Hi Buddy. Well his best 3 wins could be Papke, O,Brien, and that's about it really, maybe Sullivan , maybe Thomas, he fought a bunch of nobody's on his way up, nothing new there, shady fights with Langford and Johnson, all but burnt out by 24, growing up I had him as a great fighter, up there with the best, Hagler, Monzon, SRR, and Greb, not anymore, would not have him in my top 15, and feel like the likes of Tiger, Apostoli, and Walker would have the beating of him, this after seeing him on film, he looked abysmal, truth be told I was crestfallen, and bitterly disappointed, posters who I hold in the highest esteem rate him very high, inside the top ten, for me I just can't see it, but respect their view as stellar posters and very knowledgeable posters. I saw a picture in an old mag dating back to the early 70s, it showed Ketchell, Willis Brit, Pete Dickerson, on whose ranch he was shot, and Emmett Dalton, one of the notorious Dalton gang, replete with six gun in his belt ! Fascinating he most certainly was. stay safe buddy, chat soon. Mike.
Cheers pal,Sure i read on here that Ketch was injured for the filmed Papke fight,Thats why he looked crap... I saw this docu posted on here about him a while back i thought was marvellous anyway.Time for another look https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/stanley-ketchel-documentary.722985/#post-22953363
At the end of 1907, Tommy Ryan was asked about the various weight divisions but really just spoke about the middleweight division and how good it was. He ranked Ketchel at number 4 at that point. The interesting thing is that Ketchel beat the hell out of everyone who was ranked above him by Ryan that December, Jack Sullivan, Papke and Kelly. He met them all and just turned the division into his own personal slaughterhouse. Ryan is only one guy of course, but he was an astute observer of fighters, and he wasn't alone in his intense admiration for Ketchel. His rivalry with Papke is one of the bitterest and most brutal of that era and my favourite from that cobweb era.
Golovkin would massacre both these bums on the same night and I don't think I am even exaggerating This content is protected
Well Golovkin would have been a light-heavyweight then. Ketchel would probably turn pro at lightweight today and was weighing in at welterweight as late as 1908, I think, two years before his last fight. Colour-tv heroes beating up guys four weight divisions below them who learned fighting under a different ruleset does seem to be a particular source of pride for modernists though, so carry on
I dunno man, I seem to have lost my Vintage Vantage Vision spectacles. Maybe I could borrow yours to see what you see? Unfortunately all I saw was two guys doing an impression of mud wrestling and occasionally throwing mighty telegraphed haymakers that must have refreshed the front row but appeared to do little else. Also, Papke's outfit makes me uncomfortable.
They might not look good now but at the time they were champions and certainly not bums.Suppose the equivalent of you in 100 yrs time will be calling GGG a bum
Ketchel was a product of his era, of a time in history, that is unlikely to be replicated. He started his career in Butte, Montana, which was, at the time, one of the liveliest, roughest towns in the US. Butte doesn't have a youth gang problem now, but it did then. There was, at that time, an alley that separated different ethnic neighborhoods- Croatian and Serbian- and it was referred to as Blood Alley because of all the violence that happened there. I once found an old, locally produced book about the history of boxing in Butte. There was a story in there about two miners that had a dispute over a woman and they settled it with a bareknuckle fight. A round ended when one man was knocked down. One of the miners broke his arm in the first or second round and was knocked down 48 straight times. Then he knocked the other man down and ended up winning the fight in the 107th round and the other miner died. Butte, at that time, had a history of labor violence, of strikes that ended in violence. To this day the rubble of Miner's Union that was destroyed- blown up- is a monument, as is the depiction of Frank Little being dragged out of town to be hung. There was ethnic violence between Srbs and Croats, the Irish and everybody. In that environment, at 15 years old, Ketchel was a bouncer in a brothel; the site of that brothel is now a public square that remember the 'soiled angels' that openly served the miners of Butte into the 1980s. Ketchel lived a hard life and he lived fast, and he died that way. By all accounts he was a fighter, not a boxer, and he learned as he went. There were many gyms in Butte at the time and they produced some pretty good fighters like Dixie LaHood and Joe Simonich (I had the privilege of meeting him at my aunt's house when I was 6- another ex fighter that took the time to talk to a little boy that he saw throwing punches in the mirror). Ketchel learned as he went and he made a name for himself by fighting hard, punching hard and living hard. In the process he made himself a legend, not a clown like Mayorga.
Hey really nice read. You don't get many well thought out researched response's on here. We should all appreciate it when it happens. I really liked the background you layed out.
I've always found the Serb / Croat rivalry perplexing and a little sad. As an outsider I honestly find them to be very similar and I couldn't tell the difference really unless they told me what they were. Very fierce peoples both with opinions that can't be swayed.
One's Orthodox and the other's Catholic, that's about 50% of the rivalry right there. The other 50% is due to how Croats treated Serbs during WW2, and how Serbs treated Croats during the Yugoslav breakup.
Great rundown. Butte still carries that scent of violence and desperation. I always make a stop there when traveling I-90. Darkly fascinating place. Just for a slightly more modern reference, this is the sort of man that Butte, Montana produces. This content is protected