Born John Joseph Killion in Greenpoint, New York, he took the professional name of "Jake Kilrain" to protect his parents from the embarrassment of his questionable career. He lost the heavy-weight championship contest to John L. Sullivan in a bare-knuckle fight that went 75 rounds in Richbourg, Mississippi, on August 7, 1889. The story uses his name to help describe how the hunters in Yoknapatawpha feel about their sport: "Boon and the conductor and the brakeman talked about Lion and Old Ben as people talked about Sullivan and Kilrain or Dempsey and Tunney" (187, 218).
