for which the fight is being fought, between the principals and their backers) .

Removed text giving a definition of an inn and stating the time at which the London-Brighton coach stopped at Sutton. Not notable or required in a biography of a boxer.

The section on Jackson’s boxing academy spent some time claiming that Jackson’s mode of teaching was based almost entirely on that of Mendoza. As far as I can see this was just guesswork as no description of Jackson’s teaching methods exists. Mendoza was not the only person offering tuition in prizefighting in this era (although he was the only one to release a book about it). There is no reason to assume that Jackson worked from Mendoza’s book and was incapable of devising his own teaching programme (indeed, his great success as a teacher suggests that he was perfectly capable of doing so). I therefore removed some of this paragraph. Also 1803 was stated as the date that the academy opened, but again I see no evidence of an exact year in the contemporary material, which suggested that he commenced teaching directly after beating Mendoza. Added direct quotes about the academy from early sources instead.

Also added various sections from the original fight reports for the sake of colour (and to remove the need to ‘make up’ what happened in these fights) and added various brief snippets from early sources in relation to other important parts of Jackson’s life.

To be honest, I ended up doing quite an extensive rewrite – but hopefully it’s now all properly sourced, free of obvious errors, and free of statements assumed or invented by blogposters on external sites. Axad12 (talk) 11:55, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Was Jackson actually English champion?

The lead section of this article states that Jackson became English Champion by beating Mendoza in 1795.

Reference to contemporary late 18th/early 19th century sources on Mendoza (e.g. Pancratia, Boxiana, The Sporting Magazine, etc) clearly shows that Mendoza's 'title fights' in 1792 & 1794 (vs Warr) and 1795 (vs Jackson) were never referred to as being for the championship and that Mendoza was never referred to as being the Champion of England. Even in Mendoza's own autobiography he never claims to have been champion and doesn't describe these fights as title fights. (Further detail on this issue can be found on the Talk page on Mendoza: topic: 'Surprising lack of evidence for Mendoza having been champion'.)

This raises the question of whether Jackson was ever really the English champion.

It seems to me that there is a similar lack of original sources from the 1790s (and subsequent decades) to suggest that Jackson was ever the champion. The idea that he was champion appears to derive from Henning's notoriously unreliable 1902 Fights for the Championship, which includes much material that was blatantly invented by Henning and cannot be found in original contemporary sources.

I wonder, therefore, does anyone know of any original sources which definitively describe Jackson as champion? Evidently just one would do as long as it is categorical and unambiguous.

The clear picture from the original sources from the 1790s (and Pierce Egan in Boxiana, in the 1810s & 20s) is that they regularly describe Tom Johnson, Ben Brain & Jem Belcher as having been champion of England, but that this term is never used in relation to Mendoza or Jackson. Therefore, between Brain's death in 1794 and the time when Belcher was acclaimed as champion (1800 onwards), there would appear to have been no recognised English prizefighting champion.

Mendoza and Jackson were no doubt the pre-eminent fighters during this period - and if we were going to retrospectively award the championship then they would be the two we would look to - but the issue is whether or not any fighters were actually acclaimed as champion at the time, because, let's face it, nothing else really counts.

Any thoughts? Axad12 (talk) 10:46, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Main article now updated in accordance with the above. Axad12 (talk) 03:48, 18 December 2023 (UTC)