Is John L. Sullivan a all time top ten heavyweight champion ?

Interesting points on both sides. As I stated in a previous post I choose to omit him. I always have and I never put much thought into it, but reading these posts it does feel like some sort of erasure from history for the man. And for someone who was so well regarded in his day, it’s a sad disservice to him. By all accounts he towered over his competition and had a long dominant reign. So if you judge how one faired against their contemporaries as your criteria he would and should make top 10 lists. However I stick to my original opinion with no footage of him and of none of his opponents it’s impossible to accurately portray him. Sullivan Fighting during an era where the sport was still primitive in many areas from technique to rules I think it’s best to omit him. Give him his due but leave him off the lists where other fighters are more accurately assessed than he can be.

 

If Sullivan had done what he did in any other era, he would probably stack up as a top five all time heavyweight.

As it is, he did it in the only gloved era that we know very little about, so we are left scratching our heads!

 

That’s why I omit him. We know nothing of the era. We can’t judge his ability or that of any of his opponents. (Except Corbett)
What we know is he dominated his field. What we don’t know is what level of abilities that field comprised of. For all we know his era could of looked like a tough man competition or even worse a bar brawl with inebriated combatants participating. On the other hand perhaps they are better than we assume.
If you want to include him on lists that adhere to longest tenured champs etc I say fine but if you want to include him on all time lists I think is impossible - unless you put an asterisk next to his name and state no known footage of he or his opponents exist, denying any reflection accurate or not of his or his opponents ability.
It’s tricky. I choose to leave him out.

 

Sulivan fought maybe 20 guys who were making their pro debuts.[url]http://boxrec.com/en/boxer/10547[/url]

Even for yesterday's standards he wasn't good. But no fighter from that era could compare to modern heavyweights.

 

Please tell me that you don't believe that these men were actually making their pro debuts!

 

Anyone without previous fights listed on boxrec is described as being on their debut, that doesn't mean they actually were. There are bareknuckle matches which boxrec doesn't list (though a few are accidentally listed), and there's a lot that happened and weren't reported, or even sometimes reports can be found but just haven't been added.

[url]http://boxrec.com/en/boxer/62260[/url]
A later example is one of Tommy Ryan's early opponents Martin Shaughnessy, before his first fight with Ryan he has one fight on boxrec, a single loss. But the reports of that loss describe it as an upset and Shaughnessy's first loss by KO.

Further I have found a report of an earlier fight (a draw), of his.

tl;dr boxrec is a good resource but is very far from complete

 

Lol bareknuckle fights aren't offical fights. That is like saying Kimbo Slice street fights should be on his official records. The point is that was their pro debut. In any case Sullivan fought in a joke era and 90 plus percent of the fighters he fought would be middleweights and light heavyweights by modern standards. Which means Sullivan was only good for his joke era. He isn't even a top 10,000 heavyweight of all time.

 

What exactly do you think Boxrec is, and where do you think it came from?

Do you imagine that the Archangel blew a golden trumpet, and gave us a complete record of every professional fighters career?

It is just what a few modern researchers have been able to put together from sources that have survived.

It becomes less complete the further you go back, and by the late 1800s it becomes more misleading than informative.

 

This is some of the most moronic garbage I've ever read. You can't compare random people having street fights to bareknuckle boxing of the late 1800's, with a long history and title lineages. The bareknuckle fights were pro, and bareknuckle was more prestegious back then. It's such a comically ludicrous notion that if two of the top boxers in America fight, it's just a kimbo slice street fight, unless they put on some skintight gloves and then it's legit, despite being just as illegal back then.

And you just flat out ignored the very important point about incomplete records.

 

If I saw boxing as four or five separate sports I'd not have a thread that spans three thousand years.

I see it all the time, clearly most of you agree, but I don't agree with this idea that rule sets are akin to an entirely different sport or even skill set barriers. They are limiters on the fuller martial art and change the details of the theory but not the core of it's point. You're getting caught up in the format and that distracts you from the substance, in my opinion. This is Apollo's sport. There is no putting fist to face without honoring the Greek god. You can dress it up, change her rules, give the emperor new clothes, but at the end of the day "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" might have been said by Tyson under Unified rules but it still reflects Glaukos perfectly "the plow touch though" under Onomastos rules.

Mayweather, Mendoza, and Melankomas might make you believe in reincarnation.

As far as I'm concerned it's one long sport that's had plenty of different rules to dress it up differently for the tastes of its audience but always comes down to who can punch who better.

It's all boxing. That said in his era I personally believe the colorline still has some effect now because to forgive John his stance against fighting black fighters allows John the luxury of his dominance in his time to be uncontested. John's dominance over John's own era should not be seen as such a sure thing. In my mind he can be a-side and favorite but he still did not fight any champion from the other ranks. It'd be like AJ having three titles for a decade or some such and never seeing the WBC champ no matter who holds that title. Would you let that fly today? Why do you give John the honor of undisputed in his day when it was very much in dispute?

John was good, and deserves respect but I just don't see colorline champions who had a legitimate challenge waiting for them in the black ranks as equal to the champions that came later and did actually fight anyone. Jack Johnson is included in that. You can't tell me, even if you forgive him not doing it, that not fighting the greats of the colored title doesn't hurt Jack's resume today. Same for John. Look at these kids tear into his resume. He damn well deserves it. You know who we don't see on his resume among all the debuts? Don't see no Hadley do we? What about Godfrey? Smith? Those are good names. They'd look good on his record. I'm not here to say Godfrey is better, just that those guys don't belong in the same decision as guys like Louis. Their debate should be stuck at each other. Godfrey never got John, sucks for him. John never got Godfrey, sucks for him too. Ali fought everyone, Marciano fought everyone. I just feel it's not fair to them to even ask how well John would do out of his time. His time should be where he's stuck and disputed.

 

Dude, you've gone into threads that had nothing to do with you purely to hurl insults at me and others, not even attempting to make any sort of point. Why should I respect your politeness zone?