Where would you rank John L. Sullivan?

He would lose to every single subsequent titlist and contender. Every thing anyones accused any "duck" of being pales in comparison to Sullivan. He is a legend but only by the dictionary definition of the term.

Whatever respect he deserved as a pioneer was sort of tainted by running around for 5 years hogging the "lineage" while fighting no one.

 

If you rate someone highly based on who they’ve beaten in their respective era, as well as if you rank dominance highly, then it would be hard to keep him out of the top 10 or maybe even the top 5.

Sullivan beat everyone there was to beat in Europe and North America before he injured his left arm in 1887, on the other hand the talent wasn’t what it was even just a few years later which is mainly due to Sullivan’s popularity.

 

This is not true.

 

What about it isn’t true?

 

Sullivan beating everyone avilable to him. Just utter nonsense.

He fought everyone "in Europe and North America". Bruh Sullivan never fought outside the borders of the USA. And he didn't fight everyone inside those borders either so its a moot point.

 

“Bruh Sullivan never fought outside the borders of the USA“
Sullivan literally fought Mitchell in France lol, and beat multiple UK fighters on American soil like Greenfield, Burke, (technically TKO’d) Goss and Mitchell in the first encounter. The only name from aforementioned land I could think of that he didn’t fight was Jem Smith who certainly didn’t seem interested in fighting Sullivan when the latter toured England in 1887.

“Sullivan beating everyone avilable to him. Just utter nonsense.“

He absolutely did beat everyone barring Australians like William Miller and Larry Foley. I’ll be honest the colour line didn’t come to my mind but it wasn’t like the early to mid 1880s were stacked with black talent, Godfrey aside and even then he wasn’t really seen as being on the same level as Burke, Mitchell, Kilrain. Sullivan cleared almost all of the white talent available barring the Aussies.

 

He not only didn't beat everyone the few relevant fighters he beat don't have a single elite win. As a collective unit.

The first 2 Aussies you think of from this period are William Miller and Larry Foley? What?

 

“He not only didn't beat everyone the few relevant fighters he beat don't have a single elite win. As a collective unit.”

Nonsense if you’re calling them elites by the standards of their era, let’s count some of those fighters;

Mike Donovan (newspapers overwhelmingly favoured Donovan over Nonpareil Dempsey in their bout)
Paddy Ryan (traded a win and a loss with William Miller with hard gloves)
Burke (beat Cleary, Greenfield, some reporters gave him the 10 rounder with Dempsey)
Mitchell (good argument to beating Burke by the newspaper descriptions of one of their draws, also knocked around Kilrain in their 4 rounder)
McCaffrey (beat Mitchell)
Greenfield (beat Burke)

“The first 2 Aussies you think of from this period are William Miller and Larry Foley? What?”

From the early to mid 1880s these were absolutely the top 2 Aussies by miles and the only worthwhile ones when speaking about who Sullivan could’ve fought, idk why solely mentioning them as examples is getting you so worked up. Maybe you can squeeze Farnan in there but just beating a green Peter Jackson doesn’t show me he was on their level, I’m not even sure Farnan issued a challenge to Sullivan like Miller did. A lot of the elite Aussies of the latter 1880s were cubs as fighters at this point.

 

I'm talking the mid to late 1880s. Up to 1885 Sullivans status as champ was fine. Afterwards is the issue here. Sullivan was in his late 20s at this time.

 

But I never denied the issues with Sullivan’s reign after the mid 1880s, I specified that Sullivan beat everyone there was to beat prior to the Cardiff fight and I see no evidence to support the contrary. He has the best resume in the world before that fight.
Jackson, Slavin, Goddard, etc were not yet established as elite talents until at least late 1887-early 1888. By then, Sullivanmani was pretty much over

 

Sullivans era of boxing in my opinion cannot be matched up well with the later eras. I believe that if you took say, Floyd Patterson back to the 1880's and put him in the ring with John L. Sullivan, Sullivan would kill him. Of course the reverse could also be true if John L. was taken into the 1950's and he had to try and corner Ezzard Charles.

 

I'd rate Sully best in BK era and worst in QB era.


I don't even personally agree with the categorizations TBH.

I recognize there's a difference between Sullivan and Figg but I would argue Sullivan is more relative to Figg than he is Usyk.

You have the olden BK era.

The middle blurry times

Then the modern sport. If you're being real maybe abouts the 30s or 40s it starts.

Greb has more in common with Nonpariel than he does Mayweather. I recognize the gloves but there is more to boxing and modernization than gloves. Throw those cats their own category and stop comparing them.


If I compare Theaganese to Usyk that's weird.
If i compare Tome Pancha to Usyk that's also weird.
Same for Figg.

But Sullivan, he's so modern it's not weird to make so much fantasy just to get him in the ring with Usyk.

In terms of mythos though. 1st or 2nd to Dempsey.

 

Sullivan and Goddard are actually the oldest of this group. Most of the people who were around in the next 5 years were around prior too. It just was more glaring then because Sullivan was fighting literally no one. Opposed to fighting subpar competition that wasn't neccessarily revealed to be subpar yet.

 

I don't think that a coherent case can be made for ranking him in the lower end of the top twenty or top thirty, because he was as dominant as anybody has ever been, including Joe Louis.

He probably defended the title more times than any fighter in history, with the possible exception of George Dixon (that's another story).

Now there are some very strong caveats to this.

He fought in a transitional era, which was almost certainly weaker than the ones before and after it.

Also most of his title defenses were 4-10 round affairs', that had to be billed as exhibitions for legal reasons, even though it is obvious that the title was on the line.

What I am saying is that you have to either back his record or sack it.

If you take it at face value then you must rank him very highly, and if you don't think that it allows meaningful comparisons with later eras, then it would be much better to leave him off your list altogether.