Anyone else think highly of John L Sullivan?

I'm wondering how much of a strike the color line thing is against Sullivan in the eyes of boxing fans, because it seems like a big deal to me. I remember reading that Sullivan feared he'd lose his celebrity status, win or lose, if he were to give Peter Jackson a title shot. I always wondered if that was the case, or if he saw something else in Jackson that gave him pause. Whatever the case, his refusal to take on all comers puts an asterisk next to him in the history books, along with anybody else who drew the color line. They had a "World Colored Heavyweight Champion" back then. Why would Sullivan's title carry any more weight than that? Looks to me that he was the World Caucasian Heavyweight Champion, and nothing more.

 

Sullivan seemed to go back and forth on whether or not he would fight Jackson. On one day, blacks are too ‘inferior’ and don’t ‘deserve’ to fight white people. On the other, he tells Jackson to his face that he will fight him if he gets 15 thousand dollars, and I believe that was the same thing he told Corbett and Slavin as well. Sullivan even offered to fight Godfrey for the title in 1888 when they met in person, but it was Godfrey who declined due to being out of shape.

Paraphrasing here, but I read an article from Sullivan on the topic of fighting Jackson and he said: he doesnt deserve to fight me because blacks aren’t the on the same level as me and I wouldn’t ‘lower’ myself to the level of fighting them, but even if I did sometime in the future, I would still beat him.” He seemed open to it at times, while completely shunning the idea altogether other times

 

Seems that if Sullivan really thought he was superior, he would have been more than willing to take on Jackson, or any other black fighter of the day, and prove it to World. The fact that he wanted nothing to do with it seems to point more in the direction of him actually having an inferiority complex, if anything. His reasoning for not fighting Jackson just sounds like a garbage excuse.

I can't comment on Sullivan as a fighter, since I've never seen him in action, but the color line thing is always a bad look, especially for a guy who considers himself a World Champion.

 

I find it difficult to tell if Sullivan didn’t want to fight blacks from an ideological perspective or just used it as an excuse. Godfrey was the colored champion when Sullivan challenged him at the time they met in France. Sullivan’s first title defense was supposed to be against a black fighter named Johnson who no-showed the event. He was even in the ring to fight Godfrey in 1880, but the police showed up and halted the event.

I think Sullivan had a huge ego problem, and struggled with the fact that he knew he was over the hill by the time Jackson came around. Still, this didn’t stop him from accepting Jackson’s challenge, as long as he had the financial backing that Corbett and Slavin were told to get, when they met in person.

 

I've read that Godfrey chased Sullivan for years, but Sullivan refused to fight black fighters. I wonder how credible the story of the two actually being in the ring before the police stopped it actually is, and if Godfrey himself ever confirmed this. The reporting on such matters didn't seem to be the most reliable back then. There were some reports that either Burns or Jeffries, I forget which, actually beat Jack Johnson, for example.

Can't be too sure Sullivan's exact reasons for not fighting black fighters, but he said he wouldn't, and for whatever reason(s), he didn't. I haven't done much research on it truthfully, but at a glance, it looks like just plain ducking from Sullivan.

 

Godfrey did chase Sullivan down for years after their near encounter, he even talks about it:

1900-10-10 The Boston Daily Globe (Boston, MA) (page 5)
George Godfrey, the well-known colored boxer, writes telling why John L. Sullivan and he never boxed. Godfrey says: "Prof Bailey matched us to box Sept 21, 1880, in a room next to his boxing school on Court st. The place was full at $2 a head, and after Sullivan had been rubbed down one of Sullivan's friends went out and brought in a policeman from Howard st. When the policeman came in he asked who was Sullivan, and the man that brought him in said, 'The man who is sitting down is Sullivan.' The policeman said to Sullivan, 'I know you, you are a South end fellow, and if I were you I would not spar.'
"Sullivan got up and went out into the crowd and said he wasn't going to fight, and he wanted every man to get his money back. If I had quit like that, it would have been a crime.

Sullivan and Godfrey would meet eight years later at a Boston ceremony (not France, my mistake) in May 15 1888. The master of said ceremonies announced that Sullivan had offered a sum of money to have a bout with Godfrey. Sullivan said that he hadn’t announced that, believing that it was his former manager’s doing, but said he was willing to spar Godfrey anyway:

“I am here to spar Mr. Godfrey, if he is ready to spar me, as he has often stated.

Godfrey refused, on the grounds that he hadn’t come to the evening prepared to spar.

In June 1891, Sullivan met Jackson. Sullivan looked him square in the face and said: “Glad to see you, but I can lick anything on earth, black, brown, white or yellow. See?”

“I am willing to have you try anytime, Mr. Sullivan.”

“Well, then, you go and dig up ten or twenty thousand dollars, and I’ll give you a rally when I come back from your country.”

It’s pretty hard to paint what happened, because Sullivan also told a reporter that Jackson, “is a n-gger, and that settles it with me. God did not intend him to be as good as a white man or he would have changed his color, see?”

Later in life, Sullivan even appeared to regret challenging Godfrey as well:

A white man’, he says in hispicturesque style, ‘has nothing to gain by swapping punches with a negro. I have twice been almost goaded intomeeting the coloured brother. But Itook a second think in time. A club inSan Francisco hung up a fortune for me to meet Peter Jackson - there was$20,000 in it, and nobody everquestioned my ability to win it - but I ducked. I was insulted from one end of the country to the other in the attempt to stampede me into that fight, and I was angry enough at one time to throw principle to the wind and give Jackson his. Another time I almost came to a set-to with George Godfrey, but I am glad to say I didn’t.

When I go out to battle with a man I agree that he is of equal standing. A negro is not the equal of a white man, and it is no kindness to the negro to let him think so. Fights between negroes are all right, but the line should be drawn there. I want every negro to do well, and my opposition to seeing white boxers meet coloured boxers is not based on any petty feeling. But for a white man to meet a negro as an equal doesn’t pull the negro up to the white man’s level, but rather pulls the blonde down to the brunette.’ ”

Keep in mind that this is the same man who called Joe Gans and George Dixon the greatest boxers he’d ever seen, and even admired the skills of Jack Johnson. Sullivan is by no means an east person to piece together.