Badass Stanley Ketchel story

I'm only going to re-type part of the text, so i'll summarise here.

The story is told by the great manager "Dumb" Dan Morgan, and it concerns his fellow manager, Dan McKetrick. McKetrick had just returned from Europe with his young charge, Willie Lewis, a promising young MW hugely popular in the bronx. When McKetrick found out that none other than Stanley Ketchel was in town, he made the call to his manager, Britt. McKetrick tells Morgan how he had sold his idea: "I explained how Willie, a local boy, is the idle of his neighbourhood; how it was to be for sweet charity and all and how it wouldn't mean anything for him to lose to the champ and so on. You know."

But McKetrick and Lewis had plans. As Morgan tells the story:

The Slasher rubbed the kids head all friendly like as they met in the centre of the ring. They felt each other out for a minute or so before Ketchel slammed a couple of stiff lefts to the Kid's ribs. The kid was in perfect shape and had 90% of the crowd with him.

Suddenly - in the blinking of an eye - it happened. The confident Ketchel was moving in when the Kid teed of with a tremendous right hand smash to the bride of the Slasher's nose. Or what had once been his nose. When Ketchel took his bloody gloves from his face he looked like he'd lost a decision to a giant elecxtric fan - and he was hurt! With the blood lust in his own nostrils and taking full advantage of Ketchel's blood by rubbing it in his eyes to blind him, the kid tore in for the kill.

The Colloseum was like a lunatic asylum during a mass break. N one was sitting down and the whole structure seemed to be trembling.

I turned to look at McKetrick. He was yelling like a banshee, "Get him kid! Get him!" I yelled back, "i'm getting the hell out of here - back to the fourth row a tleast. YOU pick up the body."

Stan the Slasher finally got his bearings and form an aisle seat in row 4 I watched him walk slowly to his corner at the bell. I looked at the scarlet mask that he now wore for a face and his heaving chest and I didn't have to be told what was coming.

He didn't even bother sitting down between rounds - but just stood there like a caged beast waiting for for the trap to be sprung.

He was three quarters of the way across the ring before the bell for round two had faded, throwing punches form every angle. The kid, trying to duck or block them. He might as well have tried to out-run a tornado.

Ketchel double dhim with a one-two punch to the gut. Then, as the Kid straigntened up, the Slasher nailed him with of the most terrible right hand puncehs to the face I have ever seen. It caught Lewis flush in the mouth and drove two of his front teeth right up through his upper lip. It was an awful sight. The Kid was helpless-but would not go down. The referee was on the spot too. To stop a brawl like this could cause a riot. The Slasher had Lewis bleeding from a gash ofver his right eye, the mose and mouth when he finally dumped the dead game Kid - flat on his face right in front of McKerick's palsied frame.

It took them ten minutes to get Lewis in shape enough to be carried to the dressing room. The doctor did emergenty work then an ambulance arrived and the Kid was taken to hospital.


****ing badass is what that is.