Is John L Sullivan the greatest finisher ever?

Joe Louis. No one will change my mind

 

How in the world would anyone knoe? See a lot of film of John do you? C'mon man!

 

Tough to say, he was definitely special in that aspect. I'd go with Louis though, at least at HW. Dempsey was also lethal finisher and so was Tyson. Foreman was a bit wilder than them but he was tough to overcome when you were hurt.

If P4P, Fitzsimmons has to be at the top. Nobody has so many quick and terrifying KOs over larger and more durable opponents. Not to mention that his fights against MWs were unfair, it looked like HW vs MW even though Fitz was a MW in reality.

 

The only thing he could finish quicker and greater than anyone else was his drink.

 

Joe louis or mike tyson..when they had you they had you

 

Going by info from what I've read of him ,he could be a mean SOB , suppose you had to be back then !
Let's say , for his time ..he could certainly stomp his opponent in to the ground , but has for Greatest ever ??Who know s ?

 

I think we’re on fairly safe ground with Louis and Tyson.

 

when hes finishing whiskey.

 

Sullivan was a beast but unfortunately without film footage it’s impossible to offer a true and accurate opinion. I only rate those after Jeffries for this reason.

 

he will always be interesting because he was on the cusp of recorded visual memory.

that is, now those real memories no longer exist. They still did last decade, a few people still remembered seeing him fight. And its just been lost.

Tears in the rain man.

 

As others have said, we can't really make that assertion without film footage, and a clearer idea of the quality of his opponents.

Circumstantial evidence suggests that he could have been up there with the very best finishers of all time.

If you read ringside accounts of his gloved fights, everybody seems to either get annihilated, or go into survival mode very quickly.

That is the mark of a great finisher!

 

Was anyone alive in say 2000 that remembered Sullivan fighting Corbett or prior? Assuming they were 15 years old in 1892 they would have needed to be born in 1877!

Probably they all died off at some point 1960’s or early 70’s.

 

oh yeh slightly out there.

u ruined the drama, mind u.

mmm there were still children of the 19th century around in the 2000s, they might have seen something propped on the shoulders of someone.

 

That is kind of the fascination of Sullivan.

He is like a prehistoric monster, that has to be reconstructed from sketchy evidence.

The fascination of a Tyrannosaurus is that we know that it must have existed, and we know that it must have been bad ass, but we have to use our imagination to fill in the gaps!