Isnt most of this similar to what was written about Ali before Holmes, Jeffries before Johnson even Jackson before Jeffries? One thing that is often forgotten about Ali when discussing the Holmes fight is that he followed it by almost beating the no 1 contender in trevor berbick. Could Sulivan have almost beaten Peter Jackson after the Corbett fight? I doubt it. Sullivan was completely shot for the Corbett fight imo. the same way Dempsey, louis, Ali, Tyson and virtually every other great fighter was when thrashed at the end of their career.
"Ali had slowed and his speech was slurred...Ali had Parkinson's syndrome...three months before the fight Ali was ordered by the Nevada State Athletic Commission to go to the Mayo clinic for a Neurological Exam. The exam was not made public at the time but contained the following results: When he tried to touch his finger to his nose it was a little off, he had trouble coordinating his speech and couldn’t hop on one foot well." -- Columbia Neurosurgeons: Department of Neurosurgery. I find the notion that Sullivan was in a worse condition that Ali - definitively - bizarre in the extreme.
Compare what was written about Sullivan during the fight to understand the important difference. And then compare it to this: [yt]AJtlDvKku50[/yt] And then read this: "Ali had slowed and his speech was slurred...Ali had Parkinson's syndrome...three months before the fight Ali was ordered by the Nevada State Athletic Commission to go to the Mayo clinic for a Neurological Exam. The exam was not made public at the time but contained the following results: When he tried to touch his finger to his nose it was a little off, he had trouble coordinating his speech and couldnt hop on one foot well." -- Columbia Neurosurgeons: Department of Neurosurgery. And then, surely, you can understand once and for all the difference?
Obviously there was no such thing as a neurological exam in Sullivans day. We know that he had lost a lot of the mobility in his left arm at his point. We know that he was a chronic alcoholic before and after this point. We know that he had been inactive for some time before this fight. It is ultimately prety academic which of them was more shot, the point is that you wouldn't draw any big inferences from either figth.
And could you write the things that were written about Sullivan in the ring that you could write about Ali, Jeffries and Tyson? No, absolutely, you could not. Tyson managed three minutes of fighting. Jeffries managed four. Ali managed perhaps nine. Sullivan was still fighting back in round sixteen. To me, the difference is pronounced, obvious and almost inarguable. Sullvian was an alkie who trained hard for a fight and got into decent shape. Ali was the shell. The man couldn't even pass basic neurological exams, he possibly would have failed a drunk stop whilst sober. This is equal to outlasting. Or do you think his plan was literally to lose? Yes, but it's certainly not marked. None of these three are known for prohibitive power and all are known for a greater degree than skill. Both tended to win their biggest fights on points, but both have excellent knockouts to their names. Sullivan went twenty-one rounds with a man that knocked out Mitchell in three. Twenty-one rounds is not a "shot", "alcoholic", "shell" to be able to box against a middling talent. A shot Tyson couldn't manage twelve with McBride, for example.
In that case we should assign to him the same level of shot as we know Ali was suffering from? How to explain his apparent speed in sparring? How to explain his boxing for twenty-one rounds with the best fighter on the planet? Ali, upon attempting to do the something similar was absolutely unable to perform such a feat. And is there any evidence whatsoever that he was suffering from such a condition? And is that what you are suggesting here? And we know that he landed left-handed blows in the sixteenth round of a world-title fight. I'd suggest to you that there is more direct evidence of Ali's neurological disease than there is of Sullivan's arm injury, and I'd suggest to you that even if Sullivan had a broken arm going into the fight, it would be less of a handicap to his potential success than a neurological disease would given his right-hand punching power. Yet you remain absolutely convinced that Ali was quite clearly the healthier fighter, in the face of some reasonably damning evidence to the contrary.
in degrees of shotness Sullivan might be not have been as shot as Ali was, but I still maintain the fight was far enough removed from his prime that it isn't a great indication as to how a prime match up plays out.
