Lil Arthur vs. the Boston Strong Boy. Johnson vs Sullivan

I was referring to styles .

 

Even stylistically, there had been guys quite like Corbett before, but there doesn’t seem to have been anybody like Sullivan before. Under LPR it was almost impossible to score a quick knockout, but the introduction of Queensbury Rules with the 10 second count was a complete game changer. All you had to do was put your opponent on the canvas for ten seconds, and it was game over. Sullivan was the first fighter to really capitalise on this, and by this logic he was a stylistic innovator.

 

I absolutely agree Sullivan was a huge influence as far as the dawning of the Queensbury era is concerned ,his personal popularity did so much to legitimise the sport. As far as science is concerned I think Corbett is the man.

 

I don't know enough about Sullivan's opponents to gage his level of opposition I did read a book on him years ago but it was more to do with his cultural impact than his exploits in the ring. I would think the defensive scientific gap between his time and Johnson's time would be too much to overcome. Prime vs Prime I have to pick Johnson. Now if they fought early in Johnson's career or late I would give Sullivan a real chance because he was a phenominal puncher by all accounts. He could certaintly duplicate the success of Klondike or Choynoski but once Johnson mastered his craft I think he would just stay away, clinch, block, parry etc to a late stoppage or easy Deciscion.

 

The debate is not if Sullivan was a gifted fighter. The debate was if he was a M of Q fighter capable of competing with a master like Jack Johnson.

Sullivan's career speaks for itself. By 1883 he was a drunk. He was fat and rarely in any sort of serious fighting condition. His barnstorming tour consisted against an assortment of local tough men. Mitchell, Cardiff, Slade, McCaffrey, Flood were all small men, welters and middleweights and fought bare knuckle as well as with gloves. Paddy Ryan was a rank amateur. The famous Charlie Mitchel fights were filled with wrestling, kicks, throws, spiking and the like as was the Kilran fight. This is not to say that in between Sullivan did not fight exhibitions with gloves. IT is to say it was both clearly a far less evolved sport that began it's transformation w Corbett and the Australian wave and that Sullivan was a force and icon of his era, a previous era. He never fought and defeated a top heavyweight under fully enforced M of Q rules. IN addition, Janitor's insistence that he was without question the top M of Q fighter of his era is ridiculous since he refused to fight the far more experienced and better conditioned Jackson.

Put Sullivan and Johnson in a phone booth and Sullivan would break him in half likely .. in a ring under modern rules I see a bull fight …

 

Although I want to rightly give credit to how great Sullivan was, if one were to pluck John L out of 1883 and place him against Johnson in 1910, I would certainly pick Johnson. If Sullivan were groomed more like fighters of the 1920's, I might have a different answer but that is pure supposition.

I do like Janitor's comment that Sullivan did more for the evolution of style in the sport than Johnson. It is something to consider.

 

Iv'e asked three times for a primary report that supports this story of Ketchel giving Johnson a black eye ,will you now produce one? Or as usual , will you continue to make the claim without attempting to prove it?

Once again, it is CHOYNSKI not CHOYSNKI.
Griffin was 31 when he beat Johnson.

This match up is propagated on the theory that both are prime, that being so , is it your contention that the 36 years old 221lbs Johnson was prime when he beat Moran?

I think Moran would probably beat everyone that Sullivan defeated. Yet over 20rds, he could not beat a dissipated 36 years old man who was around 15lbs over his best weight.

 

It is worth saying a bit more about his opponents.

Boilermaker and myself are two of the stronger Sullivan proponents here, and we have both concluded that his opposition was comparatively weak. Since nobody seems to be contesting this, won’t justify it further. The mistake his critics make is to use his opposition being weak as evidence that his era was primitive. In reality they were not only weaker than the contenders of the subsequent era, but also weaker than those of the previous era. It was a weak era sitting between two strong eras.

In the 1860s Britain was the epicentre of world boxing, but it was also growing in popularity in the United States. Prize fighting had been largely tolerated in the UK, but a series of large disturbances at major prize fights resulted in a crackdown on prize fighting. This prompted many of the top UK fighters to cross the Atlantic, and the Queensbury Rules were introduced in an attempt to legitimise the sport. By 1880 the American authorities had also started to crack down on prize fighting, gloved boxing was still in the embryonic stage. It was into this chaotic situation that the young Sullivan would emerge.

The top fighters early in Sullivan’s career, were former bare-knuckled fighters who were well past their sell by date, such as Goss and Elliot. The new batch of contenders who started to emerge around this time were not great fighters, but included some good ones. They were drawn from a fairly wide geographic pool, and included Queensbury and LPR specialists. Charlie Mitchell was a great fighter pound for pound, if not a great heavyweight. It would probably be fair to compare him to somebody like Kid McCoy. Dominick McCaffrey was a good technical boxer, and might just have been the best contender around during Sullivan’s prime years. Alf Greenfield was another clever technician. Frank Herald was the Ernie Shavers figure of the period. People said things like “Sullivan is the best finisher around, but Herald is the hardest hitter in terms of pure power”. Jake Killrain seems to have been a very good fighter, and like Sullivan a good performer under both Queensbury Rules and LPR.

At the end of the day Sullivan’s opponents don’t need to be all that good, because they didn’t achieve very much against him.

 

I completely agree with your first statement which has been my point all along ...

On the second, Sullivan did very little stylistically to evolve the M of Q sport but his personality impacted it sociologically without question ... again I ask, what heavyweight bout over a championship distance under M of Q rules did Sullivan compete in other than Corbett that was not against a welterweight or middleweight ? The answer is none. Sullivan himself went on to say that the jump in style and science between Jeffries and his own day was gigantic.

Sullivan and his popularity were monumental in expanding the awareness of the sport in the US ... Corbett was the father of it's transformation as a science, not John L and their bout was a hinge on the divisions history. IN addition, Austrailia was far and away the hub of M of Q boxing from the mid 1880's on and John L. did not meet any of their top fighters, manny of whom, especially Jackson, would have likely defeated the inactive, alcoholic, poorly conditioned post 1883 or so version of Sullivan.

 

Depends on the rules, no gloves Sullivan KO.

 

http://www.thesweetscience.com/news...the-1st-gloved-hvwt-championship-of-the-world


http://coxscorner.tripod.com/corbett.html

http://photos.nola.com/tpphotos/2011/09/175box_10.html

http://www.ibhof.com/pages/about/inductees/pioneer/sullivan.html

http://boxrec.com/media/index.php/John_L._Sullivan

http://www.secondsout.com/columns/thomas-hauser/john-l-sullivan-revisited-part-1


All prove the following points ... yes he preferred gloves but he was not a man of any form of science. His most memorial bouts were bare knuckle victories. He was a physical force, the transition figure of a sport but the last link to a past that was transformed by Corbett ...the overwhelming number of his recorded bouts were short exhibitions and his best pre - Corbett opposition fought with gloves were blown up middleweights and a few welterweights tossed in ..

 

The problem here is that you are forming you impressions based on things that were written after Sullivan’s career was over, as many writers have. When you look at accounts that were written during Sullivan’s career, by people who saw him from ringside, he is a completely different fighter.

Sullivan was never filmed, and few photographs of him survived. He was also remembered primarily for his last two fights, and his antics outside the ring. The result of this is that as the people who saw him from ringside started to die, the myth of him being a crude brawler who fought mainly as a bare-knuckle fighter started to take hold. If a thousand people repeat a myth then it is still a myth.