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Show BOXING UNPOPULAR WHEN INTRODUCED Knife Fights and Shooting Scrapes Were Features of Boxing When the Sport Started in America; Sullivan Was the First to Discover the Jaw as a Knockout Point, and With Numerous Changes in Rules the Game Became Respectable. By JESS WILLARD. (.Copyright, t-n;., by a. Merrttt. AU rights ivser ed, TMK Vt-oJiuiU' In th l!tte,1 States asuinsi bolii Is not fx at A to un-Uorstrtnd, un-Uorstrtnd, Th Ainorirnn tImk. In Ha early .lays, wna about ns toisl and tie-sperme an uffalr aa couUt le inidiitned. Tho game was In tho IihihIk of saloon keepers principally and most or tho fist fighta ended lu free-for-all Unlfo battles. The law was bitter atruln.-u nugillBtn, and every ivaich was pulled off m"oui of the wav places, 1om Hyer. the first American champion, cham-pion, clutched his claim to the till In At that time, tho Rrent Bondlh'o was champion of V'.nlKiid. but the same was too young In this country for our fighters fight-ers to have, any aiundins with the English. Eng-lish. Yankee Sullivan was Hyer's chief rival and his real successor. It was the Irish lad, by the way, who met the first of the Kn;lish invaders. In Ben Caiint, tho Ktiirltsh champion, sent his brother Bob to New York to look the ground over. Sullivan Wins Easily. Sullivan took him on. and in a valley in the Blue Ridge mountains Yankee whipped the English giant in twelve minutes. His cliamplonship battle with Tom Hyer took plac-Q at Rock Point. Maryland, in 1S4. Hyer stood six feet three inches, and weighed ?00 pounds, while Sullivan weighed about 175 pounds. The big man won in eighteen minutes. Yankee's courage cour-age and science not bing able to stajid up against Hyer's weight and strength-Hyer strength-Hyer never fought again. He fly u red In various saloon battles, but drinking weakened his heart and he died in his forty-fifth year. He was the first American Ameri-can fighter to be buried In whisky's graveyard grave-yard of champions. Up to the front came John Morrlssey, an Irish man, like Sullivan. In 1SS3 the two met in a championship battle at Boston Bos-ton Corners, on the boundary line between be-tween New York and Massachusetts. Up to the thirty-seventh round It looked like Sullivan's fight. In a series of desperate des-perate rushes, however, Morriesey managed man-aged to turn the tide of battle. The crowd broke into the nag and a free-for-all fight followed. Sullivan jumped In to help his seconds and did not hear the referee call time. On this technicality the fight was given to Morrissey. Went to California. Sore at what he regarde-d a poor deal. Sullivan went to California, where he got in with a bad lot and was killed by the vigilance committee in 1S56. Only -15 years old and a strong man, but whisky got him. John C. Heenan was American born, coming into the world at West Troy, N. Y". A magnificent figure of a man he must have been, standing six feet two and weighing 200 pounds. He was a machinist ma-chinist and miner before entering the prize ring. The championship battle between Heenan Hee-nan and Morrissey was fought at Long Point. Canada, in 1S5S. Heenan's train -inz was broken up by sickness, and he entered the ring in poor shape. It was also hi? ba4 luck to break his right hand j in the first round. Morrissev won in eleven rounds, but he retired after the fight, went into politics, and was elected to congress. It was after aft-er this that Heenan touch t Say era and King In England, being cheated both ; times. : Many Irishmen. 1 Three more Irishmen, Joe Coburn, Mike McCoole and Jimmle Elliott now came forward to take the place of Heenan. Co-; Co-; burn fought the giant McCoole in 1S63 i near Charleston, Maryland, and won in i sixtv-seven rounds. Coburn then set sail for Jom Mace, champion of England. He went to Ireland Ire-land to fight him but the champion failed to anpear and forfeited $500. In 1870 Mace came to this country, and after two false alarms met Coburn near New Orleans. Or-leans. After twelve rounds had been fought in three hours and forty-eight I minutes the disgusted referee called the : fight a draw". Coburn left the game for good. Elliott was a consistent winner until he met John J- Dwyer In iSTP, when he got a beating in twelve rounds. He took to drinking and met his death in a saloon row In Chicago another knockout for vhlsl;y. After his defeat at the hands of Coburn, McCooln .