National Police Gazette Inducted Into Bare-Knuckle Hall of Fame
On July 9, The National Police Gazette was inducted into the Bare-Knuckle Hall of Fame in Belfast, New York. The Bare-Knuckle Hall is located on the site of the farm owned by wrestling champion and strength-and-conditioning pioneer William Muldoon. It is the place where Muldoon trained John L. Sullivan for his 1889 bout with Jack Kilrain, an epic 75-round battle that stands as one of the five most important fights of the bare-knuckle era and the last true world championship contested under the London Prize Rules.
No single publication was as critical as The Gazette for making and promoting the Sullivan-Kilrain affair. The Gazette was the major national publication for covering prizefighting and editor Richard K. Fox was the sport’s primary powerbroker. He was also a bitter rival of Sullivan, and the Sullivan-Kilrain fight was very much a proxy battle in that feud.
The hard feeling between Sullivan and Fox stemmed from the very start of the great champion’s career, when he was still and up-and-comer, albiet one that was already viewed as a star. A few nights after one of his early victories, Sullivan was carousing with a throng of admirers at Harry Hill’s, an important headquarters for the New York City fight scene during the era. Sitting at a nearby table, Fox dispatched an emissary to invite Sullivan to his table. Sullivan erupted with indignation that Fox expected him to walk the few feet for the meeting at Fox’s table, rather than walk the same distance to Sullivan’s table.
It was a matter of two larger-than-life figures, with larger-than-life egos, inevitably clashing. Fox was very much boxing’s king maker. But even so early in his career, Sullivan already viewed himself as a king in no need of making.
Fighting under the London Prize Rules, Sullivan would knockout Paddy Ryan to claim the World Championship in 1882. For the remainder of the decade, he would develop himself into the America’s first sports superstar and popular culture icon.
At the same time, he focused largely on fighting with gloves, popularizing the newer, Marquess of Queensberry rules. In an era when prizefighting was still illegal, gloved combat was viewed as more civilized, and gloved exhibitions could be staged with much less risk of interference from the local authorities.
Sullivan also favored the Queensberry rules because they played to his strengths as an athletic and explosive puncher. Fighting in rounds of fixed, three-minute duration, Sullivan was able to batter opponents senseless much more quickly than he could under the London Prize Rules, in which rounds were of indeterminate length and ceased only when one fighter was knocked down or thrown, at which point there was a break of 30 seconds.
But Sullivan’s focus on gloved battle left him vulnerable to criticism from Fox and his writers, who attacked him for avoiding the more “manly” bare-knuckle version of the sport. When Jack Kilrain emerged as a credible contender to Sullivan, Fox quickly became his primary booster. He even presented Kilrain with a National Police Gazette championship belt, a direct affront to Sullivan’s status as the champion.
By this point, Sullivan, whose drinking and eating were as legendary as his fighting, was a physical wreck. Even his closest advisors questioned whether or not it would be possible for him to actually face a hungry, younger threat like Kilrain.
Muldoon was brought in to whip Sullivan into shape. According to one boxing legend, which is likely apocryphal, Muldoon literally carried a drunken Sullivan out of a bar and physically dragged him away and into training.
It’s a matter of historic record, though, that Muldoon did manage to isolate Sullivan on his Belfast, NY farm and pound him back into shape, with a strict regimen of training and farm chores. Sullivan and Muldoon, both sons of Irish immigrants, had been friends for years by this time, having spent time traveling together and earning extra income as “living statuary,” dressed in classical Greek and Roman costumes. Sullivan was the world’s greatest boxer and Muldoon a world wrestling champion.
But while they shared much in common, the two were tempermental opposites. While Sullivan was a notorious partier, Muldoon was devoted to a life of clean living. He was also an early pioneer in what was then known as “physical culture.” For his work with Sullivan, he deserves to be viewed as America’s first great fight trainer.
Whatever animosity may have existed between Sullivan and Fox, in practice, they could not have enjoyed a better partnership. By hyping Kilrain and needling Sullivan, Fox gave one of the sport’s legendary champions exactly the motivation he needed to make a comeback he would have otherwise been very unlikely to make. At a makeshift stadium in rural Mississippi, Sullivan battled Kilrain for 75 rounds under a broiling July sun, securing the greatest win of his career and the one that cemented his enduring legacy as a true titan of the sport.
For The Gazette, the fight drove sales to new records. They covered the build-up to the bout extensively, including the drama surrounding the train of gamblers and sporting men that left New Orleans at dawn, to carry the members of the Fancy to a secret location. The Gazette’s coverage of the fight provide some of the most important records in sporting and prizefighting history.
