Most good judges who watched Luke Campbell break down the brave but crude challenge of Tommy Coyle over 10 rounds in Hull would agree the 2012 Olympic gold medallist is one of the best five lightweights in the country.
Most – but not all. There was considerable heat generated across social media outlets after Sky Sports posted its pre-fight top 10 at 135lb on Saturday night, placing Ricky Burns at the top, ahead of Kevin Mitchell and Anthony Crolla – all three of whom have had title setbacks this year while performing at or near their best.
Campbell, after a dozen wins in as many paid outings, leapfrogged Coyle to sit just behind fifth-placed Terry “Turbo” Flanagan – and that’s where the debate becomes more interesting. Flanagan, after all, is a legitimate world champion – but he does not fight on Sky.
As Andy Ayling, the combative associate of Eddie Hearn’s rival, Frank Warren, pointed out on Facebook: “Sky give the impression that these ratings are official ratings and it’s misleading to the viewers. How can Flanagan not be number one? He’s a world champion and undefeated. Crolla has twice failed to beat [Derry] Mathews [who fights on BoxNation] and Mitchell has failed in every world title fight. Liam Walsh [another BoxNation fighter] isn’t even in there.”
I have some sympathy with the latter observation. Walsh, who can operate at super-feather and lightweight, is one of the classiest boxers in the country and 28-fight unbeaten Flanagan is a dangerous customer for any domestic opponent.
Looking at the list without a vested interest, however, I would put Campbell considerably closer to the top, perhaps alongside the experienced Mathews. If you had to put your house on the result, it would be a tough call at this stage of Campbell’s career but he clearly has pedigree and, at 27, is well placed to make his move.
As for the other computations: I would back Crolla to beat Burns – but maybe not Mathews in a rubber match – Mitchell to give everyone fits, edging Mathews and taking Flanagan all the way; and Walsh to outpoint Crolla. Within a year or 18 months, though, I think Campbell beats all of them.
As for Coyle, he was as honest and ambitious beforehand as he was afterwards: “He’s an exceptional fighter and he’s better than I’ll ever be but this fight won’t come down to that, I’m too much for him too early.” After taking his lumps, he said: “He’s world class; I’m domestic level.”
If everyone was that candid, boxing might be a less fractious sport.
In praise of the lord of the ring
No sport offers its participants the split-second redemption that boxing does. When Andy Lee and John Jackson met at Madison Square Garden a year ago, they were not so much interested in the vacant North American Boxing Federation light-middleweight title on offer but rather a chance to move up the WBC rankings for a shot at the real thing. Jackson was the younger and more feted, the son of Julian Jackson, whose own one-punch demolition of Herol Graham when they contested the WBC’s vacant middleweight title in 1990 pretty much wrecked the Bomber’s career.
That night in Spain, Graham was battering Jackson so comprehensively that the referee gave the Virgin Islands man one more round to turn it around after three. In the 63rd second of the fourth round, The Hawk threw a counter right off the ropes that beat the Sheffield fighter’s left hand to the target by a split second, leaving Herol unconscious in a worrying heap and propelling Jackson on to four successful defences of his belt, until he ran into the awesome power of Gerald McClellan – twice.
Jackson, plagued by eye problems, won and lost the title again and finished his career in 1998, as so many champions do, stopped by a journeyman, Anthony “Baby” Jones.
Fast forward 25 years from Julian’s Spanish high point and his boy was in a near identical position to Graham: ahead on all the cards, putting his opponent down in the second and moving in for an early finish. Like Graham, he reached for his best shot, threw his finisher 57 seconds into the fifth and then felt the stiffening chill of the reply, a perfectly delivered right-hand counter off the ropes that put him down for the count.
Since that very second, Lee’s career was revitalised. He went on to shock the Russian Matt Korobov with a come-from-behind assault last December that won him the vacant WBO middleweight title in the sixth round and held on to the belt against Peter Quillin in April. Now the Travelling Man is going home to Limerick in September to defend his title against the unbeaten Billy Joe Saunders in front of 33,000 people at Thomond Park. Lee is co-promoter with his trainer Adam Booth and life could hardly be rosier.
Jackson Jr, meanwhile, is – like Graham in the 90s – rebuilding. On a little-known cable channel on Saturday night in Florida, he beat Dennis Laurente over 10 rounds to progress in a light-middleweight tournament organised by Al Haymon as part of his strategy of marginalising the recognised world bodies.
Jackson said after winning a contest that earns him the right to fight Yudel Johnson in the next round: “I want to thank God and Al Haymon for being on Bounce TV.”
If there is a quote that better sums up Haymon’s hold on his battalion of fighters at sub-championship level, not to mention the continuing spread of boxing coverage on American TV, it will have to outdo that one. God and Al gave Jackson his chance on a TV station with a schedule that includes American Bible Challenge and Live Life And Win! – as well as some God-sanctioned fisticuffs.
