John Sullivan In The Modern Era

Not buying the 33 site defenses. Adam estimates...not a fact. He took a little liberty with his favorite subject material.

While many older timers off film remain a but if a mystery, Sullivan stands the peak of that mountain. Incomplete ring records, and like you said the quality that he meet wasn't very good. The quality he avoided would have answered all questions.

I'll settle for he was a shining star in a void of smaller / not very good men who's prime went quickly

 

His prime wasn't that short, he was in his prime probably from around 1880 and his decline was noticable around 1885

James J Jeffries was said to have improved a lot between the two Sharkey fights, and he was poor in the Armstrong fight, so at longest his prime was 1889 to 1904, or about 5 years s well.

 

I dont think Sullivan would translate well to this era. Or to rephrase that, I dont think anyone can say with any certainty that he could. Too many intangibles. The sport was so different back then. The competition and training (not physical training but technical training) was amateur level at best, probably a lot worse. You really are talking apples and oranges. I also dont buy the idea that Sullivan would have been a lean and mean fighter in the low 200s or so. Against McCaffrey he was 208 and fat as a pig. He looks twenty pounds over weight. He supposedly weighed 215 for Kilrain and was admittedly in better shape but he certainly wasnt svelte even in the photos of that fight. He had a classic dad bod in that fight. Take steroids out of the modern equation and train Sullivan right and hes going to be 185 or 190 pounds in fighting trim. That would make him a small cruiserweight by today. There are some monster cruiserweights out there that are well trained professional full time fighters. Not the local blacksmith who everyone just decided was tough because he kicked some guys ass in a drunken brawl in the thoroughfare. In Sullivan's day he was a big big man. This is reflected in the fact that many of his opponents were significantly smaller than him and many of the men who gave Sullivan the most problems were much smaller than him and not coincidentally also happened to be typically be experienced fighters.. So the idea that he was this beast just doesnt pan out. I think hed be in big trouble in this era. You can say "well if we took him into this era, gave him modern training, kept him from drinking, gave him steroids, etc etc." But if you did all of those things he wouldnt be John L. Sullivan. Hed just be an empty vessel with John L. Sullivan's potential. I think Sullivan would be in deep doo doo in this era. He was the greatest of his time and thats all you can ask of anyone.

 

What questions would it have answered exactly?

If Sullivan had fought Jackson or Slavin in any realistic time frame, he would have been an empty shell at that point.

If they had beaten an inactive, alcoholic version of Sullivan, with one fully functional arm, then anybody who understood the era would say "well so what?"

If Sullivan had somehow beaten them, then it would be hard to escape the conclusion that they were no better than the guys he beat earlier in his career, and that they were probably a little worse really!

 

Well articulated post!

 

What number would you propose then, and why?

 

Sullivan claimed that he weighed 208 lbs for the McCaffrey fight, but one local newspaper put his weight at 235lbs.

Either way, you can't really trust weights from that era.

 

He wouldn`t have had the skill to cope with Usyk at cruiser, and never faced the reach and power of AJ or Wilder, nor the reach and defensive skill of Fury, I think he`d struggle in the modern game because it`s evolved so much since those primitive beginings of the sport, Johnson brought the game on leaps and bounds after Sullivan and would have done much better in todays game at cruiser or heavy than Sullivan, he needed to beat the smartest fighter he fought in Corbett to prove he could stand a chancde against a savvy fighter like Usyk I`d say.

 

Regardless the guy wasnt a naturally big man by any stretch of the imagination by modern standards. When his weight was in the 200s it was because he was fat by modern athletic standards, not because he built up this solid base of muscle. The last picture you can find of him looking anything like an athlete was taken in New York in 1883 around the time of the Mitchell fight and not coincidentally his weight was very low at the time. He was in his mid twenties then. After that fight he went barn storming and became a drunk. His weight ballooned, his physique changed and every picture after that, even when hes supposedly in fighting trim, he has a noticeable tire around his waist.

 

From what little I've found on their exhibitions (where Mitchell was past it), it doesn't point to Slavin being a level above him.

I can't remember when he said it, but I also saw Joe Choynski saying he wasn't very impressed with Slavin and didn't think he could beat Sullivan or Jackson.

 

OK so the last time he was in shape was around the time of the gloved Mitchell fight (I agree).

I know of three primary sources for his weight prior to that fight.

One put him at 196lbs, another at 202, and a third said that he was 194 after taking a Turkish bath.

Sullivan himself said that his best weight was around 195, and I tend to agree.

If you look at his tale of the tape, his hard measurements, are somewhat bigger than Marciano's.

Not big by modern standards, but probably big by the standards of most eras!

 

There are a lot of assumptions in this post.

I don't like assumptions!

 

Fair enough, which punch do you assume was Sullivan`s best weapon?

 

WAsn`t Sullivan out of shape for the Corbett fight? How much did he way for that fight and what would have been his best fighting weight do you assume?

 

Sullivan's weight was given as 212lbs, or 216lbs before the Corbett fight, depending which primary source you believe.

Two days before the fight one local newspaper said that he weighted 217lbs, but that rolls of fat were still present.

I am guessing that in the perfect world, he would have come in somewhere in the 190s.

Sullivan seems to have made a serious effort to get himself into shape for this fight, but he was not starting from a very good place.