Who ducked whom: John Sullivan vs. Peter Jackson

[travestyny]

- -Know nothing of Klein, but in the 1880s baseball had some integration depending on the owners, but that changed when the MLB formed in 1903.

A few of the owners would try and sneak a black player in by disguising him as a Cuban, ect, but the ruse never worked. However white players would barnstorm against black players that were very popular in the off season.

Babe got so popular the commish suspend him with specific rules that cut out most of it, but they could still play each other in Cuba, Mex, ect.

Trivia: Ty Cobb always savaged by the media somewhere around 1930 was asked to throw out the first pitch of a new black Chicago team, so things were not so black and white as the usual suspects would have to believe.

That must have been what inspired the scenes in the TV movie Long Gone when the baseball manager brings in a new power hitter whose black in 1957 Miami and tells the owner he's Venezuelan.

Good shlt, fellas.


I never knew that a distinction was made between American blacks and latinos (who obviously would have been also black/mixed just like Black Americans).

[travestyny]

I royally screwed that post up above lol. I can't figure out why it did not quote properly.

Its kind of a catch22 isn't it? Your a talented Black fighter and because of the color line you can't just get a fight with the champ, yet because you are limited with whom you can fight, you are accused of being a "place holder." I think this is a problem Jackson and other's faced.

History goes back and fourth...Satchel Page, who played virtually all his golden years in the Black baseball leagues, either played with the most talented men, never given the chance to make the kind of money that white players made, or, played with men who could not compete and functioned as a farm system of sorts...one where one could never advance.

Lucky for us we have guys like Paige who prove that even at his oldest he could pitch marvelously. We can know that the quality of this league was superb. But more to the point? I think like any other structure, you had great players, good players and fair players. The truth is always somewhere in between the wide road curbs of speculation.

But it occured to me while reading your exchange with the Trombone, that there was this catch 22 for Black Fighters. See to me? I think that a fighter is a fighter... I know that as one trained by fighters and who had to be a fighter for a while as well, while never really being that sort... When dealing with challenges, of which I had to deal with...when dealing with open fighting and letting anyone participate...You can never be scared.

So I am imagining these great fighters we speak of, and thinking to myself, would a man like johnson who was so self assured, fear any challenge? I think these men had big ears! Big ears that were whispered into and told certain things...Things like "You don't want to fight that _____." Then the fighter with that phrase can see his potential adversary as less than him and disregard the challenge. Of course this is a shame. Of course the press, men like Jack London who was progressive in so many ways, should have known this was low, a child's way of dealing...

But they didn't and it is that middle road again. Hence we have a man in Jack London who supported the ethical treatment of animals, and the progressive causes of the working men, but said the most awful things about Jack Johnson. I use London because he is a perfect example. In truth we had rancounters in the press, upstanding men, and everything in between.

Just to be clear, I was not the one who brought up "scared." I don't think I ever said either was scared of the other. Rusty began ranting about scared (in his usual off-color way, pun intended).

The only way I would confidently use "scared" in this instance is to say that it seems obvious to me that Sullivan was scared of the possibility of losing the title to a black man.

It seems kind of odd, but there is obviously a difference between being scared of a man and being scared of losing to that man, with the added element of perceived racial implications. It's the same reason I think Dempsey didn't want to fight Wills (let's not get into it, plz). What I didn't think about was that it wasn't a new phenomenon with the rise of Jack Johnson. Certain boxers had a fear of letting down their race on the biggest stage when America was very and more openly racist.

And to me, that's why Jack London is relevant. He definitely embodied the sentiment of...well his own quotation: "Under that dark and somber seriousness that characterizes him, there is a race pride of which he is intensely self-conscious."

Tommy Burns in the least deserves respect for putting it all on the line regardless of all that bullshlt. Of course, unless he did it thinking his whiteness would pull him through. lol

[Rusty Tromboni]

No my comments are more to point out why I would not weigh in on whether a fighter ducked another, not to say anyone was ducked. My point is that one cannot prove Sullivan's thoughts and that the most logical conclusion would not be that any fighter would "fear" another. It just is not how fighters generally think.

