Sullivan-Kilrain Fight Site — Last Bare-Knuckle Championship

On July 8, 1889, John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain fought 75 rounds in 100-degree heat in Richburg, Mississippi — just north of Bay St. Louis — in the last sanctioned bare-knuckle heavyweight championship in history. Fans arrived by special train from New Orleans. The governor tried to stop it. The sheriff couldn't find the location. The fight went on for over two hours before Kilrain's corner threw in the sponge. Both men survived. The Mississippi Gulf Coast had been shaped by forces that came from elsewhere — French colonists in 1699 building Fort Maurepas as the first capital of Louisiana, Mediterranean cultural influences filtering through a region that stayed connected to the wider world more easily than inland Mississippi ever could. At statehood in 1817, the coast held only 2.5% of the state's population. By 1889, it was still sparse enough that a crowd could gather by rail for something the state government was actively trying to prevent. A historical marker stands near the site now. It marks the place where the last bare-knuckle heavyweight championship was fought — where two men went 75 rounds in heat that should have stopped them, where a corner finally threw in the sponge, and where a train from New Orleans delivered an audience to watch what the governor couldn't prevent and the sheriff couldn't locate. The pines are still there. The clearing where it happened is not much changed. Go to see where the last sanctioned bare-knuckle championship took place, in a corner of the Gulf Coast that has always been shaped by what arrived from somewhere else.