A Career In Perspective: The Myth of Charley Burley

"The uncrowned welterweight and middleweight champion of the world"

-Banner at charleyburley.com

Yes. Charley Burley (who died in 1992) has a home page. I admit that I was surprised, though perhaps I shouldn't have been. Quite a few boxers of yore have very impressive fansites. (Check out the Jim Jeffries fansite sometime. I wish I could remember the link. It was good for a laugh.) This one appears to be largely a commercial for a book telling Burley's story and (to a lesser degree) the stories of other black middleweights of the 1940s who were sadly locked out of the championship picture, who were genuinely good fighters, and whose stories deserve to be told. Light heavyweight champ and heavyweight challenger Archie Moore called Burley the best man he ever fought, and Hall of Fame trainer Eddie Futch called Burley the greatest fighter he'd ever seen. In 2002, The Ring magazine listed Burley #39 on their list of 'The Eighty Greatest Fighters in the Last Eighty Years.' For a bit of perspective as to just how highly the compilers of that list thought of Burley, consider this: Michael Spinks (who unified the light heavyweight championship and is the only legitimate, reigning light heavyweight champion to challenge and defeat the legitimate heavyweight champion in a heavyweight world championship fight) is #41 and Thomas Hearns (the first man in boxing to win alphabet titles in four divisions and who fought in two of the greatest fights ever against two of the greatest fighters ever, Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvelous Marvin Hagler) is #67. Clearly, Burley was an amazing fighter and a lot of people continue to think very well of him.

Are they overcompensating?

Race was a factor in many fighters being denied title shots in the 1930s and 1940s, it's very true. It wasn't always the only factor, however. Archie Moore had 19 losses when he finally fought Joey Maxim for the light heavyweight title. This included a stoppage loss to one Leonard Morrow in 1948, who knocked Moore out in the first round. Morrow floored Moore three times, the final time for a ten count. Morrow's record at the time? 11-2-1 with 5 KOs. Clearly, there were some arguments against a Moore title shot besides his race over Moore's career.

So let's examine Burley's career and see how it compares. First of all, over his entire career, Burley only had either eleven (according to The Ring magazine) or twelve (according to www.boxrec.com) or twelve losses. None of them were by knockout, and that's certainly an argument in his favor.

The men who beat him were Eddie 'Irish Red' Dolan (lifetime record of 90-9-3 (31), never fought for a championship) by eight round decision, Fritzie Zivic (future welterweight champion and Hall of Famer), Jimmy Leto (84-24-7 (27), lost to Izzy Jannazzo in a fight for the world welterweight title as recognized by the state of Maryland in 1941), Holman Williams (146-30-11 (46), never fought for a championship but lost to future champions Marcel Cerdan and Jake LaMotta in 1946, inducted into the IBHOF this year) three times, Jimmy Bivins (86-25-1 (31), who never fought for a world title and who lost a decision to the same Leonard Morrow who KOed Archie Moore in the first round, in 1949), Ezzard Charles (future heavyweight champion and Hall of Famer) twice, Lloyd Marshall (71-25-4 (36), who never fought for a title but who was knocked out in 5 by future middleweight champion and light heavyweight challenger Carl 'Bobo' Olson and in 1 by future heavyweight challenger Harry 'The Kid" Matthews in 1951), Bert Lytell (71-23-7 (24), who never fought for a championship but lost to future champions Harold Johnson, Jake LaMotta and Archie Moore), and Charley 'Doc' Williams (49-18-1 (21), whose record suggests he was a career opponent who had lost in most of his previous steps up in class before beating Burley). Three of these guys (Zivic, Williams, and Charles) are Hall of Famers (though it can be argued that Williams made the list because of the minimum required number of inductees this year and that he doesn't really deserve the berth) and one of them, Charles, is one of the greatest fighters (on The Ring's '80 Greatest Fighters' list, he is #13) of all time.

Then we come to the guys that Burley beat. He beat Archie Moore, flooring him three times and Moore clearly thought highly of Burley. Yet the ubiquitous Leonard Morrow knocked Moore out in the first round and he was neither the only guy to beat Moore nor the only guy you've likely never heard of to beat Moore. He fought a rubber with Zivic and went 2-1. He went 3-3 with one no contest against Holman Williams. He beat Billy Soose (who, in his turn, beat future middleweight champion Tony Zale badly and also beat Ken Overlin for the NYSAC version of the world middleweight title and drew with Ceferino Garcia), who was a good boxer for his short career. He fought with most of the other good black welter/middleweights of his and Williams' era and beat most of them at least once.

