Was looking at something Saad said about Burley fighting Charles and Holman Williams in the same week and was thinking about what would have happened if these guys had been given chances in the 40s? At first I was thinking that they'd just clean up but then of course a lot of them were fighting around the war time when the belts were kind of in limbo. Gus Lesnevich held the title from 42-48 when he lost to freddie mills in 48' who lost to maxim in 1950. He lost to Bivins in 42' (ofc not a title fight) and mills' handlers made the mistake of putting him in with lloyd marshall in 47' and he got koed. Safe to assume that bivins, marshall, charles, moore etc would have made mincemeat of those guys but....
If they've had got their shots in like 44' then so would have perhaps archie moore. Charles was clearly the best of them so hed have probably won the middle title in the early mid 40s against zale/graziano/la motta then moved up to lt heavy, won that and then gone on to the heavys. Moore would probably have taken over the lt heavy title once charles moved up. It is possible that a lot of the murderer's row guys as they all fought around middle, lt heavy would still have not won titles anyway as they were maybe more unfortunate to be around at the same time as moore and charles rather than the unfair biase against black fighters or ww2. SRR would dominate the welters ofc and maybe La Motta would prove a tough nut for burley etc to crack at middle?