The criticism he faced for a hit and miss style predates modern debates about defensive boxing. Long before fighters like Shakur Stevenson were accused of avoiding risk, Corbett was already accused of denying the audience he believed a heavyweight champion owed them. Fans treated that style as avoidance rather than intelligence.
Those feelings only hardened when he took the title from John L. Sullivan. Corbett beat a champion who was deeply loved and who embodied brute strength, endurance and excess. He wore Sullivan down round by round, turning the fight into something colder and less satisfying for the crowd. The result was decisive, but many fans felt they had lost something in the process.
Corbett’s style appeared to his audience, and his confidence in it left little room for compromise once resentment set in.
Corbett never restored that relationship during his reign. He officially defended the title only once over several years, preferring instead to pursue exhibitions, stage work and acting opportunities. To modern readers, this may seem like early crossover ambition. To contemporaries, it represented a champion who preferred comfort and control to risk.
His public image reinforced that view. Corbett presented himself carefully, with a manicured look, a styled pompadour and a willingness to appear on stage and in early films. He didn’t look like the hardened heavyweights that fans expected to represent the division. To critics, he looked less like a fighter shaped by hardship and more like an artist who boxed when it suited him.
That perception shaped how his reign was read. A champion who rarely fought, relied on movement and seemed at ease outside the ring was judged less by skill than by what he chose not to risk.
Suspicion also followed him inside the ropes. His 1900 knockout of Kid McCoy, recorded as a five-round stoppage, never sat comfortably with observers. The circumstances of the fight, McCoy’s reputation and the sudden ending fueled speculation that the outcome was fixed. No proof ever closed the question, but doubt lingered over Corbett’s record.
The most damaging question of his career has not come to a conclusion at all.
Peter Jackson was the most dangerous heavyweight contender of the era and one Corbett could not dismiss. Their 1891 meeting went to sixty-one grueling rounds and ended without a decision. Neither man was finished, and neither man was satisfied. When Corbett became champion the following year, Jackson expected another opportunity. He never received one.
Corbett offered practical explanations, pointing to limited money and a dangerous opponent as reasons to move on. On paper, those reasons were logical. In practice, they left a conspicuous absence in the middle of his reign.
Race hovered beneath every justification. The color line in boxing was actually and openly enforced by champions before Corbett. Corbett did not issue the same statements, but the result was identical. Jackson remained shut out, and the unanswered challenge followed Corbett long after his title reign ended.
The backlash was immediate and personal. Corbett faced criticism not only from opponents and the press, but from within his own circle. Even supporters struggled to explain why the most pressing challenge of the era was left unsolved.
By the time his career ended, the arguments had hardened. Corbett introduced a new way of fighting, but he also refused to perform the rituals that many fans associate with legitimacy.
He won the heavyweight title by bringing the future into the ring. He never fully lived up to the expectations of his own time.