Edit: Its also a truism that we are at our weakest when we have to assume another's state of mind. Lawyers are not allowed to...

Oh! the other big thing...I posted to lefty about and I think it is important that when we look at Sullivan we recognize some of the hardships involved with assessing his abilities and especially his later fights. The guy was raised in one era (bare knuckle) and fought a lot of fights in another era... What made a champion was different as well. etc

London was very intresting... he was never accepted by the Gatsby crowd so to speak, and many feel that this was why he killed himself. He was also a socialist and wrote some interesting fiction about society...Most people do not know this and know him for his animal books.

Your posts are magical. Always a treasure trove of knowledge.

I wasn't trying to criticize you per se. It's just that there's evidence that Jackson's prime came at an unfortunate time, and he probably never was as good as either Sullivan or Corbett, even if he might have exploited Sullivan in his decline, and Corbett when he was green. The fact that that did not happen had nothing to do w/ racism; even if Jackson was a victim of it, generally speaking. So we need to stop talking in any way to the contrary.

As for Sullivan: you've cited another myth. Sullivan SUPPORTED the Marquis of Queensbury's rules! He WANTED gloved combat. By the time he fought Corbett he was in a reduced state, so it was very much bull vs. matador. But that's not a true reflection of who Sullivan was.

Would you characterize Ali as the fighter of the Spinks fights? Tyson as the fighter of the Lewis fight?
Imagine if that's what their respective legacies were reduced to! The very antithesis of what we think of them as. If anything their effectiveness in their primes has been exaggerated: Ali was no Pep, Tyson was no Armstrong. But poor Sullivan gets no credit for the fighter he almost certainly was.

Sure, he might have been more of an Earnie Shavers than a Vasily Lomachenko, but he definitely wasn't the caricature he's been made into. Likewise, I am not really sure how mobile and "scientific" Jackson and Corbett really were.

[travestyny]

even if he might have exploited Sullivan in his decline, and Corbett when he was green. The fact that that did not happen had nothing to do w/ racism; even if Jackson was a victim of it, generally speaking. So we need to stop talking in any way to the contrary.

So now Jackson exploited Sullivan? How the hell did he do that? By asking him to fight for the title????

Unbelievable. You just get better and better

So Sully not fighting him had nothing to do with racism? Then what did it have to do with? You still going with he didn't want to fight him because Blacks were considered inferior?

[travestyny]

Rusty Tromboni

Oh, by the way, I found your offer from Sully to Jackson!!!!


Happy day!


Is this what you were referring to? In his own words!

"There's been a good deal of talk about the stand I took regarding colored men. I was matched to box George Godfrey here very early in my career, the only time I ever gave colored pugilists any consideration from a professional standpoint. The report that I once signed to fight Peter Jackson is untrue. I kept the color line drawn.

"Parson Davles, manager of Jackson, once claimed to have a telegram from me telling him to go ahead with the details of a fight with Jackson. There were never any such articles drawn or even suggested that I would have signed. The nearest I came to fighting Jackson was once when the question was put up to me squarely. I said that if they got $20,000 I would cover it ; and would go into a room with Jackson and have it out, but that I would never agree to meet him in the ring in public- That ended the attempts to get me to fight Jackson.

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SFC19090...-txIN--------1

Mystery solved. There is your offer!

Admits that he considered fighting Godfrey, so your bs about not wanting to get in the ring with blacks because they were "inferior" seem like hogwash now.


But the good part:

"I'll fight you if you can raise $20,000, but not for the title and not in front of the public...but in a room all by ourselves where no one can see."

Is that the big offer you were referring to? Seems that Mr. Klein who wrote that book was right. Sully was afraid of losing the title to a black man...and afraid of doing so in front of the public!


What you have to say about this, hmm?

[Rusty Tromboni]

Why would I do that? I'm having a lot of fun watching how you expose your 2nd rate opinions and had to back out of your little claim with, "It was on an AOL website but but but I can't find it."

