Fought 75 Rounds of Savage Battle With Weapons of the Jungle

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17865, 5 June 1926, Page 22 (Supplement)

Fought 75 Rounds of Savage Battle With Weapons of the Jungle

Jake Kilrain met John L. Sullivan in Greatest Fight that ever was. Veteran of Gory Encounter now complains that “ Fightin’ has become Refined.” In the Written and Spoken History of Human Combat, there is no Parallel to this Bare-fisted Duel for the Title of the World’s Most Durable Brute.

(By „

John B. Kennedy

in “Collier’s Weekly.”

Two strong men stood face to face in a sun-scorched Mississippi meadow. Stripped to the waist, with ribbonbelted trunks and spiked shoes, they squared rippling shoulders and lifted fists naked and hard as sledge hammers. About them, perched on bare planks propped and nailed into a rough, square gallery, a mob of smoking, muttering men grew tense and straight-eyed. They had forgathered from the sport capitals of the United States and Canada, even from Europe, at the whispered word of a certain time and a certain place. Here was the time and here the place. And the event—the fight for the championship of the world between John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain. Those who sat under the torturing sun for more than two hours saw the tide of battle falter and flow. They have told their children and their children's children what they saw. In the written and spoken history of human combat there is no parallel to this bare-fisted duel. Not before or since have two such men, in the ripeness of vigor, trained to the last finedrawn ounce of staminal perfection, skin-taut and muscle-free, eye clear and mind alert, armed only with the weapons of the jungle, struggled for the title of the world’s most durable brute. In the stuttering memory of an old and broken man there remains the lurid cinematograph of that fight. He looks at his favorite picture as he tells the story, a picture called “The Winner,” showing a head-high stallion prancing to the paddock, a victor hailed; while behind the runner-up, head hanging in defeat, trots disconsolate ‘‘But," says this old man, “where would the winner have been if the pacer hadn’t made him race?” The old man is Jake Kilrain. baptised John Killian, who, like his father before him, was born and raised in Greenport, Columbia County, New York State, from forbears of the old sod of County Meath, Ireland. In his sixty-eighth year he looks back over the storms and fair patches of his life. He sees this fight in the grim perspective of lean, hard years, and he knows that the fury of the ordeal and the fame it brought him have passed into emptiness. His old warrior’s face is wrinkled but unbattered. The eyes in his shortcropped white head are hazel-irised and unblurred. His hands are no rougher than those of any man of his years who has used them always for a livelihood- Only smash-topped ears, burly chin and pugnacious snout remain in age as clues to his roaring youth. Tugging his shaggy white curtain of moustache, he sat relaxed, as a sweating ring man sits, and told me his tale by the window of his frame hut of a home in Oulncy, outside of Boston. “I had never met John L. Sullivan before we fought that day in Mississippi,” he said. “He was champion of the world after he knocked Ryan loose from a title he’d never really earned. Sullivan and I had started in the fight game at about the same time and in the neighbourhood of Boston.

His First Fight. “Mv father was a copper worker, and I got a job as a boy rolling brass up in Somerville. I was big and healthy and strong and got on to the way of picking up change at the fight clubs. Sly first scrap was with a hunk of a fisherman from Gloucester. He was big enough to haul a trawler in the seine along with the fish. We got 10 dollars each for the racket in a dingy South Boston club back of barred doors, for all fights were bootlegged in Boston those days. “It was rough-and-tumble. We did more jumping than hitting. I was always a good jumper. As a kid I used to leap till I d jacknife myself with pain. This man I made my first fight with had a gang of roughs from Gloucester by the ring. They bawled and cheered enough to drag in all the cops. So, in the fourth round I wrestled their mate and knocked him into their laps with three ribs broken and some minor bruises. “I fought around Boston every week or so after that, meeting anybody who’d take me on. Which wasn't easy. Even though fighting was illegal there was faking and jobber in those days, and a guy who liked scrapping for the sake of scrapping made the other boys shy to meet him. Tough going to get a reputation. The ballyhoo about John L. Sullivan started after the Ryan fight and I saw' him on the streets of Boston, swaggering about in his box hat and fawn coat. I saw him fight—not really fight. He used to punch their bodies and then crack their chins when the crowd yelled for a knockout. “My* road was rougher because I didn't have a tricky manager to guide me. My brains were fighting brains, but. I was a sap at business.’’ The prize ring was not then a business. Kilrain cannot recall more than six men in America, Sullivan and himself among them, with George Godfrey, Joe Landon and Jack Ashton as run-ner-up for heavyweight honours in those days when the ring was legally and socially taboo save in dark corners of the continent.

