John L. Sullivan

... boxing, sparring with the heavyweight champ.

I think it might have been John L. Sullivan, and he was taking it easy.

And Teddy said, "No, no, no.

Come on now.

We've talked about his boxing.

John L. Sullivan trained him, trained him, worked through his alcoholism all the way through that, only to eventually end up, the two could not work together anymore, and both of them just blasting each other in the papers.

So Scott has an epilogue here, and here's a couple notes from it.

And again, highly recommend William Muldoon, The Last Gladiator.

that might have provided some measure of lasting, if even derided, fame in the manner of, for example, Sylvester Graham and his crackers.

Remarkable advancements in health and nutrition science across the 20th century relegated many previously well-known figures to obscurity, but perhaps no one else of Muldoon's former stature, the tamer of millionaires, who put thousands of prominent Americans on the road to better health, faded from view so dramatically.

The damage to his reputation suffered after his death is visible in the 1945 United Artists motion picture The Great John L., a fanciful retelling of the life of John L. Sullivan, directed by Frank Tuttle.

In the film, Robert Barrett portrays Muldoon as an abstentious, stuffed shirt who, in contrast to his real-life success in getting Sullivan in shape to beat Jake Kilrain, fails to control the boxer, and contributes to his defeat at the hands of James J. Corbett.

And Britain waited.

and there was John L. Sullivan and Jim Corbett and Jack Dempsey and Jack Johnson and Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano and Muhammad Ali and on and on and Britain waited and waited until eventually Lennox Lewis came on the scene and was the greatest heavyweight of his era.

But then Lennox Lewis retired.

So what happens to a lineage when it's broken, when the champion goes away? Someone else comes in his place.

We talked about this some in the pioneer book as well.

Um, Boxing, we talked about it recently on the John L. Sullivan show, where we talked about Muldoon training him.

Boxing was largely still illegal in a lot of states, most states, in fact.

But as it became more and more regulated...

I do definitely, uh, want to, uh, take a look at that and see what Scott has to say about the, the latter days.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time in his, um, you know, in his, uh, New York state athletic commission era and, and all that.

But, um, I want to depart from Scott's book for a moment and return to my own Dragon King Carl's Pioneer Era Pro Wrestling Omnibus and kind of get touch on some of the things we've talked about the last couple of weeks with John L. Sullivan and then ultimately his retirement and see how what I discovered on my own compares and contrasts to Scott Biedman's book.

Thinking back to last week in Sullivan and the split that they had, I cover this on page 615, starting on page 615 of my book.

Knitting.

secretly tearing from the newspaper the latest picture of John L. Sullivan.

Also, Jim Corbett, who was rumored to be more of a gentleman.

Or, this way.

You know, that, that's kind of what scuppered that, that potential history-making fight.

So we'll move on then to another fight that should have happened, another failed fight, and it's another old-school fight, going back even further, John L. Sullivan versus Peter Jackson.

Now, just to put a bit of background again to this, Jackson had actually won the Australian heavyweight title and was the first to win the Commonwealth heavyweight title in 1882, holding it until 1899, making two defenses.

During that time, he defeated George Godfrey in 1888 to win the World Colored Heavyweight Championship.

We love these ones, absolutely love these.

61 rounds, and it was actually declared a no contest as both boxers were just too exhausted to continue.

But one year on from that, Corbett got his chance against John L. Sullivan and got rid of him in 21 rounds.

Look, we don't...

Yes.

He lost to John L. Sullivan.

But surely there's no disgrace in that.

Your father employs a man who fought against John L. Sullivan?

Of course.

That's impossible.