The fact remains that there are only three world champions (all future champs, when Burley fought them) and four Hall of Famers (including all three champions) on Burley's record. Against them he went a total of 6-6 with one no-contest. This is, in my opinion, just enough to make him Hall-worthy. No one at 160 or 175 could be criticized for losing to Ezzard Charles. He beat Moore in their only fight. He beat a prime Zivic two out of three in their rubber, and Zivic was a notoriously dirty fighter and hard to beat. He and Holman Williams, regardless of their comparative overall worthiness (Burley was clearly 'greater' than Williams overall, on paper), fought on exactly even terms.

Which brings us to the crux of the usual argument for Burley's real greatness, in the absence of concrete arguments in his record: Burley was ducked. Now, fighters certainly have been ducked by champions before. Ezzard Charles and Gene Tunney are considered two of the greatest light heavyweights of all time by most experts, and the light heavyweight champions of their respective eras consistently ducked them. Charles and Tunney, however, proved their greatness in two ways. First, they beat most of the top light heavies of their day, including the champions who wouldn't fight them for the title when they had the title. Second, they both stepped up to fight for the heavyweight championship when unable to get light heavyweight title fights and they both won. Jake LaMotta, Ray Robinson, Marvin Hagler and others were all ducked for years before getting their middleweight shots. Robinson was also ducked at lightweight and welterweight, before winning the welterweight championship. Archie Moore claimed to have been ducked for years and years at both light heavyweight and middleweight, but it can be argued his resume was never quite championship material for many of those years.

All of these great fighters fought for a championship at some time, however, and won it. Burley never fought for a championship. More, he very rarely fought top 'name' contenders. Even more significantly, he didn't fight top contenders even after WWII and the increase of top-level opportunities for black fighters. The counter-argument is that the top contenders ducked him and he was forced to fight other black fighters who were also ducked for their level of skill. Yet while all of these men were clearly good fighters and worthy contenders, their resumes are not the equal of most of the men who did fight for titles during the same periods. All of them (including Burley) lost to men the average student of the sport has never heard of today. I do believe that race did play a significant part of their lack of opportunity, but Henry Armstrong, Ray Robinson, Joe Louis, John Henry Lewis, Archie Moore, and Ezzard Charles all proved that if you were good enough, for long enough, against recognizable opposition, the opportunities would eventually be there. The argument can be made that none of these men were good enough, for long enough, against good enough competition.

There are many reasons fights don't happen. The biggest is not fear of defeat, but rather the analysis of the risk versus the reward. If a guy feels he will get enough fame and money out of it, he will fight knowing he has no chance. If a guy doesn't feel the reward is worth the risk, he won't make the fight until the reward increases. Should it be this way? No, but it is and this is not 'ducking' an opponent.

Even if one accepts the 'he was ducked' argument entirely at face value with no Locke-ian exercises in skepticism, however, one still has to face one hard fact: one is not great without achievement, even without the opportunity for that achievement. To use a contemporary example: Roy Jones and Darius Michaelchewski never fought one another. No matter how good Michaelchewski was, no matter how many men he beat, he wasn't the champion or the 'uncrowned champion' because he never fought Roy Jones. Even if the argument that Jones ducked Michaelchewski is true, even if Michaelchewski were the most skilled light heavyweight of all time, he was never champion because he never fought Roy Jones. He never matched Jones' achievements, so Jones is greater than Michaelchewski.

Charley Burley may have been denied his opportunities, even his chances to earn his opportunities, unfairly. He almost certainly would have beaten many of the top white fighters whom he did not fight, regardless of whether they ducked him or his management was simply unable to make the fights. Yet this does not make him 'great.' Greatness is built on accomplishment and the accomplishments are not there. It is a tragedy that he did not get the chance to accomplish what he certainly could have accomplished and that we did not get the chance to see for certain just what he might have accomplished. Yet a resume for greatness can not be built on 'if he got the chance.'

Burley may well truly have been the best fighter ever. We will never know and that is a tragedy. Yet he cannot be called one of the 'greatest' fighters ever, even if he was the best. No one can be great without proving it.