Auntie T, we know what your idea of fun is. We all know how the wig comes flying off almost as fast as the dress...

But maybe stop posting after so many late nights out. You can't address a single question. And delineate from the direction of the conversation with non sequiturs.

Oh, I'm not putting words into your mouth.

Of course not. You're just stating things is never said, setting them into quotation marks, and attributing them to me.

P.S. This crazy stalking thing your doing ... is it because I never called? I thought we both agreed it was a one time thing. You're not gonna kill my pets are you?

Do your own quotations do you justice Or how about this. You can go on record right now and state that Blacks were not inferior athletes to whites.

No. I can't. Can you?

(I doubt you can, I know you're just doing this for attention).

I can say that there were more top tier White fighters at the time. That would continue to be the case until the 40's. Blacks become dominant in Boxing post-WWII (when Whites became richer, and Blacks became poorer; and large scale immigration from Europe effectively ended).

Looking at pro-sports today, notably team sports. Blacks tend to out-number Whites in participation, but the best athletes are overwhelmingly White. I really don't know how you dispute that: Soccer, Football, Baseball, Wrestling. Obviously Blacks dominate Basketball (which is mostly about being big) and Whites dominate Hockey (which draws from a limited geographic and socio-economic base).

That's not a racist or biased claim. And I am not sure what the reasons for it are. (I am sure you have many opinions you'd love to share). That's just facts. Again, it's not to say it's zero-sum. But that's the reality of pro-sports.

And you can also stop trying to use Tunney and paint him as a White supremacist. Unless you have some proof you want to share.

We get it. You like to have other people do your thinking for you. That's proven with virtually every post you make.

But is it really that hard for you to read and make your own conclusions? I honestly believe Tunney's writing is above your level of comprehension. But that's the great thing about reading, the more your try, the better you get. You won't get better by having someone read it for you.

I wanted this thread to be about proof. All I'm getting from you is 2nd rate opinions.

2nd Rate!? Am I already 2nd Rate? Well thanks for the promotion! I dunno what I did to deserve it. But I cherish the acknowledgement.

What do I need to do get 1st Rate? This isn't like Fatal Attraction where it won't end until you try to kill me, is it?

- -Know nothing of Klein, but in the 1880s baseball had some integration depending on the owners, but that changed when the MLB formed in 1903.

A few of the owners would try and sneak a black player in by disguising him as a Cuban, ect, but the ruse never worked. However white players would barnstorm against black players that were very popular in the off season.

Babe got so popular the commish suspend him with specific rules that cut out most of it, but they could still play each other in Cuba, Mex, ect.

Trivia: Ty Cobb always savaged by the media somewhere around 1930 was asked to throw out the first pitch of a new black Chicago team, so things were not so black and white as the usual suspects would have to believe.

Great info. But is there really any evidence of the Black leagues having players on the level of Ruth, Gehrig, Williams?

Is there any proof that Whites "feared" being inferior to Black players, and that's why they didn't play them?

My Stalker had to site the poster boy for steroids, Barry Bonds, to come up with an equivalent to those legends.

[Rusty Tromboni]

So now Jackson exploited Sullivan? How the hell did he do that? By asking him to fight for the title????

Unbelievable. You just get better and better

So Sully not fighting him had nothing to do with racism? Then what did it have to do with? You still going with he didn't want to fight him because Blacks were considered inferior?

You're still reading Bernstain Bears andNancy Drew, aren't you?

[travestyny]

Auntie T, we know what your idea of fun is. We all know how the wig comes flying off almost as fast as the dress...

But maybe stop posting after so many late nights out. You can't address a single question. And delineate from the direction of the conversation with non sequiturs.



Of course not. You're just stating things is never said, setting them into quotation marks, and attributing them to me.

P.S. This crazy stalking thing your doing ... is it because I never called? I thought we both agreed it was a one time thing. You're not gonna kill my pets are you?



No. I can't. Can you?

(I doubt you can, I know you're just doing this for attention).

