“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
– Khalil Gibran
By Matt McGrain: Billy Papke is perhaps the only middleweight in all of boxing history that typified violence in the ring more completely than Stanley Ketchel. What Ketchel is reckoned to be, Billy Papke may have been, a fighter trading so completely on brutality that absorbing punishment was as much a part of his ring experience as dishing it out.
Papke exulted in his suffering.
He suffered for the first time in that year with the perpetual road warrior Walter Stanton. In truth, Papke had moved beyond the likes of Stanton as an opponent but the two had signed articles the previous year before Stanton had been forced to pull out with illness. Papke being Papke, he decided to go back and clean up that mess even though he had already signed articles for 30% of the gate for his up-coming re-match with Kelly and even though the winner of that fight was already being lined up to match the winner of Ketchel-Sullivan. As extraordinary a four round fight as has ever been fought was the result. Papke began it like a man determined to avoid cashing in on his mounting fame. The New York Sun:
Stanton, throughout the first round landed lefts and rights to Papke’s body and face, driving Papke from one end of the ring to the other. The punishment, however, did not seem to affect Papke. The second round was a repetition of the first until Papke landed a hard left on Stanton’s jaw, drawing blood.
Papke was a shark, perhaps sated on the eleven knockouts he had scored in 1907, but he took a greater interest once his opponent started to bleed.
In the third, Papke “started to fight” and soon Stanton started to wilt. Papke fought aggressively from the outside but it was when he was inside be really excelled, mauling and throwing up “loop-the-loop punches” from all angles. In the fourth, there was nothing between them, Papke had taken the fight to the furnace, his head on Stanton’s shoulder, bulling him round the ring as they fought “like whirlwinds”, Papke’s fight. Driven round the ring Stanton was eventually dropped heavily by a body shot but at nine he leapt to his feet and tore into his man landing, according to the LA Herald “a dozen hard blows.” Papke absorbed them contemptuously, before smashing Stanton to the canvas once more. Stanton’s corner threw in the sponge.
“He took all that Stanton offered him, and there were some stiff punches in tha lot, without being fazed,” noted The Washington Herald. “Papke demonstrated that he is a terrific hitter and a wonderful fighter but no boxer.” Admiration for his strength, power and most of all his durability, would remain constant throughout his career. His skill would remain less admired.
Next for Papke was a rematch with Hugo Kelly. This would be the first match-up of the year between two of the Tommy Ryan-nominated “Golden Four” although Ketchel and Sullivan would meet only two months later. Ketchel would lay Sullivan low, Ryan’s number four knocking off his nomination for number one both in the division and the world Here Papke would be given the chance to begin the rout of youth over experience, as he, the number three, was matched with Kelly, the number two. The question between them had not been settled at their first meeting in the last days of 1907 although reports suggest that Papke was unlucky not to be given the nod in that draw. Billed now for the disputed Middleweight Title of the world, Papke intended to settle the matter. “I will not rest until I am proven the best middleweight in America.”
Kelly, meanwhile was hard at work at a training regime that even then dated to an older school, sparring every day without exception, wrestling, and lifting weights via the pulley system. The fight fans pouring into Milwaukee were unimpressed by this not unusually strong display of diligence in training from the Chicago man and Papke remained a strong favourite as fight night approached. The press saw the fight as a closer affair, The Washington Times labelling it “even money.”
Kelly was a sure puncher and a strong man and this may have been enough to dissuade Papke from the inexplicable slow start that saw him stand idle whilst Stanton unloaded on him. He attacked Kelly immediately upon the bell’s first sound and upended the Italian-American with a huge left hook. Kelly was up as quickly as he had gone down and. Papke bored into him tearing punches at his hurt opponent, body and head. As Kelly’s senses cleared he began to box away from his man, the lessons of their last fight learned, trying to keep the furnace at bay, but always Papke would find his way in and the two would go to war inside. The crowd, at first for Papke, soon turned against him as he repeatedly smashed his head into Kelly’s upturned face in the clinches. Papke’s disinterest in their fervour was complete, he fouled Kelly viciously throughout. In the middle rounds Kelly’s eye was torn open, whether by a butt or a punch is unclear, but The Evening Bulletin reports both men “covered with [Kelly’s] blood” by the final bell. Before then Kelly would be repeatedly staggered by hooks on the inside, but always he fought back gamely with punches that “smoothed the smile” from Papke’s face. Papke’s good time was only ever spoiled momentarily however. A tumultuous final frame saw all three men in the ring caught up in a bloody dance as the two fighters, pinning one another in a clinch, freely swapped uppercuts with their spare hands, referee Bright wedged between them trying desperately to pry them apart. Kelly’s cleaner work had been overwhelmed by savagery. He left the ring gingerly, his arm broken, his face a mess of gore. Papke would terminate their rivalry in 1909, taking him to pieces in a single round.
