The Ketchel Question

FAN-FAVOURITE BUT NOT THE FIGHTERS FAVOURITE
'Funny how the old time 'fighters' don’t think that Stanley Ketchel could fight, while most persons who 'saw' Ketchel fight - and who are not and never have been fighters - think the "Assassin" was a marvel.
The foregoing remarks are occasioned by an interview in an Eastern paper with "Syracuse” Tom Ryan, ex-Middleweight Champion, and in his day, one of the ring's greatest boxers.
"Yes,” Ryan is alleged to have said. "Ketchel WAS great - a great slugger; but sluggers in the old days didn’t figure. We simply feinted them out and then knocked them down."
Three rears ago or thereabouts Joe Choynski was visiting in San Francisco, and in the course of a conversation, with Sam Berger we think it was, somebody remarked that there would never be another fighter like Ketchel. "There it goes again!" exclaimed Choynski, a bit nettled: "that s all vou people know in San Francisco Ketchel, Ketchel, Ketchel! I wish Ketchel had been the hardest chap I had to meet in my day!? I would rather have fought TWO Ketchels than one Peter Maher!”
Bob Fitzsimmons expressed himself in a somewhat similar way when he last visited San Francisco. "My eyes!” said Fitz; "if Ketchel had come at me with his chest open like he did at other chaps, why, blime me, I’d have stepped in and stood him on his head!”' - Marion T. Salazar, 'San Francisco Call', 1917

Do you agree, or disagree with any of these old timers’ assertions on Ketchel?

 

"For his inches he can hit harder than any man in the world today. I also have often said that Ketchel could land his punch on anyone. His deceptive way of delivering it would fool the cleverest man that ever lived, and in O'Brien's two fights with him it was clearly demonstrated that Stanley was no respecter of science.

Ketchel has a great hold on the American people. He is a fighter by nature, and a born ringmaster. He is of an entirely different type than any that have gone before him.

His methods are his own and he has none of the theoretical ideas crammed into his thought factory that every Heavyweight Champion has had since the days of Tom Hyer. Ketchel uses his own tactics, however, Ketchel tried to absorb some of the knowledge of others, and I believe that his defeat at the hands of Papke was the result of it.

When I met him in his camp in Frisco before his third battle with Papke he said: "Jim, every man I meet tells me something different, and l often get bewildered listening to them."

I told him then to forget it all and to fight along the same lines that he followed when he whipped Papke the first time. In fact, I made him give me his word that he would, and those of you who saw him fight Papke the first time and then saw Stanley in the ring with Philadelphia Jack O'Brien will admit his methods were the same - only he had filed off some of the rough edges.

When Ketchel fought Papke the first time his greatest difficulty was in staying away from an uppercut. I explained to him then how he could avoid one of these dangerous wallops, but I tried to keep the explanation in harmony with his other methods of defense and attack.

Ketchel is quick to see a point and quick to take advantage of an opponent's weakness. He is, above all other things, a fighter by nature.

He has not the cleverness of a Langford - or an O'Brien - or the footwork of a Tommy Ryan, but he is a terrific mixer who knows no fear and realizes his great punching powers." -Corbett