Sneaking into New Orleans. The sports knew where and what the talent was. Without substantial betting by fight lovers, bouts of importance were impracticable. So private opinion dominated a sport outlawed by public opinion, and a champion who ducked a challenger was quickly spotted and derided Kilrain's knuckles left a trail of bruised jaws from Boston to Baltimore, where at the age of thirty he took 6.000 dollars savings and went into the only-by-product business open to pugs in the rear eighties—the “hotel game.’’ Sports flocked to his bar and “gentlemen only” occupied the thirty rooms above it. The word went through the land that Kilrain. who had smacked to tfte boards every man his weight Who would meet him, with or without Moves, had hurled mA challenge at the jjo*P n strong boy—

then flattening all comers with the monotony* of an accordion. A thin, wiry man, who had stepped out of Ulster to give American boys in barbershops the literature they’ loved —Fox of the Police Gazette —had whipped gales of laughter through the sporting world with his oiler to back Kilrain for 10.000 dollars. Which, to a man greedy to get 2.20 dollars a day rolling liquid brass in twelve-hour tricks, was more than the national debt. Brooklyn spoke for Sullivan when Charlie Johnson, glittering leader of the peg-top boys, who smoked cigars end to end. drank champagne for breakfast and talked of horses and men and women with chipped expertness, posted 10.000 dollars to cover Fox’s. Rattling to New Orleans went the monarch of maulers and his suite. a carload of bruisers and dandies lifting their voices in hosannas when John L. swallowed noggins of ale, flexed his biceps like a bull measuring a matador, and boomed ugly prophecies of destruction for the mad Baltimore barman. Also to New Orleans by a different route went Kilrain with his trainer. Charley Mitchell, former champion of England, retasting the dust he had bitten at Sullivan’s feet, dreaming of a vicarious revenge; and Pony Moore, Mitchell’s father-in-law. Quietly, from the recesses of the country, those in the know mooched into Louisiana's metropolis. Police, apprised by news reports that champion and challenger were rolling southward, watched the depots, but the fighters played the bid trick of skipping their trains at the city’ limits and hastening to the shelter of country’ saloons. Fight to the Finish. Shortly’ after nine on that blazing morning of July 8, 18S9. each warrior moved separately—Sullivan between his second. Tommy’ Mitchell, and his trainer, Phil Casey; Kilrain sandwiched by Charley Mitchell on one side and his second, Mike Dovonan, on the other. Only the tap of a telegraph key, wired to the depot a mile away, split the silence as Fitzpatrick clapped his hands and called the men together. No paltry pantomime of cameras and movies; only brusque orders: “ London prize ring rules; defend yourselves at all times; no tripping, no hitting below the belt; a fall completes a round, and the fight goes to the finish.” No studies of taped hands, or awareness of trickery of powdered cement in damp gloves. Bare, bumpy’ knuckles, pumped by arms on steel springs, were the weapons. Sullivan, after his superstitious manner of using his left hand first, had

illHiillliiiiillilillllllllllllllillliillillllilil'llililililllliniillilllllllilllllllllllilllillllilll grabbed a clutch of grass with it. He emptied it in Kilrain’s bulldog face, and the smiled curse this evoked convinced him that he faced a man. “ He growled at my first crack to his ribs,” says Jake. “so I gave him another. and he spilled me with a shoulder throw.” They rested thirty seconds, trainers smearing their knuckles with alum, flaying their faces with vinegar. As Kilrain remembers the second round, it was the pivot. Two smashes from Sullivan, one square to the jaw point, another to the stomach, told him he could take what the champion had to give. He picked himself from the scorched grass and went to his stool for the third-round rest, confident that he was well matched. Into the third and fourth and fifth rounds they went, gripping bodies, smiting necks, thumping kidneys. No waste time on car heeling and arm slapping—the noisy, innocuous stuff that sets the rafters rocking in these milk-and-water days. In thb sixth round Jake staggered the champion to his knees with a drilling uppercut and clouted him to the sod with a head bang. Sullivaji went into the seventh outraged. No man had ever handled him so before.

The Rangers were Ready. Kilrain went to the grass three times running, and came back doused with water for the tenth. For seven minutes the men wrestled about the ring, left arms locked, right fists pummelling. Then Jake went down again. For the eleventh he and the champion squared off fortified by swigs from the whisky jars. John leered, missed a swing and fell. The twelfth round, on and up through the bloodless battering until near the thirtieth, is blurred in memory’ to Kilrain. Then he remembers Mitchell drubbing his thighs and his mind flying back to a fly-ridden parlour in Baltimore, where his wife and two boys thought of him fighting, and of a third child buried. lie flew out after the thirty-second respite and cracked the champion’s jaw

with a left hook. That cost him something. Sullivan shook his head, feinted, and Jake’s left eye met, full force, a murderous right. He didn’t know what had happened until three rounds later when he found one eye his guide to the lumbering giant before him. Goaded, he swung his 181 pounds at the champion’s 209, and they swayed and toppled together. They came out, backs blistered, for the fortieth round. Sullivan streaked a crosspunch to' Kilrain's stomach,

