Editing Stanley Ketchel (section)

== Biography ==
[[File:Stanley Ketchel LOC.jpg|left|thumb|Ketchel in fighting pose]]
He was born in 1886 in [[Grand Rapids, Michigan]], to Tomasz and Julia (née Olbinska) Kiecal, whose family immigrated from the village of Sulmierzyce in [[Piotrków Governorate]], in modern-day central [[Poland]].<ref>Some sources list his year of birth as 1887, but 1886 is generally accepted.</ref>

He avoided school, instead falling in with a gang of street kids and often getting into fist fights. At twelve years old, he ran away from home, becoming a child hobo. As a teenager he lived in [[Butte, Montana]], where he found employment first as a hotel bellhop and then as a bouncer. This profession obviously led to many scraps that established his reputation as the best fist fighter in town. Soon enough sixteen-year-old Stanley was performing in backroom boxing matches with older locals for twenty dollars a week. He began traveling throughout Montana, offering to take on any man brave enough to face him. Between 1903 and 1906, he lost just twice in thirty-nine contests and, in 1907, moved to California, where he knew most of boxing's big names and big fights waited for him.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://boxrec.com/media/index.php/Stanley_Ketchel#Early_Years |title=Stanley Ketchel - Boxrec Boxing Encyclopaedia |publisher=Boxrec.com |accessdate=2014-04-26}}</ref>