Charley Burley, Myth or True Great?

[HomicideHenry]

You always hear stories from different people saying "This guy," or "That guy," was something extraordinary, a once in a lifetime kind of fighter, but when you cross examine the evidence and facts you begin to question it all.

Charley Burley is one of those guys for me.

Archie Moore probably was the most vocal about Burley, but I disagree strongly with him. Ezzard Charles absolutely made Archie look like nothing multiple times, even kayoing him. Not to mention Charles also beat Burley.

Eddie Futch is another who said Burley was the greatest.... But how can you say that when Burley lost to Holman Williams multiple times? Losing to Lloyd Marshall? Losing to Jimmy Bivins? Losing to Fritzie Zivic?

The stories you hear about Cerdan, LaMotta and Robinson ducking Burley sounds almost ridiculous when you look long and hard at it all.... Unfortunately we only have the Oakland Billy Smith fight film to gauge Burley on and quite frankly it's not all that impressive.

It's difficult to imagine Ray Arcel, the manager of Billy Conn, allegedly outright refusing his fighter to ever meet up with Burley when Conn was a top 20 all-time middleweight in his own right and an all-time top five light heavyweight as well as a terror in the Heavyweight division.


What do you guys think?

Personally I think there was plenty of guys who were just as good as Burley, and like him never got a title shot.

[HomicideHenry]

I mean think about it.... Jake LaMotta technically fought at Light Heavyweight for a large portion of his career.... Back then 161-175 was Light Heavyweight.... He ALWAYS had struggles with losing weight, and had he double crossed Billy Fox he'd of been the #1 contender for Gus Lesnevich's crown.

At the 175 pound limit LaMotta kayoed Bob Satterfield (and this was before Satterfield had a bunch of losses). At the weight limit he defeated (also) Bob Murphy when LaMotta was all but completely shot as a fighter. Does this sound like a guy who would DUCK anyone regardless of size and ability?

[orbtastic]

Holman Williams was a great boxer, he just had hands made of coral and had no punch to match.

I hardly think you can hold losing to him against Burley. In fact Burley dropped him four times in one of their fights.

Futch himself said that he would rather watch Williams shadow box rather than most other boxers fight. He also saw Burley fight numerous times.

[Abradolf Lincler]

Sounds like you're playing devil's advocate. How can he be great when he lost to...a few great fighters? Half of whom he also beat?

You say he didn't have many high profile fights against the Row. He had 19 of them (if you place Joe Carter among them, 17 otherwise), facing every other member aside from Eddie Booker. He went 12-5-1 with 1 NC, the only unavenged loss being a split decision to Marshall. You're not gonna find another member with a record as consistent as his.

Charles, Bivins, and Marshall (4 of his unavenged losses) were all larger greats whom he held his own with. So, too, was Charley 'Doc' Williams toward the end of Burley's career. Never stopped in his career.

I don't see how you can question his record or the existing footage. Question the "he was ducked by everyone" business all you want. A lot of that certainly is questionable.

[Ambling Alp II]

I remember many years a go (around 2005) I had an interesting discussion about Burley with boxscribe (who unfortunately stopped posting long ago)
He was very high on Burley. (He had actually wrote a book on him.) I was not nearly as high on him. Believe it or not I had never heard of Holman Williams or Lloyd Marshall or most of the fighters that Burley had fought. Remember, this was before Williams and Marshall were in the Hall of Fame.
I looked at how he did against the fighters that I was familiar with.

He lost to Bivins
Lost to Charles twice.
Draw with Abrams.
2-1 vs Zivic,. Zivic was Hall of Famer, but literally dozens of guys had beaten him.
He did beat Moore, but that was middleweight where Moore was not as good.
That really didn't impress me all that much.

Boxscribe and I had a nice, civil discussion and I pointed how I saw Burley did against "name" opponents.
He patiently brought up Williams, Marshall, and other quality opponents that Burley beat that I was unfamiliar with at the time. I started looking up their records and found that they had beaten quality opponents. This made me reevaluate Burley as well as his opponents. Also made me look deeper into fighter's records form then on.

ie- You have to not only look at the guy's results, you have to look at his opponents results, and the opponent's opponents results

I never did quite rate Burley as high as boxscribe did. However, I certainly now rate Burley higher than I once did. I think he is close to being one the Top 50 fighters of all time.

[Cojimar 1946]

Abrams is actually thought by many to have deserved the decision against Robinson.

[Cojimar 1946]

Its also worth noting that his level of competition is higher than many guys. He was fighting many of the best available opponents whereas many other fighters dont fight the best available.

[elmersalsa]

I got the great Charley Burley rated at #32 all time pound per pound. We never know how he would have fared at a world title fight. How would he would have done being world champion.

[Controversial]

The lack of footage makes it hard to really judge him but he was obviously a very good fighter. He was forced to move up to middleweight due to the welterweight title being frozen for 4 years because of WW2, lets face it he would have beaten the WW champ Freddie Cochrane without too much trouble.

The first loss to Zivic was said to have been a poor decision which Burley later avenged twice. Zivic also famously bought Burleys contract so he wouldn't have to fight him again.

And in regards to losing to Charles, not bad defeats when you consider Charles was the naturally bigger man, an ATG and one of the finest LHWs in boxing history, and a pretty decent HW as well. When you also consider in 1942 when Burley fought Charles, Burley fought 17 times that year, fighting Charles twice in five weeks with a fight with Holman Williams sandwiched between them. In fact he fought Holman Williams four times in 1942. All whilst working a full time job.

