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John L. Sullivan Biography

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SULLIVAN, JOHN L(AWRENCE) (1858- ). An American prize fighter, born in Boston, Mass. In 1880 he defeated George Rooke, and two years afterward he beat Ryan in nine rounds. In 1887 he fought a draw with Cardiff; in 1888 fought a draw with Mitchell at Chantilly, near Paris; and in the next year, in Mississippi, in a 75-round fight, defeated Kilrain, winning the American championship and a diamond belt offered by a sporting paper. In 1892 he met Corbett at New Orleans and was defeated in the twenty-first round, thereby losing the championship title. Later he became an advocate of prohibition, asserting that his use of liquor had been responsible for his defeat in the ring. Consult his Life and Reminiscences of a Nineteenth Century Gladiator (Boston, 1892).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXI (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 651.