For all his seeming unearthliness in coming through yet another war seemingly unscathed, Papke was rumoured to have broken a bone in his hand in. He would uncharacteristically sit out the next three months. His next opponent would be the only middleweight in boxing history to provide competition in terms of sheer savagery.
“Ketchel? Any time he wants, any place he names for any amount he chooses.” So said Tom Jones, manager of Billy Papke. In truth, negotiations between the two were so smooth as to be near non-existent. Each wanted to fight at home, but when Jones insisted, Ketchel bowed. Papke wanted to fight at the modern 158 limit, but when Ketchel insisted upon the more archaic 154 limit, Papke acquiesced. It may have been that these two knew they needed each other. Coming to know them, I would guess they flat out wanted each other.
Ketchel believed in the furnace every bit as much as Papke, but he was not its slave. He often would find himself burning alongside the man he was attempting to destroy, but he had far more technique. Bill Delaney, one-time trainer of Jim Jeffries and still amongst the world’s most respected boxing brains, picked out much that was interesting early in 1907:
“He has a style that will baffle the best of them, and can hit the hardest punch I’ve ever seen delivered. He fights sideways [especially when he’s] getting at a man’s body, he stands sideways and lets fly with both fists.”
Ketchel was no Sullivan when it came to his thinking approach to boxing, but his violence was honed. A fighter showing as little as he can of himself to his opponent when he punches is as familiar to the modern boxing fan as the double-jab, but it was not the standard for the old-school swarmer. Even the Jeffries crouch was greeted first with suspicion. Ketchel was known, also, for “a certain kind of switch”, namely a left hand feint to body or head which would force his opponent to move or drop his guard before delivering the right hand with full commitment. Ketchel often spurned boxing’s niceties in favour of the type of violence that made him famous but he was capable of more. This would be a factor in his series with Papke, the opening salvo of which the entire sporting world would now turn its attention to. The Salt Lake Herald:
“Right now all of the talking is of the…Papke-Ketchel fight…both of the new middleweights are young fellows. Both are strong, aggressive and have a punch. They are built to go the route. Both are anxious to become great men in the boxing world…and appear eager to get together.”
The fight would also bring together the two claimants to the middleweight title of the world and nearly impossible to call as a contest. The Evening World:
“There is no possible yellow streak about either one of these gentlemen. Papke is a wonder, with a wallop as soporific as the thump of a stone axe. Ketchel: same. Two bunches of flying wallops turned loose at the same time, full speed ahead, until something drops. As for picking a winner – why, what’s the use? You might as well throw a dice…[but] when the fight is over there will be no disputing the right of the winner to claim of the winner to the middleweight championship of the world.”
The fight was to be fought over only ten rounds, but Ketchel refused to break with the training habits that saw him crush Sullivan. On May 26th he boxed four rounds with four different opponents for a total of sixteen rounds. The San Fransicso Call continued to describe two fighters so closely matched that a winner could not be picked, but the public had been impressed with Ketchel’s more accessible workouts and he became a slight favourite. The Call also reported that both men were confident and in trim and insisted that no middleweight title fight could be compared to this one since Fitzsimmons had destroyed Dempsey in 1891.
The two men weighed in on the money at three. James J Corbett picked Ketchel by knockout and named him the best fighter in the world. Ketchel claimed confidence but admitted that this would “likely be his hardest fight.” Papke’s final statement, also short, was more bizarre: “I will remove him from the limelight. It will be anything but easy.” Six thousand would be in attendance to see him try.
The two men crashed out of their respective corners and within ten seconds, Papke was down. Ketchel had caught him with a short right hand as he moved in. The blow was not a finishing one but it changed the fight before it had begun. The Evening World: “When he got up his smile was not so confident and he was not so jaunty. He looked at Ketchel with a queer look and backed away.”
In this fight, Ketchel teaches us some lessons about presumptions, presumptions based upon short snatches of film and questionable toss away lines passed down the years by colourful historians. Ketchel is a “wild man” a “hurricane” a “savage.” Yes, he was all these things, but these things are not all he was. The Ketchel of legend tears into Papke now, bores into him and drags him to the furnace even if he has to go there himself against an opponent who lives there. Ketchel the fighter, the reality, does something far more impressive. The World once more:
“Ketchel didn’t lose his head and fight wildly when he put his man down. He was the coolest most deliberate man in the house. He went about his work in a calm and confident way, as if to say ‘I’ll get you if you stay here long enough!’ He wasn’t in a hurry.”
