There have been, over the years, over the decades, some truly memorable and thrilling knockouts. There have, too, been some disturbing KOs. Often, whenever a knockout is scored, fans cheer with gusto, celebrating the fighter who scored the fight-ender and applauding his work.
But sometimes, we witness a genuinely disturbing KO that leaves the room, the arena, and even the TV crowd at home in silence, shocked at what they have just seen. It was on this day back in 1990 when such a chiller of a KO – of the one-punch variety – took place.
Julian Jackson, who resides loftily on any Greatest Ever Puncher list you will come across, perhaps scored his most famous and most shocking knockout when he boxed in Spain.
Jackson, a former champ down at 154 pounds, carried questionable eyesight into the ring with him at the time, along with his venomous, shattering punching power. We don’t know if the former aided British defensive genius Herol Graham as he literally boxed rings around Jackson, “Bomber,” also busting up Jackson’s eye to the point where the referee was just seconds away from calling a halt to the one-sided affair, this in round four.
Graham, who had been so unlucky not to have gotten the decision over common opponent Mike McCallum (who stopped Jackson in a 1986 encounter and won a razor-thin decision over Graham in 1989 ) was blitzed by Jackson just as he was already celebrating the win he was certain was his.
But Jackson, through a combination of desperation, fear of losing, and blind instinct, reached back, seemingly as far as the ringside seats, and let loose with a crippling right-hand bomb. Graham was out colder than cold the split-second the punch from hell landed on his quite ludicrously exposed jaw.
Graham hit the canvas with almost as much force as was behind the punch that had hit him, his chest heaving as he lay prostrate. Aside from the rapid breathing activity Graham was thankfully engaged in, an observer could have been forgiven for thinking the stricken fighter had literally been killed.
No exaggeration, the KO the boxing world had violently presented to it on this day some 34 years ago has to rank as one of the most bloodcurdling, and at the same time, most watched of the last half-century.
Up there with Sugar Ray Robinson KO Gene Fullmer, Manny Pacquiao KO Ricky Hatton, Bob Foster KO Mike Quarry, Mike McCallum KO Don Curry, Rocky Marciano KO Jersey Joe Walcott, and others, Jackson KO Graham made an indelible mark on all who saw it as it happened.
