[RING, March 1962] John L. Sullivan…A False Legend?

John L. Sullivan…A False Legend? By Daniel M. Daniel (The Ring, March 1962, pp. 28-29, 51)

Many books have been written about John Lawrence Sullivan, the Boston Strong Boy, who was the heavyweight champion for a decade, from 1882 to 1892.

As the years rolled along the Sullivan Legend grew. He was built up into a fantastic image of incredible power and fistic skills.

That he was colorful cannot be denied. That he was a truly great fighter now must be doubted.

The Old Guard doubtless will rise in wrath and disbelief at this iconoclastic view of a fighter whom so many veteran experts have rated with the greatest of all time.

I will say this about the Strong Boy. He reigned in an era of class lack among the heavyweights. As the champion he beat nobody. When he finally ran into a rival who was clever and could punch, James J. Corbett, Sullivan was 34 years of age and the victim of about as easy a life as any top pugilistic figure has enjoyed, if that be the proper word.

On September 7, 1892, at New Orleans, Corbett knocked out Sullivan in 21 rounds. That was the end of John L.

Corbett’s victory has been written up as some sort of feat. It was nothing of the kind. Taking more than an hour’s fighting time to dispose of the fat, *****, ill conditioned albeit stout-hearted Sullivan cannot be listed as one of Gentleman Jim’s remarkable achievements.

Corbett was only 26 years old, a well conditioned fighter who was vastly more clever than the Strong Boy, faster, quicker mentally, and faster in his reflexes.

Fighting Game was Emerging from Saloons

Sullivan held sway in an important period in boxing, especially in the heavyweight division.

The sport was moving out of the bar rooms, out of London Prize Ring Rules, out of bare knuckles. It was feeling its way into gloves, into sane and gentlemanly match making, into bigger financial returns and far better fighters.

Boxing was getting away from the Sullivans, the Ryans, and the Kilrains and was promoting itself into the Corbetts, the Fitsimmonses and the Jeffries school.

The Corbett-Sullivan fight, at the Olympic Club, was fought in a ring with a dirt floor. But the men wore gloves weighting five ounces. The old days in which a knockdown meant the end of a round now were gone.

Sullivan was born in the Roxbury section of Boston on October 15, 1858. For a time he was undecided between baseball and the fight game. He was not a giant in stature, standing only 5 feet 10 ½ inches in his socks. In shape, he weighed 195 pounds. BY the time he ran into Corbett, John L. weighed 212. Jim tipped the beam at only 178.

At the age of 20, Sullivan cast the die. He went into pugilism for a living.

The reigning heavyweight champion was Paddy Ryan, no great shucks. He won the title from Joe Goss, a hitless boxer, in May 1880. Under London rules, the scrap went 87 rounds. Under Queensberry Rules, any fight lasting 87 rounds would have gone four and a half hours. But Paddy took Joe in 1 hour 24 minutes, a knockdown or shove or deliberate flop ending a round.

Little Mitchell Knocked John Down First Time

Sullivan had no trouble at all in taking the title from Ryan. They met under London Rules at Mississippi City, Miss., on February 7, 1882, and the Strong Boy took Patrick in 10 minutes, 30 seconds. Into this brief interlude were packed nine rounds.

Sullivan tincanned around the country, putting on exhibitions, and alleged contests which were nothing more than workouts.

Nothing of any significance happened until May 14, 1883, when John L. met Charley Mitchell, of England, in the ancient Garden in New York.

Mitchell was only a middleweight. Sullivan was a real heavy. The Strong Boy stopped Charley in three round, the police halting the slaughter to prevent something much worse than just a knockout.

Something very interesting happened in that brief fight. After Sullivan had dropped Mitchell to the canvas twice in the first round, John L. was belted off his pins for the first time in his career.

In vain did Sullivan, blustering and threatening, plead that his legs had become crossed and he had stumbled.

In vain did John plead with the fight writers to get Mitchell to take a shot at him with Sullivan’s hands tied behind his back.

“If he knocks me down he can get my thousand,” the Strong Boy announced.

Sullivan did not take the knockdown lightly. He brooded over the indignity. For John, brooding meant the saloons and John Barleycorn. He became more and more difficult to get along with.

