THE 100 GREATEST BOXERS OF ALL TIME #34: CHARLEY BURLEY
83 WINS (50 BY KO), 12 LOSSES, 2 DRAWS
International Boxing Hall of Fame Inductee 1992
6’3” heavyweight Jay D. Turner had a 5 ½” height advantage over his opponent and, at 219 ½ pounds, a 68 ½ pound weight advantage as well. Jay D. Turner also had no chance of winning because his opponent was Charley Burley. This unassuming Pittsburgh boxer was small even for a middleweight (160 pounds) but possessed a skill level that completely nullified the size advantages bigger men held over him, including heavyweights like Turner. On March 13, 1942, despite having every single physical advantage a fighter could have, Turner left the Minneapolis boxing ring with a “face beaten to raw beefsteak in six rounds,” reported The Ring. Charley Burley was awesome.
Burley belonged to two noteworthy collections of talented fighters. First, to a crop of elite fighters coming out of Southwestern Pennsylvania in the 1930s and 1940s that included Burley, Fritzie Zivic, Billy Soose, Billy Conn, Teddy Yarosz, and Jackie Wilson, among others. Early in his career, Burley would beat future champions Zivic and Soose. Sadly, fights with Conn and Yarosz never materialized, with some fans believing they wanted nothing to do with the man who might have been the most talented boxer to come out of the region since the legendary Harry Greb.
The second unofficial group of great fighters to which Charley belonged was a generation of hard-luck black middleweights whose skin color played a huge role in preventing their shots at a world championship. Renowned writer Budd Schulberg dubbed them the “Black Murderer’s Row.” They included Hall of Famers Lloyd Marshall, Holman Williams, Eddie Booker, and Cocoa Kid, as well as Oakland Billy Smith, Jack Chase, Aaron Wade, and Bert Lytell, none of whom even got a shot at a championship. And Burley was the best of them. His record against the “Black Murderer’s Row” would be 13 wins (3 by KO) against 6 losses, 1 draw, and 1 no-contest.
Blessed with unusually long arms for his size, Burley used his long-range, precision jab and superb footwork to keep opponents at bay. He kept his hands low to encourage the other man to punch, and when they did, his defensive head movement was among the best in the sport’s history. Weaving and rolling his head inches out of range, he then countered with an arching overhand right. It was not a style designed to please fans in an era that adored all-out sluggers, but it perplexed some of the best men in boxing.
Welterweight phenoms Sugar Ray Robinson and Henry Armstrong are often referred to by boxing historians as the two greatest pound-for-pound fighters who ever lived. While Burley was still a welterweight (147 pounds), the managers of both Robinson and Armstrong actively avoided him. Pundits began to refer to Charley Burley as the uncrowned champion of the division.
It was not necessarily certain that he would have beaten Sugar Ray and Homicide Hank, although that was always a possibility. But because Burley was so slick and crafty, even had they beaten him, he would have made them look bad doing it. His combination of speed, reach, and skill made him a tall order for anyone, Robinson and Armstrong included. That he was Black and quiet by nature meant that he did not draw big crowds outside of Pittsburgh, and that meant there existed little incentive for these champions to fight the most dangerous opponent out there for them.
So, it was on to the middleweights for Burley, looking for bigger paydays against bigger men who might be convinced by their size advantages to face him in the ring. On April 21, 1944, Charley dropped Archie Moore (the future light heavyweight king and holder of the all-time knockout record) three times to take a lopsided ten-round decision. Archie later called Burley “The toughest of them all.”
From 1944 through 1946, Charley was never lower than the third-ranked middleweight contender by The Ring magazine, but champion Tony Zale ignored him. Again, some took to calling him the uncrowned champion of the division.
Though he only once weighed more than 162 pounds himself, Burley began to regularly take on light heavyweights (175 pounds) — and in Turner’s case, one heavyweight — to get decent paydays as his career continued into the mid-1940s.
Frustrated at never getting his fair shot, Charley Burley retired in 1950 as the veteran of 98 fights without having once been knocked out or stopped. He spent his later years working for the Pittsburgh sanitation department, mostly forgotten. To his dying day, Hall of Fame trainer Eddie Futch (the mastermind behind Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Larry Holmes, and Riddick Bowe) considered Charley Burley “the finest all-around fighter I ever saw.”
Charley Burley’s record vs. Hall of Famers & lineal world champions:
3/21/1938 — L 10 — Fritzie Zivic
6/13/1938 — W 10 — Fritzie Zivic
8/22/1938 — W 15 — Cocoa Kid
11/21/1938 — W 10 — Billy Soose
7/17/1939 — W 10 — Fritzie Zivic
12/1/1939 — L 15 — Holman Williams
9/3/1940 — L 10 — Jimmy Bivins
2/26/1942 — W 10 — Holman Williams
5/25/1942 — L 10 — Ezzard Charles
6/23/1942 — W 10 — Holman Williams
6/29/1942 — L 10 — Ezzard Charles
8/14/1942 — W (TKO) 9 — Holman Williams
10/16/1942 — L 15 — Holman Williams
12/11/1942 — L 10 — Lloyd Marshall
4/19/1943 — D 10 — Cocoa Kid
5/14/1943 — No-Contest 10 — Holman Williams
4/21/1944 — W 10 — Archie Moore
7/11/1945 — L 12 — Holman Williams