I don't think you can say that because Corbett beat old Sullivan, he could beat prime Sullivan, but just as we can know that the combination of athleticism and technical excellence that Holmes displayed against Ali would likely always trouble him, certain aspects of Cobrett's apparent ability to time Sullivan's moves and out-joust him in straight exchanges are not without clues for how that fight might go. Another example is Lewis-Tyson. Tyson was shot but who can have failed to be informed by the timing of Tyson's excellent first round rushes by the Lewis uppercut, however rounds 2-8 looked.
In his prime Sullivan ate fighters like Corbett. He was fighting most of the best cuties of the period in six rounders, and he was still stopping them inside the distance.
He absolutely - did not. If you can find even the merest suggestion in any contemporary press report that Corbett was anything less than considerably more advanced in science and athleticism I will be extremely impressed. Furthermore, I'd suggest McCaffery was technically the most gifted Sullivan opponent of the time, and he was able to stay either six or seven "good rounds" with the champion and finished strong. I can't tell from my notes whether this is from the Bismarck or the St.Paul (may be both, wire), but here's the account of the final round: "Sullivan now seemed desperate though it was apparent he was growing weary while McCaffery was the fresher. Sullivan closed and they gave a number of blows then separated. Sullivna kept pushing his opponent and when they closed near the ropes, both fell. Rising, Sullivan closed again, but this time McCaffrey got away without a fall and delivered a light blow on Sullivan, who sent a terrific cut back, but McCaffrey ducked and escaped and the time of the sixth round expired. Instantly there was a shout all over the vast crowd in honour of McCaffrey. They all supposed he had won." This is in spite of a forty pound weight advantage. It doesn't read like he is "eating" this cutie, at all.
And the good work he did in the fight? Why? Here is my position - certain aspects of Corbett's performance hint at how he might tackle a prime Sullivan. His twenty-one round effort indicates to me that he was less shot than Ali. Where is the circular logic? I don't doubt that, yet you are unsure of the extent to which it hampered him against Corbett and you can't explain how that position is impacted by his use of the arm in the fight, or produce a newspaper report that indicates that he was struggling with his left during the fight. So we agree that it was broken but we don't know the extent of his difficulty. Now how does that add up to his being considerably worse off than Ali, as you indicated, when Ali retrospectively (Admittedly) had just about the worst condition any fighter could bring to the ring with him diagnosed by some of the most forthright experts in that field? I think that the evidence indicates that Corbett beat a much better fighter than Holmes did. Having said that, Ali looked a lot better against Berbick than he did against Holmes. Like Sullivan he looked like **** for that fight and came in at a career heavy weight but he trained properly, as in, without the weight cutting pills, without the lies. Here's a different way to put it. Based upon what I've read about what Sullivan did IN the ring against Corbett, not in training or sparring, but in a fight, I bet there are decent fighters he would have beaten. I doubt Ali could have beaten anyone in the top twenty when he met Holmes. There is almost no silver lining to that performance. Sullivan's surges in the late teen rounds speak of a fighter still firing somewhere in the basement.
Pollock's book on Sullivan backs all of Janitor's points. His arm was gone, never healed properly from the Cardiff fight. Whether he was still on the sauce or not, he had ruined his constitution. Two alcohol-induced coma's will do that. And to the point that he was not drinking, I remember seeing a breakdown of his diet and workouts leading up to this fight. For lunch, he had two warm ales. Perhaps, tho, he was not drinking the hard stuff. And I recall a quote from one of Sullivan's seconds in the Corbett fight, that he had barely trained and all the good appearance was the result of vigorous rubbing. Sullivan was a ghost at that point.
And where do you think I am drawing reproductions of Sullivan's fight with Corbett from? Pollock. Then we have to say that Pollock's book also supports my position, do we not? Yeah, he was all ****ed up, but I wonder if he was more ****ed up than Johnny Tapia? I think Tapia nearly died more often than Sullivan and still looked good. Sullivan put forth a good effort - a far better effort than the corresponding attempts by Jeffries, perhaps Tyson and certainly Ali versus Holmes. Corbett beat a better man than Holmes, Johnson and possibly Lewis. That's all i'm saying. I'm not saying he wasn't shot, past prime, "a ghost", whatever you want to call it.