http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/ ... arles.html
I found the bit about how the death of his overmatched February 1948 opponent, welterweight Sam Baroudi, affected him especially interesting. Also how the first Marciano fight could very easily have turned out differently if Charles hadn't caught that forearm in the throat from a missed Marciano punch in the 8th.
Article text. in case the link goes away:
Ezzard Charles: Lawrenceville's fighting machine
50 years ago, pugilist tangled with Marciano
By BILL OSINSKI
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
He died in a veterans' hospital in Chicago, as poor as when he was born in a shack in the Rocky Knob section of Lawrenceville.
Before that sad circle came full, though, Ezzard Charles fought his way to glory. He was the heavyweight champion of the world. Yet, his earnings, at least in terms of today's lottery-sized purses, were little more than chump change.
He was never proclaimed a hero in his hometown until years after he died. And like his friend and contemporary, Jackie Robinson, he only went back to his native Georgia once.
The man who was the model for Muhammad Ali fought his last bouts in places like Boise, Oklahoma City and Juarez, Mexico. Then, he hit the pro wrestling circuit; he was always the good guy. However, his earnings weren't enough to keep from losing his home.
He played the cello; he played stickball in the streets. No one has recorded a memory of seeing him drink, smoke or swear.
He was the kind of champ people say they want -- humble, community-oriented, religious, a family man. Yet, he was forgotten not long after the last time he unlaced his gloves.
None of which alters the fact that the man could box.
"Ezzard Charles was a fighting machine," said Richard Christmas, Charles' boyhood friend and longtime personal secretary.
Charles fought 122 bouts as a pro, one or more a month in his prime years and beyond. He boxed so often he could've been the host of early TV's "Friday Night Fights". He beat most of the best of his time -- Joe Louis, Archie Moore, Jersey Joe Walcott.
Twice, he challenged the never-defeated Rocky Marciano. Both times, he lost. Still, Charles was the only fighter ever to go 15 rounds with Marciano.
Christmas lives in Cincinnati where a young Charles moved to live.
"Nobody could beat him"
Everywhere else, they called Charles the Cincinnati Cobra; but back in Lawrenceville, they just called him Snooks.
Charles was born in 1921. The country doctor in attendance, Webster Pierce Ezzard, lent his last name to be used as the baby boy's first.
His first boxing match that anyone can remember was in a ring roped off on the lawn of the mayor at the time, Grover Montgomery.
"He could knock any of those little kids down," said Bonnie Kate Reese, Charles' aunt, during a 1986 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Nobody could beat him." Reese is now deceased.
When Charles was about nine or 10, his parents divorced. His father moved to Lorrain, Ohio, and never saw his son again, until he fought in Cleveland about two decades later. His mother moved to New York and left Ezzard to be raised by his maternal grandmother, Maude Foster, who lived in Cincinnati and worked as a maid.
Theirs was a righteous household. His grandmother made sure he attended church regularly.
"You can't scare a clean-living man, and my grandchild is clean-living," Foster said in an article in "The Ring" magazine in 1951, after Charles had gained the undisputed heavyweight title by defeating his boyhood idol, Joe Louis.
In a way, his grandmother helped launch his boxing career. She gave him 50 cents, which he used to seek some training at a local gym. They told him to clear out; he was too scrawny.
Charles worked as a stock boy in a local store, where he "trained" by incessantly running up and down the stairs. The proprietors recalled that even after he became successful, Charles would come back and work at the store for free during holiday rush periods.
His first real trainer, Bert Williams, at first thought Charles was too small and too weak to make a good fighter. "But he had the heart and the determination. He wanted to live in the gym," Williams said in the magazine article.
Christmas, commenting during a recent telephone interview, said Charles swept through amateur tournaments, fighting as a welterweight and then a middleweight.
In 1940, Charles turned pro. Christmas recalled that when professional handlers and trainers were being hired, Grandmother Foster inserted herself into the negotiations by demanding that Christmas, the neighborhood boy she knew and trusted, be a permanent part of the Charles camp.
"Contracts didn't mean nothing to Grandma," Christmas said.
World War II interrupted Charles' career. In the military in 1943-45, Charles drove an officer's Jeep and boxed exhibition matches. After the war, Charles seriously considered giving up the ring, partly because a Jeep accident had left him with one leg shorter than the other, Christmas said. Go see some fights and then decide, Christmas advised his friend.
Charles decided he could beat the fighters of the day, Christmas said. For the years 1946 and '47, Charles racked up a 20-1 record. Then he started off 1948 by knocking out Moore. His next fight was with a welterweight named Sam Baroudi. Christmas recalls that Baroudi seemed way out of his class and was taking a pounding from Charles.
"I thought, if he gets knocked down again, he might never get up," Christmas said. In the 10th round, Baroudi got knocked down and didn't get up. He later died from the injuries.
The death had a devastating impact on Charles, Christmas said. He had literally made up his mind to stop fighting, but Baroudi's father talked with Charles and assured him that his son's death was not Charles' fault. Charles went back into the ring, but he was never the same fighter, Christmas said.
