Where does Stanley Ketchel rate as a puncher all time

At Middleweight I will go with what those said of him who saw him fight. Hardest middleweight champion puncher of all time. Hit like a hammer.

 

A great middleweight puncher.
The best?
How about?
Langford
Fitzsimmons
Moore
Lausse
Robinson
Hostak
Steele
McClellan
Jackson

 

Ketchels power was written about at length. Since there is no objective measurement of middleweight champion punching power one needs to rely on eye witness accounts. Ketchel comes out on top. Heavy enough to wobble a great heavyweight champion.

 

I don't think the kd of Johnson was genuine ,so that's a huge part of Ketchel's rep gone for me. Looking over his resume its stuffed with kos over nobodies ,debutantes, and guys with abysmal records. As to stories about his power ,there have been just as awe inspiring tales about Fitz's & Langford's, both of whom ko'd class heavyweights.

 

To be honest that right hand against Johnson didn't look like it really connected. And it didn't exactly hurt him if it did, did it.

 

There are stories of McClellan putting down Holyfield and McCall with body shots in sparring.

 

The fly in the ointment with the stories about Ketchel is he had his last fight in June 1910.
Therefore anyone who saw him in the flesh would be unlikely to have seen that much of the later big punching 160 pounders that came after him.
Another point to consider is there were only 4 middleweight champs prior to Ketchel so there really wasn't a lot of guys to compare him with.
There had been about 24 fights for the middle weight title when Ketchel was shot ,that is a pretty tiny sample for those contemporary writers to form a definitive opinion on .
The division didn't really see another huge puncher until the mid 30's with Hostak and Steele.

 

Moore has over 40 kos at middleweight, that is more than enough to qualify him for inclusion in this discussion.
Ketchel has 47 kos.
Correction, at around 160 or below Moore has 50 kos.

 

The KD IMO was faked. I am talking about a right hand earlier in the bout that made Johnson shudder.

Fleischer saw Ketchel and all the fighters on that list who were fighting up until the early 70's. He rated Ketchel as the most powerful hitting middleweight. Since no objective measurement of punching power exists I will learn toward what Nat believed which was based upon eye witness testimony.

 

Ketchel never hurt Johnson, not even during the fake knockdown. If you see the long version of that fight Ketchel got his ass kicked royally and thats with Johnson carrying him, literally and figuratively. Johnson went out of his way NOT to hurt Ketchel and still managed to have him bleeding from the nose, mouth, and a cut, and have one of his eyes closed, score a KD, and literally hold him up from a KD on a couple of other occasions. Ketchel, for all of his vaunted power, couldnt have hurt Johnson if he had an anvil in each glove. Its hilarious that some people with an agenda want to try to paint that fight in some light as being some sort of feather in Ketchel's cap based on a fake knockdown and an imagined punch that "made Johnson shudder..." or as another one of our resident loons imagines: a bruise on Johnsons cheek. LOL. Go back and read the interviews Ketchel gave about that fight just before he died. He said that fight ruined him and he wanted nothing to do with Johnson ever again after that. Thats an asswhipping no matter what a bunch of Ketchel fanboys want to believe.


And I get so sick of hearing about Nat Fleischer this and Nat Fleischer that. When Fleischer saw Ketchel he was just a kid and Ketchel was taking part in fake fights in New York set up by Wilson Mizner. Fleischer wasnt infallible and certainly wasnt above hyperbole or bias. He was human like the rest of us and he certainly never saw Ketchel at his best on the west coast. And for the record Fleischer always rated Fitzsimmons the hardest puncher. Since Fitz was a MW, even up until the end of his career (weighing 156 in 1909) I would say that makes him a harder MW puncher in Fleischers estimation.

 

You are perfectly entitled to do so ,I would just point out that Fleischer picked Jack O Brien as his number one lhvy above
Loughran,Conn, Moore and Foster

He also found no place for Ali in his heavyweight top ten.

 

His ratings, like most old men, are almost comically biased toward the fighters of his youth.

 

What makes people think the Johnson knockdown was fake?