-limbed up aKKiu and In IStlH claimed the championship after wlnnlnK '""i Tom Allen un n foul. Three years later he met Allen again and ws whipped to h standstill In twenty minute. M.-t'oole wliile drunk allot another fighter fight-er to .loath and was Indicted for wllfnll murder. ll friends saved him and ho left St. I.ouls. to he heard of no more. I om Allen was an Englishman, who came to the United states In 1Sii7. Ills one defeat was at the haiidM of Jem -Mace In 1S70. After Mace left Allen claimed the championship and held It until un-til 1S?, when be lost to .loo closs. During tlie Interval Ned O'Oalriwin and Joe YVurmald came from the other side to get Into the American game. The two men fought at I.ynnflel.l, Mass., tile police arresting them after the first round. Whisky soon entered the ring and knocked out both men. The slant O'Bald-, O'Bald-, win was killed In a drunken row and I Wormajd died a horrible death In 1S71. In ISTti Joe Goss, the Englishman, came over to the Untied States. He had been whipped twice hv Jem Mace and had fought a draw with Tom Allen. It was Allen that he was after now. The men met In 1876 In Kentucky. A ring was pitched In Kenton county, but at the last minute the police compelled a Jump to Boone county. The battle lasted fifty-three minutes, when Allen fouled to avoid a knockout. Ooss was hailed aa champion of the Untied States. Tells of Sullivan. As near as I can figure it out, the American championship record should run as follows: Tom Hver, Morrissey, Heenan. Hee-nan. Coburn, McCoole. Allen, Jem Mace (champion of the world), Tom Allen and Joe Goss. Goss had an easy time of It for four years. The game was dead and no good man offered to meet him for the title. In 1SS0 Paddy Ryan, the Trojan giant, popped up and offered to take Joe on. I have already described the battle in another article. Goss was 42 years old and weighed about 160 pounds. Even at that Ryan took eighty-seven rounds in which to whip him. As a result of this one battle Ryan claimed the championship. champion-ship. Now we get down to John I,. Sullivan, a real fighter. The "Boston Strong Boy" was first heard of in 1ST9. when he began to spar at exhibitions. Joe Goss, i-om-inp along after the Ryan fight, put on a benefit in Boston and Sullivan was picked as a chopping block. The Boston boy hit tiie old champion so hard he nearly near-ly killed him. Sports writers now began to Interest themselves in Sullivan. The Strong Boy was short on science, but he had the most terrible blow ever seen in a ring. They matched him against George Rooke, a clever Englishman, and Sullivan Sulli-van knocked him out in one round. John Donaldson of Cincinnati was looked on ns a marvel of cleverness. Sullivan went to Ohio and whipped Donaldson twice for good measure. Steve Taylor was put to sleep in one round and then Sullivan met Jonn Flood on a tugboat in the Hudson river. Flood took the count in eight rounds. Sullivan Beats Ryan. It was now Paddy Ryan's turn to face the terrible Bob ton boy. The fight was for the championship and $200 a side, and it took place in Mississippi on February Feb-ruary 7, 1SS2. The Boston boy beat Ryan to a pulp in nine rounds, lasting eleven minutes. Sullivan's style was all his own. It was his way to walk forward, smashing rights and lefts and driving his opponent before him. Never in his life was he known to back away, feint or fiddle. It was the last bare-knuckle fight in the United States. Gloves came in after that and wrestling also went out. The new rules made a finer, cleaner, more humane fight and the boxing game began be-gan to look up. While never a scientific fighter, Sullivan Sulli-van discovered something that the scientific sci-entific boxers bad overlooked. He found the knockout blow to the jaw. Up to that time it had been a case of wearing a man down by brutal punishment. Sullivan Sul-livan stumbled on the sleep-producer. This discovery, as much as the change in rules, revolutionized boxing. It did away with plain slugging and opened the door to real science. (Tomorrow WUIard will talk of Corbett and the new school.) |