Was John L Sullivans win over Jake Kilrain one of the best in heavyweight history?

I think we have to consider the possibility that it might be. Sullivan was up against the following factors:

• He had lost much of the mobility in his left arm, having broken it against Patsy Cardiff, and later having it re-broken to make it set properly.
• He was coming off a severe bout of feaver that had nearly killed him and which he had not been expected to survive.
• He was badly disipated by years of alchoholism and everybody knew it.
• He was a queensbury fighter fighting under an unfamiliar ruleset. While we can debate whether Kilrain was the best available challenger at the time he was definitely the best available bareknuckle challenger.
• The format of the fight e.g. a finish fight was strongly favourable to a younger challenger.

Under normal circumstances we might expect any one of these five factors to cause the passing of the torch from an ageing champion to a prime younger challenger. Taking all five in combination, it seems remarkable that Sullivan not only won the fight but dominated his opponent.

I think that if Sullivan had lost the fight, then some verry strong and valid excuses would be put forth for him. Indeed I question how much credit Kilrain would have got for beating Sullivan under these conditions, when I look at some of the dismisals on this site of wins over ageing former champions.

 

Kilrain was a verry good technician under LPR rules, which should have put him at a technical advantage over Sullivan. Ryan, Mitchell and Kilrain were all much more specialized in LPR fights than Sullivan.

An interesting "what if" of history, is "what if the LPR fighters of the era had prevailed against the top Queensbury fighter (Sullivan)?". What efect did it have on legitimising Queensbury rules, to have a Queensbury fighter who beat the bareknuckle boys at their own game?

 

Well firstly, there can be no question that Kilrain was the best LPR fighter of his day and that in itself might have been a taller order than taking on the top Queensbury fighter of the day in a Queensbury bout. The oponent and ruleset were handpicked by Richard Fox for Sullivan to loose. He calculated that Kilrain probably had more chance of beating Sullivan in an LPR bout than anybody else had of beating him in a Queensbury bout.

Secondly, I cant think of any case of an ageing champion overcoming so many variables arranged against him (injury, near fatal illnes, alcoholism, ruleset etc, to win. Indeed I am starting to think that even given a glowing assesment of Sullivans abilities, the fact that he was able to beat the best around at this point is a mark against the era.

 

There can be little doubt that Sullivan had a verry serious drink problem in the latter years of his title reign, since he left as much of a paper trail for his drunken antics outside the ring as for his acomplishments within it. He did eventualy kick the bottle of course, but it is not clear when.

Sullivans sole comeback fight in 1905 was a rather impresive destruction of Jim McCormick, which suggests that he had probably instilled some order to his training regime. It also shows that he had retained his murderous punch if nothing else.