Before the Baroudi fight, boxing writers called Charles' style vicious, he said. But after that bout, Charles started "kind of pulling back," Christmas said. "He started cutting fighters instead of knocking them out," he said.
Nevertheless, after whipping all the contending light heavyweights, Charles climbed to the top rung of the boxing world and won a partial heavyweight title by beating Walcott in 1949.
The next year, he battered an aging Louis and became the undisputed champ.
"I'll try to keep it as clean as the fellow who just stepped down," Charles said at the time.
He'd come a long way from Rocky Knob in some ways, but even as the new champ, he couldn't leave poverty far behind.
"I'm about the poorest heavyweight champion, financially, the game has seen in years and years," Charles said in "The Ring".
Charles made four successful defenses of his title, including another win over Walcott. But in 1951, Walcott beat him twice, and Charles would never regain the title.
After losing to Walcott those last two times, Christmas said, Charles was diagnosed with a heart murmur. He took a two-month layoff, then started fighting again.
Two epic battles
Charles is best remembered for his two losses to Rocky Marciano, on June 17 and September 17, 1954. Both fights were at Yankee Stadium, and Christmas was there each time.
"Hey, Ezzy, stand still a minute!" Christmas recalls hearing from the ringside crowd during the early rounds of the first fight. Charles dazzled Marciano with his speed, he said.
"For the first seven rounds, I don't know how the judges could've given Marciano a single round," Christmas said.
When the bell rang for the eighth round, Marciano made a bull rush at Charles, he said. He threw a wild punch that ended as a forearm blow to Charles' throat.
After that, Christmas said, Charles had difficulty breathing. For most of the rest of the fight, Charles simply covered up to protect his face and head from Marciano's blows. But in the last two rounds, he made a valiant comeback, which made the final decision a close one, but in Marciano's favor.
Later, Marciano would say it had been the toughest fight of his career.
Three months later, the same two boxers met again, with the title on the line again.
In the seventh round, Charles almost won the title back.
"He hit Marciano with a right uppercut, split his nose wide open, gristle and all," Christmas said. Though Marciano was gushing blood from the wound, his handlers jammed cotton up his nose and the fight went on, Christmas said.
"Today, they would've stopped the fight right then," he said.
In the eighth, Marciano knew he had little time left to make a move, he said. He pounded Charles into submission, winning by TKO.
"Truth be told, Marciano retired after that fight," Christmas said. Marciano retired as the only undefeated champ in modern boxing history.
By contrast, Charles could only keep on fighting. He fought 17 more times in the next two years, retired for the first time in 1957, then fought six more times in 1958 and 1959, losing four of those matches.
For all those fights, Charles earned a total of about $750,000, Christmas said. About two-thirds of that total came from the two Marciano bouts, he said.
However much or little his prize purses were, they didn't last. Christmas said Charles' finances were depleted by bad investments in real estate and business. Also, Charles provided financially for several relatives, including his mother, while also supporting a wife and three children, Christmas said.
For a short time after he finally retired for good, Christmas said, Charles worked in a Cincinnati youth program. However, he was stung when co-workers resented the fact that he had only a high school diploma for a job that required a college degree.
Charles quit and went on the pro wrestling circuit, but he could not earn enough to prevent the foreclosure on his main home in Cincinnati, Christmas said.
In the mid-1960s, Charles was diagnosed with Lou Gherig's disease. A politically connected friend obtained a position for him with a youth sports program in Chicago, and Charles and his family moved there for his final years.
Not long before he died in 1975, his admirer, Muhammad Ali, staged a benefit fund-raiser for Charles, bringing in $100,000 to help with Charles' medical expenses. Christmas recalls that Ali pushed Charles' wheelchair into the banquet hall that night.
One trip back home
In the early 1940s, Charles took a train trip back to Lawrenceville. It was his only return to the town of his birth.
During the brief visit, he stopped by to meet with Dr. Ezzard, and he spoke at a local school. Then he went back to Cincinnati.
Christmas said his friend Charles would talk to him about many things, but he seldom spoke of life in Georgia.
"Things that he didn't like, he didn't talk about much," Christmas said.
However, some Lawrenceville people who never knew Charles have made sure he was memorialized in his hometown.
In 1979, a drive led by the Lawrenceville Jaycees resulted in the erection of a monument to Charles on the green of what is now the historic courthouse.
"He was one of the most underrated heavyweights ever," said Lanny Franklin, the head of the Jaycees at the time and a former chairman of the Georgia Boxing Commission. "And he was an extremely decent individual."
Shortly after he became the champ, Charles said he didn't intend to flaunt his title or flash his money.
"I've come up the hard way," he said. "You see, now I am the champion. Yes sir, this is a great country."
.Ok if you have a batter rec (Featherweight) put it on :x . OYAH! Can u pleas give me a list of your best boxers? 
?! Is the next SRR 