Save your money on these biographies

I've read Wil HayGood's book on SRR, it's a pretty good read. Lots of information in there about him outside the ring which was cool to read.

 

No, I did not "read" where you said the McVey fight was an exhibition earlier in the thread.

I "read" that in the messages you sent me!!! :nut

 

I tend to agree with this take. But while we're at it, I find "Live Fast, Die Young, and Leave a Good Looking Corpse" a horrid, cartoonish, and overly sensationalized title for a book about Harry Greb.

 

Well now you know Rasch.

 

Well stay away from this autobiographical movie, Phantom Punch:The Story of Sonny Liston starring Ving Rhames. Robert Townsend directed and did a bad job imo. The scipt and story wasn't accurate and it answered no questions about Sonny's death. Rhames wasn't a bad Liston but he looked even older than Sonny did and was given such a bad script, it didn't really matter what kind of performance he gave.

 

I admit it does say "defend title". I have already planned on revamping the book in the beginning. I least I was man enough to say I was wrong. Ketchel still was gonna fight him but not defending the title.

 

I had to put ricky hattons bio down half way through. he was really doing me head over doing the nice guy/ down to earth max clifford pr ****

 

There are a few other books on Ketchel. I have a reasonably rare copy of Nat Fliescher's. Out of curiosity, I wonder if those authors' books have been trashed, too? Or is this a vendeta of some kind? :think Strange, indeed. I'm not going to say bad things about his Greb title. To each his own. But, maybe I've read too many serial killer books, but the word that jumped into my mind, and mind you, I'm not calling anyone this.....but it's necrophiliac. :shock::huh

 

"Since there are those who feel my criticism of this book in particular are unfair I suggest someone else review it. Clay Moyle is a fair minded individual and probably has the book. Id suggest him as a good counter balance to my often pointed views. I would be very interested in hearing his views on the chapter dealing with the Langford match considering the authors description makes it seem like Ketchel beat Langford coming and going. "

I just saw this thread for the first time this evening and was surprised to come across the above post. I'm actually reading Manny's book right now and am about halfway through it. I was anxious to read this book because I've been doing a lot of research on both Ketchel and Papke of late and I wanted to compare my findings to that of the authors.

After seeing the above post I quickly flipped ahead to the chapter concerning the Langford- Ketchel fight, and while I've only skimmed it, I can see some clear differences between my own coverage of that fight and Manny's and I think it's fair to say the authors coverage is definately more in Ketchel's favor. But then so was that of a number of newspaper reporters who covered that particular fight. It was for that reason that I chose to provide so many of the differing reports of the fight, and what Sam and a number of others had to say about it afterward. The fact that the Ketchel book doesn't have any footnotes, or an index, is a valid criticism and I've found myself wishing it did have footnotes so I could see where some of the information was obtained. I made that mistake myself when I originally wrote my book about Langford. I had all the materials, I just didn't originally understand the importance of including footnoes. It made for a helluva lot of work to have to pull out two huge file drawers worth of newspaper articles, etc. and sort them all chronologically and go back and add footnotes after the fact before publication. I spent a long time digging through all those articles again and adding footnotes because I didn't do that at the time I originally wrote the various chapters. Live and learn.

I've come across some other minor issues in the early part of the book, but I will say that it's clear to me that Manny put a considerable amount of time into researching the book. Yeah, he could have done more in places, but I'm still glad I got the book and I'm anxious to read the rest. I noted that the author referenced the twelfth Census of the United States to confirm Ketchel's 1886 birthdate and found that of interest because you find both 1886 and 1887 referenced in various sources. In fact, Fleischer's book 'The Michigan Assassin gives the date as 1887 on page 7 of this book and then shows it as 1886 in a fight record in the rear of the book. I also suspect that I'm going to find that the chapter at the end of the book dealing with Ketchel's death and the resulting trial is probably right on because of the source of the materials the author has indicated were used.

On a somewhat related subject I noted that the author gave November of 1905 as the date of Billy Papke's professional debut against a fighter named "Battling" Hurley. Peter Walsh's book 'Men of Steel' also say's his first fight was in November of 1905 as well though he doesn't name the opponent. I've come accross one newspaper article in which Papke say's his first opponent was Jack Denny (6/1/1906), yet there are newspaper reports of three prior fights in La Salle, Illinois in March, April and May of 1906. Manny advises me that he has an article about the November 1905 fight so I'm hoping to get to the bottom of this issue.

 

This thread reminded me of a semi-famous story involving the great maverick filmmaker John Cassavetes and a young Martin Scorcese. I will cut n paste a bit of it:

Cassavetes became a close friend and mentor – unstinting in his support of Scorsese, and unsparing in his criticism. Scorsese remembers that when he made his first feature in Hollywood in 1972 for the producer Roger Corman, the Depression-era exploitation film Boxcar Bertha, Cassavetes told him, 'You’ve just spent a year of your life making a piece of ****.’

From what I've heard Cassavetes- now that he no doubt had Scorcese's undivided attention- then went into detail about what the films strengths and weaknesses were and Scorcese later credited JC for helping him to improve his game. The greatness of Scorcese's subsequent films bear this out.

I hope Ketchel can see this criticism as an opportunity to tighten up his game as well.

 

Yes but if Cassavetes had zero films under his belt and made the statement to Scorcese publically at Martin's screening how would you feel ? Huge difference when someone with huge accomplishments in a field offers tough love to someone man to man than this mob hit. Klompton wacked him.