Burley was never stopped in 98 fights and was in Ring Magazines top 10 for 100 consecutive months. He beat three future world champions, Zivic (welterweight), Soose (middleweight) and Moore (LHW). Thats a pretty decent resume for someone who never got a sniff of a world title shot.

[APerno]

Burley is in The Ring top ten ratings (MW) for the years 1942, 1944, 1945, and 1946. After that he disappears from the rankings.

With the titles on hold for the war years, '42 '44, '45 were non-title fight years. In '46 everyone wanted the Zale-Graziano fight and that translated into a trilogy that took almost two years to complete. By then Burley had fallen out of the rankings. So exactly when was he ducked?

Tony Zale would have been a fool to to pass on the Graziano fight, Burley would never have drawn the gates Graziano did.

When did Robinson and LaMotta duck him? By the time either was champion Burley wasn't in the ranking, in any weight class, .

Truth is Burley was going to be a tough fight for anyone, made everyone look bad even when beating him.

But I don't see exactly who was ducking this guy; he got burnt by the War and then Graziano's popularity. By the time the war years were over and the fight game got cranked up again, Burley was out of the rankings so why fight him?

P.S. In 1941 he is ranked 5th at WW, but SRR is ranked #1, so he wasn't going to get a shot at Cochrane either. I just don't see when he was actually ducked. He got burnt by bad timing; and when the big fights were there, '47-'54, he wasn't.

[gilgamesh]

I remember many years a go (around 2005) I had an interesting discussion about Burley with boxscribe (who unfortunately stopped posting long ago)
He was very high on Burley. (He had actually wrote a book on him.) I was not nearly as high on him. Believe it or not I had never heard of Holman Williams or Lloyd Marshall or most of the fighters that Burley had fought. Remember, this was before Williams and Marshall were in the Hall of Fame.
I looked at how he did against the fighters that I was familiar with.

He lost to Bivins
Lost to Charles twice.
Draw with Abrams.
2-1 vs Zivic,. Zivic was Hall of Famer, but literally dozens of guys had beaten him.
He did beat Moore, but that was middleweight where Moore was not as good.
That really didn't impress me all that much.

Boxscribe and I had a nice, civil discussion and I pointed how I saw Burley did against "name" opponents.
He patiently brought up Williams, Marshall, and other quality opponents that Burley beat that I was unfamiliar with at the time. I started looking up their records and found that they had beaten quality opponents. This made me reevaluate Burley as well as his opponents. Also made me look deeper into fighter's records form then on.

ie- You have to not only look at the guy's results, you have to look at his opponents results, and the opponent's opponents results

I never did quite rate Burley as high as boxscribe did. However, I certainly now rate Burley higher than I once did. I think he is close to being one the Top 50 fighters of all time.

Would you agree he's deserving of the often thrown around moniker "Best Fighter to Never Hold a World Championship"? Or at least in the discussion

[Ambling Alp II]

Sam Langford was better. He may have been number two. Billy Graham would have been close, as well as some of Burley's own rivals.

[bwu]

We can have legitimate differences of opinion about who ducked who, the greatest uncrowned champs and/or whether other guys were slighted as much as Burley. Putting all that aside and getting to the question, the guy was no myth. He deserves to be labeled as a great.

[jimglen]

"the Myth" is in fact the immortal type status attached to the so called legendary "Greats" altogether, they are simply overblown.

SRR, Greb, Jack Johnson, Joe Louis (actually probably the most balanced & realistic legacy), Marciano, ALI, Hagler, RJJ, LL and numerous others are ALL too Hyped and it's just not True to Life accurately.

Now thats not to say they aren't greats - They ARE...

BUT, the difference between GREATS, Greats, greats and TOP Fighters is marginal and there are literally HUNDREDS and Thousands of them.


That is the Truth of Life, Boxing and the reality of the Business of this not really the sport that it should be...
Money, Ownership, Created Opportunity and Back Hand deals are what nullify it as a sport in the soley competative sense.

Burley was/is a Great and ALL of these pre mentioned level of greats & top, the very top fighters are all greats with little between them. That is the truth and what I have discovered while reasearching and understanding how this business works.


Boxing has given us No End of GREATS to research, discover and herald, and Thank GOD for that, they deserve it.
Charley Burley and the lot of them.

[Ambling Alp II]

I think you one fighter be great and someone else can be so great that they are more than a little better than him. For example, you can fairly say that Marciano was great; but that there was more than a little difference between him and Ali.

[cfang]

Burley is in The Ring top ten ratings (MW) for the years 1942, 1944, 1945, and 1946. After that he disappears from the rankings.

With the titles on hold for the war years, '42 '44, '45 were non-title fight years. In '46 everyone wanted the Zale-Graziano fight and that translated into a trilogy that took almost two years to complete. By then Burley had fallen out of the rankings. So exactly when was he ducked?

Tony Zale would have been a fool to to pass on the Graziano fight, Burley would never have drawn the gates Graziano did.

When did Robinson and LaMotta duck him? By the time either was champion Burley wasn't in the ranking, in any weight class, .

Truth is Burley was going to be a tough fight for anyone, made everyone look bad even when beating him.

But I don't see exactly who was ducking this guy; he got burnt by the War and then Graziano's popularity. By the time the war years were over and the fight game got cranked up again, Burley was out of the rankings so why fight him?

P.S. In 1941 he is ranked 5th at WW, but SRR is ranked #1, so he wasn't going to get a shot at Cochrane either. I just don't see when he was actually ducked. He got burnt by bad timing; and when the big fights were there, '47-'54, he wasn't.

Great post