Sullivan-Kilrain Fight First U.S. Sporting Event to Draw National Press Coverage

Sports news in The Mobile Register increased greatly after 1880. One sporting event on the Gulf Coast in 1889 drew nationwide attention.

No formal boxing titles existed in that era, but John L. Sullivan spent the summer of 1889 in New

Orleans preparing to defend his heavyweight championship against Jake Kilrain. Boxing matches were illegal

John L. Sullivan

and the fight proved to be the last bare-knuckle heavyweight championship title bout. The match was also significant because it was one of the first American sporting events to draw national press coverage.

The site for the fight was a closely guarded secret. Fans had to purchase train tickets to an unknown location.

The Register editorially condemned the match that everyone knew was about to take place as well as prize fighting in general. But when more than 3,000 visitors showed up in the lumbermill town of Richburg, Miss., which had a normal population of about 300, to watch the fight, the Register had arranged for telegraphic reports to be sent.

Jake Kilrain

A crowd began to gather in front of the Register’s bookkeeping room and the telegraph office at about 8 a.m. July 8 to hear news of the fight, which began about 10:30 a.m. Knots of men gathered along Royal Street for the four blocks from the Register office at St. Michael Street to Government Street.

The crowd grew in size as the hours passed and the men awaited news of the boxing match. Men flooded the Register staff with questions and every time a newspaper runner “poked his nose out of the office door, he was besieged by a throng of expectant waiters, and plied with all manner of interrogatives. . . ” One bettor tried to bribe a reporter with $25 for a tip on the fight’s outcome.

At 2 p.m. the crowd surged from the sidewalk into the Register’s bookkeeping room and almost took it over. The staff called police to clear the men out. As the afternoon wore on, the crowd again became rowdy as rumors passed that the Register was suppressing news of the match to use in an extra.

The crowd again surged into the bookkeeping room at 4:30 p.m. demanding to know the outcome of the fight. The editors, awaiting reports, held the evening edition four hours past deadline and finally went to press at 6 p.m. The newsboys took to the streets shouting “Yer’s y’extra, all about the prize fight,” which had gone on for 75 bloody rounds before Kilrain's manager threw in the towel.

Newspaper sales that night were the largest ever up to that time for the Register.