Ezzard Charles This page intentionally left blank Ezzard Charles A Boxing Life William Dettloff McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Dettloff, William. Ezzard Charles : a boxing life / William Dettloff. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-9743-0 (softcover : acid free paper) ISBN 978-1-4766-1947-7 (ebook) ♾ 1. Charles, Ezzard, 1921–1975 2. Boxers (Sports)— United States—Biography. I. Title. GV1132.A44D47 2015 796.83092—dc23 [B] 2015014215 BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE © 2015 William Dettloff. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: Ezzard Charles poses wearing heavyweight world title belt circa 1950 (photograph courtesy of Lou Manfra) Printed in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com To Kim This page intentionally left blank Table of Contents Acknowledgments ix Preface 1 Introduction 3 1. Snooks 5 2. No Cheap Ambition 16 3. Jake 26 4. The Garden 34 5. Baroudi 48 6. The Price 57 7. Going Heavy 64 8. Hey, Aren’t You Ezzard Charles? 77 9. Joe 91 10. Unforgivable 108 11. What They Came For 126 12. A Good Race Horse 144 13. Rocky 166 14. How Much Is Enough? 185 15. The Flood 195 Chapter Notes 205 Bibliography 214 Index 217 vii This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments here are many people without whose support this work wouldn’t have come to be, not Tthe least of whom is Nigel Collins, the former longtime editor- in-chief of Ring maga- zine. Besides giving me a voice and doing his best to fashion me into a passable writer over my career at The Ring, Nigel gave me full access to the entire Ring archive for the purposes of researching this work, even as my association with the magazine was ending. His guid- ance and support were invaluable. I owe a great debt to my parents, William and Priscilla Dettloff, and to my parents- in-law, Salvatore and Jean Minetta, all gone too soon. I must thank Ray and Marilyn Dowd, who opened their home to me many years ago and encouraged my writing at every turn. My gratitute also to Steve Farhood, whose crisp, fun writing style informed my earliest exposure to sports journalism and whose prose I strove to emulate when, by some wonderful accident of the universe, I started writing for him. My sister, Mary Dettloff- Reilly, also has my deep gratitude for her steady and unyield- ing support over the book’s long development. Whether I needed inspiration or an educated opinion on a dubious turn of phrase, she was there, always willing to inspire, to guide, and to help. I am not convinced it would have been written if not for her. Two people who were close to Ezzard Charles took the time to speak with me and provided information I couldn’t possibly have gotten anywhere else: Richard Christmas, who was Charles’ boyhood friend and later his personal secretary, and Ezzard Charles II, who came along when his father was just about done fighting but who shared valuable insights nonetheless. I will always regret that the book was not done in time for Mr. Christ- mas to read it; he died in December 2013, about a year after our last conversation. I am happy and thankful to have gotten the photos included within, contributed by J. Russell Peltz, Craig Hamilton and Lou Manfra, gentlemen and scholars each, as well as great friends of the fight game. It should go without saying that it is the characters themselves and not the writers that make any story interesting; and if this one is interesting it is because of the wonderful and awful characters who inhabited Ezzard Charles’ world. So it is the forgotten kings and their kind who have my profound gratitude: the great Black Murderer’s Row, the journey- men pugs, the champions and the gangsters, the nameless sparring partners and bucket- carriers and late- night card- players who provided the backdrop to Charles’ life. It is the Cotton Club and Toots Shor’s and Dempsey’s and the ladies and the cheap-seat boo- birds. They’re all gone now, or will be soon, just as we will be. I can only hope that this work con- veys to the reader just a hint of what it was like when they lived and breathed. I would be remiss if I didn’t use this space to thank my agent, Richard Henshaw, and ix x Acknowledgments my kids, Kayla, Angelina and Billy Boy, who fill my days with light and life and who I hope someday may take pity on their old man and give him a sympathy read. Finally, this book would not have been written without the support and love of my wonderful wife Kim, who endured the long silences and lonely afternoons it required. She knows me better than I know myself, and I can only do what I do because she does what she does. She remains, in all the most important ways, my co- writer. Preface he idea for this project was born in 2002, when Nigel Collins, then editor of The Ring Tmagazine, asked me to write a section for the magazine ranking the twenty best- ever light heavyweights. Before I started researching, I figured that the great and revered Archie Moore, who scored more knockouts than any fighter in the history of boxing, would get the top spot, followed maybe by Bob Foster or Billy Conn, then Michael Spinks, Tommy Loughran and other old pugs nobody knew or cared about anymore. I knew that Ezzard Charles was loved by the purists and the old- heads and that he’d fought some at light-heavy, but had never won the championship at that weight and was mostly remembered for his short, fairly unremarkable tenure as heavyweight cham- pion. Almost for the hell of it I researched his record at light heavyweight—a kind of no- man’s division between the glamor classes of middleweight and heavyweight—and found that he beat, among others, Moore three times, once by knockout, and Jimmy Bivins, Lloyd Marshall and Charley Burley, each more than once. These were the hard, great, black fighters no one else wanted to fight, especially the popular white fighters, and when he was on his game Charles went through them like they weren’t there. Joey Maxim, a brilliant light heavyweight with one of the best jabs ever, was whipped five times by Charles. Bivins, Burley, Marshall, Maxim and Moore all are in the Boxing Hall of Fame, as they should be. Charles is too, and his record against that group proved to me that Charles was the best light heavyweight ever, and not by a little. I wrote my section for The Ring with him at the top, and I moved on, but questions about him and his career picked at me. I looked for more information about him, but there wasn’t much: a few nostalgic magazine articles; a mention here or there. There were no books about Ezzard Charles. It didn’t make sense. How was it possible that this great light heavyweight fighter had never won the light heavyweight title? Why did he have to move to heavyweight to get a title fight? How was it that he beat Moore three times and yet most rated Moore the best in the division? And why could one find several good biographies covering Moore’s career and life, but none that did the same for Charles? The same went for Charles’ most celebrated heavyweight opponents, Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano. There are at least a half dozen biographies cov- ering each. I kept an eye out for a Charles biography over the next several years. Nothing. In the meantime, two books were published about Burley, whom Charles whipped twice, fairly easily. Then one covering Bivins, whom Charles knocked so cold in their third fight that Bivins had to be revived by ring doctors. Eventually there came too a biography of heavy- 1 2 P r e f a c e weight Jersey Joe Walcott, who Charles whipped twice (three times if you asked most, but that’s another story). For me that sealed it. Ezzard Charles deserved to be remembered and admired. He didn’t get the credit he deserved, although he was one of the best fighters ever, and even today he is overlooked. No more. I can only hope that after all this time this work does him justice. He deserves that much. Introduction zzard Charles was one of the best prizefighters who ever lived, and yet there wasn’t a Eiwhole lot that even a good, experienced fight guy could do for him. Some guys had the gift of gab, or a thunderous punch, or a great back story. Some had unusual charisma or presence. As heavyweight champion Charles had none of these. He was just a poor kid from an American slum, no different, really, than other poor kids from other American slums. But he wasn’t a palooka. He didn’t talk in broken or mangled English. His nose wasn’t mashed, and he didn’t get a big push from the mob. He’d never done any jail time. And he wasn’t the first to do anything.