- Mark Hatmaker
- May 5
- 4 min read
Stanley Ketchel, aka “The Michigan Assassin,” was one of the greatest middleweight boxing champs of all time. He was noted for tremendous power in both hands, which he threw often.
Most of the descriptions of Ketchel’s punching power penned by sportswriters of the time echo this one from Bert Randolph Sugar:
“Like Dempsey, Ketchel’s defense was his offense. A murderous puncher with death at the end of each arm, Ketchel kept exploding six-inch shells in five-ounce gloves until something happened.”
Ketchel always fought with murderous intent, whether it was in his unofficial 250-plus barroom fights or while wading through the middleweight division until his untimely death at age 24. He was so confident of his power and conditioning that on five occasions, he fought two men in the same day. Once, he outscored six opponents in one six-round match, taking a fresh fighter for each round.
Perhaps the greatest show of Ketchel’s power and conditioning, if not his grit, came when he took a run at the heavyweight crown then held by the formidable Jack Johnson.
Some boxing historians insist the fight was fixed. Well, if this is true, somebody forgot to tell Stanley Ketchel. On October 16, 1909, in Colma, California, the middleweight champ met the heavyweight champ. Ketchel gave up height, reach and weight — 35 pounds to be exact (Ketchel was 170 pounds vs. Johnson's 205). In short, Ketchel gave up every advantage there is for a shot at the heavyweight title.
We're lucky to have film of this fight because the disparity between the two boxers is almost humorous. Ketchel looked like a child going against Johnson, a child in all things except heart. At the opening bell, Ketchel waded in, looking for his target.
The crafty heavyweight champ toyed with him and evaded his blows round after round, perhaps lending credence to the “fix” claim, but Ketchel never stopped swinging in search of that knockout. In the 12th round, Ketchel finally found his mark on his opponent’s jaw, dropping the bigger man.
The angered heavyweight soon got to his feet and went after the scrappy middleweight, dropping him with a punch so hard that two of Ketchel’s teeth became embedded in Johnson's glove.
Fix discussion aside and even though he lost, Ketchel demonstrated enormous strength and stamina in mustering the power to drop such a big man — a big, formidable man at that, a man used to being hit by the heaviest and best men in the world and weathering those storms just fine. This is one of the reasons so many boxing historians revere Ketchel.
Just how did Ketchel build such extraordinary punching power and indomitable stamina? He was noted for running a Spartan training camp with a good work ethic, and for the most part, his training regimen mimicked what you'd find many fighters of the era — and today, for that matter — doing.
There was roadwork, bag work, calisthenics and sparring, but there was also an unusual feature that few other champions did.
Ketchel threw boulders.
We’ll get back to the boulder throwing in a moment. First, let’s consider this: Combat sports — be they boxing, kickboxing, grappling or MMA — all rely more on rotational power than on strict linear power.
What I mean by that is strikes, throws, takedowns, sweeps and even submission setups use twisting, turning, torqueing and rotational power more than they do right-angle linear effort.
Any strike worth its salt relies on rotational forces that begin at the ball of the foot and move upward through the knees, hips, waist, and finally the shoulders and arms (if the strike is a punch). All strikes and all offensive grappling techniques exist in this rotational domain.
With this in mind, let’s consider the domain that the majority of our training takes place in. We do push-ups, squats, pull-ups, dips and other bodyweight exercises, all of which are executed in up-down linear fashion. Back squats, bench presses, barbell rows, kettlebell swings, push presses — again, all are exercises that exist in linear planes and do little to develop the rotational power of combat sports.
All the aforementioned exercises are necessary and useful to build overall conditioning, but perhaps it was Ketchel’s adherence to heavy rotational work that allowed him to be valued so highly in his own division and to be as surprising as he was when he was at such a size disadvantage. With that in mind, let’s get back to the boulder tossing.
In addition to doing conventional conditioning, Ketchel would spend one hour a day throwing boulders. He didn’t simply clean them, press them, deadlift them; he threw them. He’d pick up a boulder and hurl it as far as he could. Then he’d move on to the next one and rinse, wash and repeat until his hour was up.
You can’t help but make the assumption that this diligence and adherence to rotational specificity contributed to Ketchel’s astonishing punching power and stamina.
So how might we adapt Ketchel’s methods to our need to build rotational power? Most of us don’t have spare boulders lying around, but if you do, you know what to do. If not, try the following:
Grab as many “slam balls” or medicine balls as you can. If you have only one, make sure it’s a heavy one. I like to use four: a 20-pounder, a 30, a 40 and a 50. I place them in a line behind cone A. Then I mark off 10 feet — if you go for more than that, you might lose your “freshness” — and set my timer for 30 minutes.
When I’m ready to begin, I pick up the slam balls any way I desire and toss them any way I can: push pass, swing toss, granny toss, overhead toss, whatever. I just make sure to mix them up and get them to cone B 10 feet away. Then I walk over to that line and send them all back to cone A.
Because I’m throwing only half the time that Ketchel did, I’ll frequently add a set of 10 penalty burpees for each makeshift boulder that falls short of the 10-foot mark. I find that being honest with penalties helps keep the quality of work high.
Whether this turns out to be the key to building Ketchel-esque punching power or not, one thing is certain: It can’t hurt. Well, it can’t hurt beyond the sore muscles.