During this series of bouts between booze and Sullivan, the former Annie Naylor, then Mrs. Sullivan, left him, never to return.

Mrs. Sullivan Became His Punching Bag

Instead of getting into shape and doing his punching in the ring, John L. got into the habit of walloping Annie every time the champion got loaded, which was often.

If Sullivan’s ring career was nothing special, his standing as a citizen was blemished terribly by his drunken habits and brawls, his treatment of Annie was about as miserable as any of the adventures he crowded into his life story.

John and Annie were school chums in Roxbury. She grew up into a beautiful woman, with golden blond hair.

Annie took to the stage and made good, first as a chorus girl and later in boys’ parts. She scored quite a hit in a revival of “The Black Crook,” first theatre production in this country in which girls appeared in tights. Out of “The Black Crook” grew American burlesque.

Annie was only eighteen when she married Fred Anderson, business manager of the Old Howard in Boston.

Before long Annie gave birth to a daughter whom they named Eva.

The domestic life was not for Annie, so she returned to the stage, now under the name of Ann Livingston.

Her life with Anderson was terminated by divorce and it wasn’t long before John L. Sullivan, The Champ, appeared on the scene.

For the next half dozen years, Ann was in the immediate vicinity no matter were Sullivan might be—in England, in France, in the United States. It was not an unusual relationship, but hardly a delectable one.

John Needed No Urging When it Came to Booze

Apologists for Sullivan have written some pretty nasty attacks on Ann Yes, she did like her liquor. But John’s increasing fondness for booze was not due to her influence. He was a toper long before he became attached to her.

The sordid story of Sullivan’s treatment of Ann ended in 1896. She died. He had not seen her for some six or seven years and had ignored her pleas for help.

A Boston newspaperman who had the temerity to tell the real story got a nasty letter in which John invited him to take a thrashing.

The names of those whom Sullivan met as champion are not too important until 1888, when he fought Mitchell on the Rothschild estate at Chantilly, France, and was held to a thirty nine round draw by a man whom he greatly outweighed.

This fight with Mitchell furnished an important tipoff on Sullivan’s real class.

Of course, by March 10, 1888, Sullivan had had six years of championship living and hardly was the fighter who had trounced Ryan.

The little Briton fought John L. to a stalemate in an engagement lasting 3 hours 10 minutes 55 seconds. Sullivan got the first knockdown, Charley drew first blood, in the eight round.

Arm Injury in Fifth Handicapped John

Sullivan hurt his right arm in the fifth round when he clouted Mitchell on the head. Thereafter John was badly handicapped.

A year after the Chantilly affair Sullivan finally gave Jake Kilrain his shot at the title. On July 8, 1899, they met at Richburg, Miss. Bare knockles, London Rules.

Nowhere in the annals of the Prize Ring will you find any evidence tending to prove that Jake was a great fighter. I know this. In his late years he was an exceedingly surly man. I went to his home in Quincy, Mass. For an interview and he threw me out.

Despite the fact that Kilrain was just a fair scrapper, Sullivan needed 2 hours 16 minutes, a total of 75 London rounds, to polish off his challenger.

In the seventy fifth round John tapped Jake lightly and Jake fell down. Mitchell, in Jake’s corner, proposed a draw and Sullivan refused. Then Mike Donovan, also in Kilrain’s corner, threw up the sponge.

A couple of years later a young fighter named Jim Corbett began to talk up a fight with the fading title holder. John L. ridiculed the idea of meeting “this bank clerk.”

But the onetime Strong Boy finally had to give James his chance. Corbett gave the John L. a terrific shellacking and Sullivan quit the ring to devote more attention to his drinking.

I met John L. when hew as an old man, when he was about to deliver a temperance talk in Jersey City. He was a genial veteran by then.

Examination of Sullivan’s record, a close study of the round by round details of his title fights, a realization of the physical deterioration of this onetime Strong Boy, cannot fail to impress on us that the Sullivan Legend does not stand up too robustly.

 

You guys sound like crybabies.

 

The author had an agenda. So what? At least he was transparent about it.