Stanley Ketchel was better than Tommy Burns

The obvious response is Burns knocked out heavyweights.

 

I concur.Ketchel at his best was always a middleweight at about 158 pounds..Tommy Burns morphed into a 175-80 pound LH
who kod heavyweights of his day...Like comparing a Marvin Hagler fighting a LH version of Archie Moore or Ezzard Charles
wightwise. Not fair...

 

Maybe youll get the chance someday moron. Then we'll see what living in the richest safest city in America has made out of your pansy ass, it sure softened your brain.

 

Too bad the Porky Flynn fight came when Wilson Mizner was fixing all of Ketchel's fights for him. After Johnson Ketchel was through and admitted it. Thats how bad Johnson whipped his ass, fake knockdown or not. Just look at the results:

Johnson LKO12
Klaus NDL 6 (Ketchel sent to the hospital afterwards)
Langford NDL (fake)
Flynn (glass jawed)
Lewis (glass jawed WW)
Jim Smith (glass jawed MW)

Between them Ketchel's last three opponents suffered 36 knockouts... That means they were knocked out in nearly a quarter of their combined bouts.

Sandwiched in there somewhere was an attempted fix with Bill Lang and another fighter whose name escapes me.

And even if you choose to believe that the Flynn fight was not faked Flynn wasnt exactly known for his durability. The guy was knocked out 12 times at every stage of his career and lost a total of 27 bouts. Winning only 23 times either ND or official. In fact the guy was knocked out almost twice as many times as he won official decisions. That hardly proves anything about his power. Moreover just because Ketchel notched KOs doesnt mean he was a better fighter. His style was simply more geared toward getting KOs. KOs arent the only aspect of the game though.

 

Well Hart was clearly a much better scalp than anybody Ketchel beat.

He was a reigning lineal heavyweight champion.

 

I suspect that Ketchel's better results a middleweight, reflect the fact that Burns was pretty marginal as a viable middleweight. If that is the case, I would not read too much into it.

Ketchel did get better results against O'Brien, which is impressive, but it might simply be that he had O'Briens number, or a better style for beating him.

 

The Flynn fight is believed to have been "arranged " .

 

Im not sure I agree that he got "better results" against Burns. I say again that those fights compared are deceptive. When Tommy fought O'Brien Jack ran his ass off all night in both those twenty round fights. He wanted no part of Burns and this after having only agreed to fight him if Burns either took a dive or promised not to KO Obrien. Against Ketchel OBrien wasnt intimidated and came to fight, some reports had him ahead at the stoppage and one said he made Ketchel look foolish at times. Ketchel himself said it was one of his most difficult fights. Against Burns in their two 20 rounders OBrien did absolutely nothing but run the entire fight in order to avoid punishment. Im still amazed that Jeffries made it a draw and can only surmise that he did so because Obrien didnt fight and Burns couldnt catch up to the Usain Bolt of the ring in time to stop him. What fighting there was was easily dominated by Burns as can clearly be seen. So given that a younger Obrien was scared to death of Burns but fought his heart out when older against Ketchel and gave Ketchel problems, I dont know, to me I cant really use that as a barometer. Obrien clearly felt he was in for an ass kicking against Burns and as such possibly robbed him of a conclusion every bit as final as Ketchels.

 

Burns naturally weighed a minimum of 10 pounds more than Ketchel. Against Johnson he came into the ring in fantastic shape and outweighed the division by 10 pounds. Hence he was killing himself to make 158. In contrast Ketchel weighed 156 in his second to last fight. He was not a huge MW by any stretch. In fact during his meteoric rise it wasnt unusual for him to weigh in the low 150s. Against Joe Thomas in his coming out party at the world class level he only weighed 147 and in their second fight he only weighed 150. Its fairly well established that his weight of 170 for Johnson was hogwash.

 

Yet he beat quite a few of them? I have grave doubts that Ketchel could beat Marvin Hart.