Stanley Ketchel cleaned house in 1908

S, today 100 years after Ketchels tragic demise,we only have TWO films of
Stanley Ketchel.One is the last fight with Billy Papke,when he suffered from
bone injuries in his hands, but still went 20 rounds to a decision over the
Tony Zale clone of his time Billy Papke. The other film was Ketchel tackling the great 200 pound Jack Johnson. Other than these 2 clips ,you or I have never seen the true Stanley Ketchel who tore through the middleweight ranks, like a tornado. WHAT would you be thinking if you discovered film of Ketchel flattening ,Phil Jack OBrien, the Sullivan twins,and dozens of other top middleweights of his time ? Do U think that Ketchels top victims somehow
fell unconscious from heart attacks,because "how could such a crude " fighter
as Ketchel,create such havoc in his great title regn.? No, S Ketchel by what i have read of him,
was no crude old version of Rocky Graziano, but a great two handed shifty blaster,who never backed down,with amazing stamina equal
possibly to a later Harry Greb,and as brave a fighter as any in history.
Do not judge the fighter Stanley Ketchel ,by 2 of his only fims we have today.
Like judging Robinson with Tiger Jones, Artie Levine, Marty Servo. He was
in my eyes as great as his peers of his time judged him. After all THEY saw
the Michigan Assassin fight ! Cheers...

 

Easy, b. I'm just saying that he's no technically sophisticated fighter. He's not a defensively adept blocker or mover of the upperbody and head. He was effective and powerful though.

You don't need to be a stylist to be great.

 

I think another thing that made Stan so dangerous was that he carried his awesome power right till the end of a fight, one slip ,and you could wake up with your head in the resin box.
The guy was a force of nature.

 

Agreed McDude. To me ketchel is more of an advanced form of fistfighter than a boxer in the traditional sense ala Jimmy Wilde or Dempsey pre-Kearns, a unique style derived from an environment(Wilde learning from Dai Davies, Dempsey developing a crouch from his days in the mines). These guys interest me a lot for that reason. And curiously they can hit hard enough to knock a man dead...

 

S, you know who of the modern fighters ,comes closest to Ketchel in style ?
I envision Gerald Mclellan, with twenty round staying power. Mclellan was
also a powerful, no holds barred puncher in the Ketchel mould, but Ketchel
combined enormous stamina,ala Greb/Armstrong to go along with his hitting powers. :good

 

Kectchell-Langford was just 6 rounds , lets not forget it.
Langford's quick rise in weight was primarilly due to him getting fatter and not getting enough lucrative fights in his natural weight.

 

Matt McGrain...that boy is good!...
Kidding aside, excellent piece and lookig forward to the next installment. I've always lauded Ketchel on this board for his effectiveness. Good to see someone in agreement...

 

Good stuff, McG. What do you figure it means by standing "sideways" when going to the body. Is that a position or a reference to a path of movement?

 

So like a sort of sway, okay, I figured that's what it was like. My suspicions confirmed... A slugger who fights like a swarmer.

 

Do not miss the fourth and final installment of McGrain's unbelievably good treatment of Stanley Ketchel: WELCOME TO HELL.

http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=29591&more=1

It's no secret that I have alot of respect for McGrain. However, that has nothing to do with the odd tingling I got on my scalp while reading this today.

I'll start at the beginning: The approach McGrain took to open his article is the mark of a great writer. Forget his obvious passion for the subject and his skill at formulating sentences (like this one that captures Ketchel's horrific defeat, his retreat into monk-like solitude, and return: "from hell, to the wilderness, back to the ring...."). Forget his thoroughness and the research involved -McGrain can write like hell -Welcome to Hell is a masterpiece.

Watch this:
“'I regard Papke[,' said Ketchel, ']as one of the first stepping stones in my path toward the heavyweight championship. When am through with him I will devote all my time to Tommy Burns.'

Ketchel had done something extraordinary in clearing out the top men of a stacked middleweight division but no matter how massive the river he crosses and no matter what the value of the prize on the other shore, no fighter should ever look to use a rattlesnake as a stepping stone."

Writing about boxing history is tough to do well. It often lurches into boring overviews and unreadable chronicles ("and then he fought, and then he was defeated by, and then he blah blah blah"). There is also a great risk of getting overly dramatic and even silly. This work by McGrain does indeed provide a chronicle of Ketchel's fights, but it limits itself to one year, and never gets overburdened with details. It brings in drama exactly as it should be brought in. Ketchel is alive for a while and so aren't those red-fisted middleweights surrounding him. What a crowd they were, and I never appreciated how serious they were until now.

This work is way, way up there among the best, and I'll fight anyone who disagrees.