I can say that there were more top tier White fighters at the time. That would continue to be the case until the 40's. Blacks become dominant in Boxing post-WWII (when Whites became richer, and Blacks became poorer; and large scale immigration from Europe effectively ended).

Looking at pro-sports today, notably team sports. Blacks tend to out-number Whites in participation, but the best athletes are overwhelmingly White. I really don't know how you dispute that: Soccer, Football, Baseball, Wrestling. Obviously Blacks dominate Basketball (which is mostly about being big) and Whites dominate Hockey (which draws from a limited geographic and socio-economic base).

That's not a racist or biased claim. And I am not sure what the reasons for it are. (I am sure you have many opinions you'd love to share). That's just facts. Again, it's not to say it's zero-sum. But that's the reality of pro-sports.




We get it. You like to have other people do your thinking for you. That's proven with virtually every post you make.

But is it really that hard for you to read and make your own conclusions? I honestly believe Tunney's writing is above your level of comprehension. But that's the great thing about reading, the more your try, the better you get. You won't get better by having someone read it for you.



2nd Rate!? Am I already 2nd Rate? Well thanks for the promotion! I dunno what I did to deserve it. But I cherish the acknowledgement.

What do I need to do get 1st Rate? This isn't like Fatal Attraction where it won't end until you try to kill me, is it?



Great info. But is there really any evidence of the Black leagues having players on the level of Ruth, Gehrig, Williams?

Is there any proof that Whites "feared" being inferior to Black players, and that's why they didn't play them?

My Stalker had to site the poster boy for steroids, Barry Bonds, to come up with an equivalent to those legends.

You provided nothing except more of your second rate opinions.


You are a sad, sad man. It's not my fault that the success of black athletes makes you feel so inferior that you have to make up complete bullshlt. You claim black boxers were inferior and one of your proofs is why didn't one challenge for the title before Jack Johnson.


I'll tell you why. Because Sully didn't want to fight Jackson in public


There is your offer. What you got to say about that? Does it make you ashamed of who you are, or just ashamed of Sully


Let those tears begin to flow

[travestyny]

You're still reading Bernstain Bears andNancy Drew, aren't you?

I'm still laughing at you for your claim that you had to back down from...


and now new information presented here makes it so much funnier


Tell us why Sully was afraid to fight in public. Is it because he didn't want the public to see him get whooped by a black guy?


Makes a guy like you want to give up your whiteness, don't you. Start working on that tan, son!

[Rusty Tromboni]

Rusty Tromboni

Oh, by the way, I found your offer from Sully to Jackson!!!!


Happy day!


Is this what you were referring to? In his own words!





Mystery solved. There is your offer!

Admits that he considered fighting Godfrey, so your bs about not wanting to get in the ring with blacks because they were "inferior" seem like hogwash now.


But the good part:

"I'll fight you if you can raise $20,000, but not for the title and not in front of the public...but in a room all by ourselves where no one can see."

Is that the big offer you were referring to? Seems that Mr. Klein who wrote that book was right. Sully was afraid of losing the title to a black man...and afraid of doing so in front of the public!


What you have to say about this, hmm?

For someone so perversely obsessed, you don't really do a good job tracking what I say, do you?

What state was Sullivan in at the time? Was he really even still a professional fighter? Again, I never said Jackson couldn't beat Sullivan. Just like Sullivan never said he doubted his ability to beat Jackson - he just wouldn't risk the possibility.

Reading the text with an unbiased, critical view: Sullivan very plainly does not want to give a Black man even a chance at the title, nor a chance at looking competitive. It's clearly a pride thing.
Did Babe Ruth (also a "racist") fear being struck out systematically by Black pitchers? Were there any contemporary Black Pitchers who would've bested The Bambino?

You're the same guy who thinks Johnson looks acceptable on film (because Teddy Atlas says so), and that Wills had a chance against Dempsey (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary). The fact that you can infer something from this quote that no reasonable person would, isn't a surprise. It's a reiteration of your limited comprehension, and desire to get noticed at any cost - even at the expense of your dignity.