sending him backing to a neutral corner. The champion charged. But Kilrain's mock weakness fooled him. Quick as a flash he clipped Sullivan's forehead, and that hand was numb for four rounds more. “Everybody’s Mad!” In the forty-sixth round a glancing blow tore the champion's nose. It bled. Enraged. Sullivan swung his squared nails about Kilrain's neck and hammered him to the grass. The crowd broke loose, and dimly in the background Kilrain remembers a crunch and crack of wood, swaying black figures and a sprawled, cursing heap. The rangers were ready*. Coldly the referee bent over Kilrain. “Enough?” he barked. Jake's savage head jerked “no.” And in he went. On to the seventieth round they’ went, stumbling, clawing, the referee helpless before two Spartans who knew nothing but the will each to prove himself the better brute. In a frenzied flur-

ry* the challenger speared the champion with a ranging right. Great Sullivan toppled. To the sheriff went the referee. lie couldn’t stop it. A title was at stake. Fortunes involved, and the men watching those fortunes carried guns! Declare a draw and not even the rangers leaning by* the ringside could save his skin from lead peppering. “Look at. their faces,” he bawled, sweeping his tired arms about the square. “Look at your own. Everybody’s mad.” The seventy-third round and Kilrain went down from a blow that wouldn't have dimpled whipped cream. In the 74th Sullivan pushed him, and he fell. The End of It. In again he went. Something Sullivan muttered straightened him. Bloody* jowls touched, skin curled in white patches on both men's backs. And the champion proved what champions are. Staggered by* a feeble punch to the jaw, he reeled. But he returned. llis soggy hands slipped on Kilrain's drooping shoulders, a dangling fist came up like a lead weight. Kilrain went down, and Sullivan giggled as his bruised knuckles left the challenger’s head. In Kilrain's corner Donovan and Mitchell whispered. Sullivan swore at his towel boy and thrust him aside. More whisky. As Kilrain faltered a damp towel floated over his shoulder, thrown by Donovan from behind. The crowd yelled with glee and relief, all but Kilrain’s followers, who growled and roared, but paid their bets. The referee faced the beaten man. “Over.” he barked. “They've thrown in the sponge.” Kilrain. unheeding, ploughed forward. The referee grasped him like a child, and as the crowd scampered away he turned and raised Sullivan's gory* right hand. Somebody thrust an envelope at Kilrain as his seconds splashed him furiously and pushed ammonia under his nostrils. Revived, he saw Mitchell, his trainer, scurrying from the ring in the wake of the fleeing crowd that had torn up posts and ropes as souvenirs. A depu.ty* sheriff stood before him, his back eloquently* turned.

“Jake,” whispered Donovan. “it’s every* man for himself now. Charley* and I are going to make our get-away. There’s w*arrants out for you and Sullivan. We’ll shoot to Chicago, then. New York, where we can help in case of trouble.” And Kilrain remembers saying; “Take your split of the cash. If they get me in this here state, I'm not afraid.” ! The Aftermath. Crammed trains, minus Sullivan, minus Kilrain, screeched into New OrTo Kilrain the aftermath of that little pummelling party—which took exactly two hours sixteen minutes and twenty-three seconds of time—is a blurred nightmare. He toiled into his clothes, and with smashed face and weary limbs, the faithful Pony Moore at his side, made his way from there. His only* bitterness wasn’t failure to gain a championship—for the title meant no million in those days—but chagrin at dropping his backer's ten thousand. Sullivan, with the side bet, got twenty thousand round out of the fray. Kilrain’s end was 3,000 dollars, less expenses. From train to train he and Moore skipped, sheriff’s deputies after them. Countless palms were crossed. Sullivan was arrested in Biloxi, where it cost him 1,000 to get free. Kilrain shifted from trains and hired hacks and waggons until finally he arrived in Chicago six days after the fight. Later he sought refuge in a downtown Broadway hotel in New York, but the fly* cops found him smoking in a bar. They* tipped him off, and he took the road again to Baltimore. “I didn’t come off so badly*,” old Jake told me. his eyes geaming with stubborn pride. “ I was smashed and blue, but I'd stood up to Sullivan longer than any man who ever faced him. “I didn’t sec John L. after that for five y*ears. As holder of the championship of England I had a bout with Jim Smith on an island in the Seine, near Paris. That went for 100 rounds. Worse than the Sullivan fight, and the boys who saw it spent 100 dollars a head for the privilege! Become Refined. “You can't compare the men of my day* with the men of to-day,” he said, sitting down. “No use trying. Dempsey may be good ; Wills may be good. Maybe they* were better than us. But in my prime I’d have taken on the two of them in the same evening, winnei take all. The trouble with fightin’ is it’s become refined . “I picked up some tough fights after licking Smith. But Sullivan never gave me a return bout. “He and I went barnstorming with burlesque shows and other outfits for seven years on and off,” he recalled. “We could be doing it yet if John

hadn't died. We’d box a few rounds, then belt any local lads who took up our challenges. We did this all over America, Canada, England and Ireland. “John was a fine man, no matter what they say. Kind and gentle at heart. He liked his liquor, and naturally women flocked about him. But I haven’t a word to say* against him, although I wished he’d given me another fight.”