KETCHEL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 188, 29 October 1927, Page 10

KETCHEL

The world has a short memory. Obsessed with its woes, it readily forgets its heroes as well as Its benefactors. Great fighters of the past might as well never have been born, so fleeting is their fame. The other day I mentioned to someone the name of Stanley Ketchel, whereupon my friend demanded to know how many miles “it” could do to the gallon.

Such ignorance seems inexcusable; it savours of sacrilege. It is, I assure you, no exaggeration to say that Stanley Ketchel was not only America’s greatest middleweight, but he was undoubtedly one of the greatest boxing champions that this world ever saw.

His was an impressive record. His punching power was positively frightful. His nom-de-guerre, “The Michigan Assassin,” while exaggeration, is self-explanatory, and gives some idea of v.'hat a phenomenal piece of fighting machinery Stanley Ketchel was. Do you recollect that record he made? It was simply one long list of pugilistic disaster. Do you recall the journalistic description of any of his battles?

Listen to this! “Gentle reader! If you were a spectator last night at the Ketchel-Laug-ford fight you yourself are a celebrity, for you are one of the few thousands of favoured mortals who were privileged to witness the greatest fight of all time; for you have seen, in action, and at his best, that paragon of pugilistic perfection, Stanley Ketchel, who, with the possible exception of Bob Fitzsimmons, is absolutely the greatest piece of middleweight fighting machinery that ever wore a glove. You were privileged to see a fight that would have thrilled the gods on high Olympus. You saw a blonde stripling defeat a black tiger. You saw a pale Polish peasant-hoy hammer and hatter the great Sam Langford!

“Can you ever forget that last mad round? Can you ever, thereafter, despite grief, disappointments, and failures, think life not worth the living, or that you have lived in vain? Can you ever forget the ecstatic fury of that berserk, blood-spattered, battlemad Ketchel, as flailing and thrashing he harried the desperately-fighting negro from corner to corner? Would you have believed that It was possible for any human being either to deliver or to withstand such a ceaseless, devastating rain of sledgehammer blows ?

“Once in an eternity, to make the rest of us realise our limitations, the war-gods create a Ketchel.”

And that is the kind of man of whom most people have never heard, whom others have forgotten, and still others think is some kind of a motorcar!