During the next three rounds the old champion was evidently growing weak, and fought only on the defensive. But Jackson beat down his guard and hit him severely. The ninth round was the last. Jackson walked in and planted several hard blows in quick succession on face and body. Mendoza struggled on for a little while and at last fell utterly exhausted. He knew that he stood no chance now. It was folly to go on. He gave in.
It was one of the shortest main battles ever fought, lasting in all but ten minutes and a half; and for its time quite the hardest ever fought at all. Mendoza was badly cut up; the new champion was hardly hurt.
This was not by any means the Jew’s last appearance in the Prize-Ring, for he fought Harry Lee for seventy minutes and beat him in fifty-three rounds eleven years later: and he actually fought Tom Owen in 1820, when he was fifty-seven years old. “Youth will be served,” we know, and Owen, who was at the time only just over fifty, beat him. Mendoza lived to a good old age, and in comfortable circumstances, dying in 1836.
Seven years after the encounter recorded above a letter appeared in the Daily Oracle and Advertiser which purported to be a challenge from Mendoza to Jackson for a return match. As a fact, the letter was a practical joke; but a part of Jackson’s reply is worth quoting, as it is so characteristic of all we hear of the man.
“... for some years,” he wrote, “I have entirely withdrawn from a public life, and am more and more convinced of the propriety of my conduct by the happiness which I enjoy in private among many friends of great respectability, with whom it is my pride to be received on terms of familiarity and friendship....”
Jackson never fought again, and one of the greatest reputations in the annals of the championship that have come to us is based upon a pugilist who only entered the ring thrice! One other champion was in precisely the same case, and that was John Gulley, whom we shall come to in due course.
No doubt Jackson attracted to himself a good deal of attention apart from the eccentricity of his good behaviour. He was a man of prodigious strength and is said to have written his name whilst an 84 lb. weight was suspended from his little finger.
After his retirement he took rooms at 13 Old Bond Street, a regular and fashionable house of call for the young bloods of the day. It became the correct thing to take a course of boxing lessons from John Jackson. Byron, who was a keen boxer despite his infirmity, used to go there to keep down the fat of which he ever lived in terror. In his diary for March 17th, 1814, he says: “I have been sparring with Jackson for exercise this morning, and mean to continue and renew my acquaintance with my mufflers. My chest, and arms, and wind are in very good plight, and I am not in flesh. I used to be a hard hitter and my arms are very long for my height.”—which was 5 ft 8¼ inches—“At any rate, exercise is good, and this the severest of all; fencing and broadsword never fatigued me half so much.”
Byron regarded John Jackson as a friend whom he greatly admired. He wrote letters to him on several occasions.
Jackson had innumerable pupils and was about the first real instructor of boxing for amateurs. He went to his grave in Brompton Cemetery old and honoured in 1845.