By Steven Pink: So we have examined how the fighters rated number one in October 1989 from Heavyweight down to Middleweight might have fared against their modern day counterparts. The list has provoked debate and disagreement in equal measure but now it is time to cast our net a little wider and take in Light-Middleweight to Light-Welterweight.
Julian Jackson
Edison Miranda = A Weaker Julian Jackson
By Eric Thomas: Former three time middleweight/junior middleweight champion Julian Jackson (55-6, 49 KOs) has always been a favorite of mine, a fighter who fought in the 80s to mid 90s and known for his many knockouts, with many of them coming from a single punch. To this day, he is still regarded by many to the hardest puncher ever in the middleweight/junior middleweight division, though some fighters like Gerald McClellan, who holds two victories over Jackson, are thought to have power approaching that of Jackson, it’s still not even close from what I’ve seen of him.
However, as good as Jackson’s monstrous power was, he was flawed by having less than an iron chin, which let him down in defeats to McClellan, Quincy Taylor, Mike McCallum, Verno Phillips and Anthony Jones. The defeats to Phillips and Jones, however, came at the end of Jackson’s career, when he was clearly not the same fighter he had been earlier on when he held the junior middleweight and middleweight titles. For many boxing fans, we’ve they’ve been waiting for another fighter to come along with the same kind of impressive power that Jackson formerly possessed, someone with one-punch power in either hand.