In two, Papke’s confidence seemed restored. He came roaring out “like a lion” and Ketchel settled down to the business of taming him. They traded punches mid ring, Ketchel emerging from the exchange the better of the two, although Papke landed hard punches to the body. The two clinched and Ketchel, having stymied Papke’s natural aggression, met with his second problem, the Papke butt. Papke came into a clinch low and drove his head up sharply, sometimes with an accompanying glove behind the opponents neck. Against Sullivan, Ketchel had had an ally in the referee who strictly enforced the rules. Against Papke this was less the case, but he had his own solutions. The first was to fight fire with fire, coming in lower himself and meeting Papke’s head with his own, betting on his own head being the harder of the two. But Ketchel was a tactician as well as a “savage” and his primary weapon was far more elegant, a short but sharp left uppercut on the inside which “dissuaded Papke and soon turned the affair into a clean punching one.” Midway through the fight, Papke had all but given up on his butt.
Papke had a better round in the third, and may have scored a flash knockdown, although many papers report a second knockdown for Ketchel in this round. A knockdown for Ketchel seems more likely given the fact that most newspapers scored the frame for Ketchel and that he did seem to visit the canvas after a slip around the same time. Most reports agree though that Ketchel was“beginning to slow down.”
Ketchel would speed up again in the very next round, but he could afford to slow down a little. His superior technique was coming into play now as he began to work Papke out of position. The San Francisco call reported that “Ketchel worked his famous right and left shift to good advantage and bewildered Papke in his attempts to get to him.” In an interview with The Evemomg World three days after the fight, ring veteran Abe Attell went even further:
“The greatest fighter that ever lived. He is a wonderfully clever fellow with both hands and he can hit harder than any other man I ever saw. Papke didn’t have a chance. He uses a shift – hits with the right and then shifts instantly to the left. He has that down better than Fitzsimmons ever did.”
This is high praise indeed. Fitzsimmons is regarded by many as the grandfather of the shift. A fighter moves in with the left hook, changes to a right hand lead and throws the right hook as a southpaw. This is in part what Delaney referred to as Ketchel’s “baffling” style. It makes a fighter at once difficult to hit and lethal on attack, a perpetual motion of unnatural punching angles. A fighter without the technical acumen to execute the switch is vulnerable. By 1909, Ketchel would be credited as the grandfather of the triple shift.
Ketchel was using feints mixed with a power-punching one-two combination protected by this shifting attack. Against Sullivan he had fulfilled his stereotype fighting a superior boxer and craftsman, here he spurned what was expected of him in favour of the switch and the shift, out-maneuvering and out-boxing a fighter who could match him for sheer brutality. Still, the fight was a red hot one and both were bleeding by the end of the sixth.
Feinted out of position and “frequently given to the ropes” Papke was becoming desperate. Ketchel’s more careful “sideways” body-attack was also beginning to tell with Papke “bent double” during the sixth round. Both men appeared to tire, but Papke was really beginning to sag and at the end of the round Ketchel beat an absolute tattoo on his body, landing “several lefts and rights doing considerable damage.”
“Milwaukee has seen some tough fighters,” observed the The Evening Standard. “But not one like Stanley Ketchel.”
After fighting well in the eighth, nine and ten were heart-breaking for Papke who was soundly thrashed. Ketechel came after him with everything he had. The tenth was particularly harsh with Ketchel beating Papke to the body for the entire three minutes. Papke responding with one of his best punches of the fight, a left to the mouth, only to be staggered by a double handed attack to his unprotected head which left him staggered upon the ropes. Not a single voice was raised in dissent when Ketchel was named the winner. Most sources give him every round outside of the eighth. It was a total domination, only the stoppage would have been a more impressive result and it seems just that had not been so far out of reach. The Daily Arizona reported that “…at the end of the last round Papke was clearly in distress and would hardly have lasted another round.” Papke must have seemed in denial when he announced that he “wanted a longer fight” because he “couldn’t get going” over the ten round distance. He would be vindicated. His vindication would come at a terrible price.
Ketchel was on his way to cleaning house. At the beginning of the year Tommy Ryan had ranked three men above him. The first, Sullivan, the great boxer, had been forced to quit in a showing of total brutality. Now the great warrior, Ketchel’s supposed equal in the art of savagery had been out-thought and out-gamed. The Evening World:
“Until last night people in this part of the country considered Pake about the ruggedest piece of fighting machinery in existence. He isn’t. Ketchel beat him at his own game. He out roughed him and outstayed him.”
Hugo Kelly, the only man member of the golden four who was yet to match the Michigan Assassin challenged Ketchel in the ring. Ketchel would entertain him a little under eight weeks later in perhaps his most destructive performance to date.
Papke waited, seething..
Part 1: http://www.boxingnews24.com/2011/05/welcome-to-hell-stanley-ketchel-in-1908-part-1-the-twin/
I can be contacted at m.mcgrain@hotmail.co.uk