Ryan, Patrick

Ryan, Patrick (1853–1900), boxer, was born 15 March 1853 in Thurles, Co. Tipperary. He emigrated with his family from Ireland to America in 1861 and made his career as a professional heavyweight boxer. He was popularly known as ‘the Tory Terror’ and his first major fight was against the Englishman Joseph Goss for the championship of America, with a purse of $2,000 for each contestant at Collier Station, West Virginia, on 1 June 1880. It was a brutal contest that lasted eighty-seven one-minute rounds. Ryan was much younger than his 41-year-old opponent and won because of his superior stamina. He did not rush to defend his title. He was challenged by John Lawrence Sullivan, the ‘Boston Strongboy’, in 1880 but refused the invitation, leaving Sullivan to embark on a tour of America where he offered allcomers money if they could last more than four rounds with him. No one did. Ryan agreed in October 1881 to fight Sullivan, with the bout scheduled for 7 February 1882. Each fighter took $2,500 from a contest that was held in Mississippi City after police were sent some twenty miles away (32 km) to Biloxi, as the fight's London prize-ring rules, with bare knuckles, gouging, and wrestling allowed, were illegal. Oscar Wilde (qv), then on his American tour, was among the crowd of 15,000 who saw Ryan dispatched with a broken jaw in nine rounds. Ryan fought two subsequent gloved fights against Sullivan. Police stopped the first (19 January 1885) after thirty seconds; Ryan was knocked out in three rounds in the second (13 November 1886). He retired from boxing to run a liquor store in Chicago. He died 14 December 1900 in Green Island, New York.