John L. Sullivan vs. Ingemar "Ingo" Johansson

Ingo, decision or DQ. Sullivan would be baffled by the rules

 

I think it is a shot in the dark deciding anything on Sulivan without any film.

He was obviously very special at some point. To the extent he could have been something in the filmed era we can never know.

But I think he was special. Even if only some of it stacks up.

 

Only thing I'd be certain of is if you took Ingo back to Sullivan's day as champ John L beats him up. It's a complete unknown how Sullivan would perform under the modern rules of professional fighting

 

Obviously Johansen is a completely known quantity, and Sullivan is a mostly unknown quantity.

The more recent heavyweight who Adam Pollack cites as perhaps being the best match for Sullivan's style, is Floyd Patterson ironically.

As a talent, Sullivan seems to have been much more of a standout than Johnasen, so perhaps he should be provisionally favored.

 

Sullivan might actually have made a really good amateur heavyweight!

He excelled at bringing a fight to a conclusion, in four to six rounds.

 

Really no point in matching Sullivan vs anyone post jack johnson era. The rules and training methods were so different you may as well call it another sport. He could have been a beast in a modern setting with his insane stamina, brute strength, and work rate with the old school gentleman stance, he could have been made a complete fool by a B level amateur boxer or somewhere between the two extremes. We'll never know. The lack of footage leaves too much to the imagination. It's like speculating who'd win between a sabretooth cat and a lion.

 

A better analogy would be matching a Dimetrodon with a lion!

We can at least constrain fairly accurately, what a sabretooth cat was capable of, and what its behavior was likely to be!

 

Sullivan fought from a low crouch, and seems to have use a peek a boo guard.

This is going off verbal descriptions of course.

I can't say how fast his hands were, but they were obviously fast, because his hand speed was always gushed about.

Foot speed is the first thing to leaver a fighter!

He did not say that exactly.

He said that there weren't as many good boxers around in his day, which is not remotely the same thing.

He often criticized the techniques of later fighters, and stood hard against the idea of anybody after him being an innovator.

 

My first thought is that Sullivan would not have had the discipline to succeed in more modern eras.

 

There are very few photos where he is actually fighting, and in the few that we have, he is either standing over a fallen opponent, or standing back ready to engage them.

I do not think that the photographic evidence contradicts the many eyewitness descriptions.