John ‘Old Smoke’ Morrissey, arguably the best bare-knuckle boxer of his time! He was born in County Tipperary, Ireland, and moved to New York with his family when he was a child. He grew up working in factories and iron-works, as well as getting into many a gang fight. He was tough enough to lead the entire Downtown mob in Troy, New York at one point.
He gained the name ‘Old Smoke’ when fighting with one Thomas McCann. McCann pinned Morrissey to a bed of burning coals and started to wail on him, but Morrissey knocked McCann back and continued to beat him into the ground, the smoke from the burns still coming up from his back. A bonafide badass!
Later, in the early 1850s, he went to San Francisco to try his luck at the gold rush with a whole group of Brooklyn Irish. He never got much in the way of gold, but he made a damn fine gambler, and struck his name in California boxing history.
Despite being renowned in New York, he never went professional there until later; all his New York fights were illegal bare-knuckle matches. In California, however, he stepped into the ring for the first time, and became a famous prize-fighter in his own right. He fought his way up the ranks until his ego was big enough to want to fight Yankee Sullivan, who was the premier American boxing champion.
He went back to New York and challenged Sullivan again and again, until Sullivan finally relented and gave Morrissey a shot. The articles were set and the rules were placed down. The fight was to happen nearly a week and a half after. Since the match was illegal, it was to happen in Boston Corners in Massachusetts, out of the prying eyes of the peelers.
They were posted up in a field, with an audience of supposedly 3,000 people! Sullivan seemed pretty clean cut to win for most of it. But Morrissey stood firm, and the match went on for 37 whole rounds! Unfortunately, a spat between Morrissey and Sullivan’s fans escalated, and the whole fight turned into a riot. The referee ended up giving Morrissey the match, but the actual results are lost to history; it is, however, reported that Sullivan threw a foul.
Morrissey was also responsible for murdering nationalist gang leader William ‘Bill the Butcher’ Poole via a gunshot in a bar on Broadway after Poole beat Morrissey in a match. Morrissey and two of his friends were brought to court but ultimately acquitted. Bill was kinda an asshole anyways.
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