Moore Vs The Black Murderers Row

Apologies for those of you who were on the old BBC site with me and had to endure my ongoing and somewhat unhealthy Charley Burley obsession but the good folk on here have escaped it too long, but was going through my old 606 threads and thought this was worth dusting off. I read, some time ago a fascinating biography of the Old Mongoose Archie Moore and whilst the tales of Archie’s feats and achievements are fascinating enough in of themselves what I have found interesting is how instructive the career of Archie is in establishing the abilities of the group of fighters known as the black murderers row, such as Charley Burley, Lloyd Marshall, Holman Williams, Eddie Booker and Jack Chase.

But for his indomitable will to succeed and ability to fight on well into his 40s is extremely likely Moore would have been talked of as a member of this band with title shots being absent from Moore’s younger years when he was undoubtedly deserving of a shot. However as with many talented black fighters of the time this lack of shots meant Moore had little choice but to take frequent fights against the fully paid up members of the black murderer’s row such as the aforementioned.

Now with regard to Moore, in an age where the terms legend and all time great are bandied about for guys who are frankly undeserving Moore is the real deal. Is undoubtedly one of the top two or three light heavyweights ever (IBRO have him at one), no mean feat in one of boxings strongest divisions ever and is also a guy who regularly and deservedly features in many experts top 20 P4P of all time and is a guy who in my humble opinion who I would not raise an objection were guys to have him in the top ten.

Given this his record against other members of the black murderers row is surely a decent indication of their abilities irrespective of their lack of title or title chances. Moore’s record against these guys breaks down as follows

Burley 0 – 1
Chase 3 – 1 – 1
Booker 1 – 1 – 2
Marshall 2 – 0
Williams 1 – 1

Whilst it is clear that Moore held his own in this company and in the cases of Marshall and Chase had more the better of his battles it is clear that these guys more than held their own with an undoubted all time great and in the case of Booker and Burley had more the better of their battles, this is particularly impressive in the case of Burley who was probably more natural at either welter or middle and according to all reports absolutely dominated his battle with Moore, who lets not forget was a veteran of some 80 fights at the time they fought. Moore was certainly fulsome in his praise of these guys describing Burley as the best fighter he ever fought and in his opinion a fighter simply without compare, coming from a guy who fought Charles, Ali, Marciano, Maxim and Yarosz this is no small compliment.

Will make no apologies for posting yet another thread that is little more than a tenuous excuse to praise Burley but in a time of multiple belts when being a world champion is diluted to the point of being meaningless thought that anything that can illustrate just how good these oft overlooked guys cruelly denied the shots their talents deserved was worth writing.

Anything with Archie Moore in it tends to forgive all other transgressions - so we wont count the fact that you wrote the article against it. Interesting that burley was the only one to best him - clash of style you think? By all accounts he absolutely beat the carp out of him.

I often use the Murderers Row era when people talk about how bad the state of boxing is now. Back then you had a whole host of fighters frozen out and I question where the likes of Zale, Graziano, Mills, Lesnevitch, Maxim or even LaMotta would have ended up in histoy if the Murderers Row had not been frozen out.

One thing that I always find difficult to evaluate from that ea is the impact of the weights on fighters. Nowadays with the extra weight divisions weight tend to very streamlined and people put a huge amount of emphasis on even a cople of pounds difference here and there and the potential impact it had.

Back in the MR decade they would all face each other at varous different weights and and often be conceding large amounts of weight to each other. Trying to classify them into what their natural weight classes would be at various points in their career is difficult. Its hard to estimate the impact of the weight had on various wins and contests they had with each other. Even between fights they would bounce between several weight classes and there was no real incentive for them to stick to one division and make weight because they were never going to get a title shot anyway. The impression I get is that the fighters didnt really bother with making weight back then because there was no real point. As a result you have fighters like Burley, Cocoa Kid, Williams etc often fighting at middleweight or above when they were probably comfortable welters had they wanted to make that weight.

Who knows Shah, impossible to say whether they had fought two or three times whether Moore would have sussed him, he was not without intelligence or ring smarts. the rumour is Burley disliked Moore as he found him a bit arrogant and big headed so was far more aggressive than was the norm in the fight with some even going as far as to say he could have stopped him but chose to punish him over the full distance.

manos de piedra wrote:I often use the Murderers Row era when people talk about how bad the state of boxing is now. Back then you had a whole host of fighters frozen out and I question where the likes of Zale, Graziano, Mills, Lesnevitch, Maxim or even LaMotta would have ended up in histoy if the Murderers Row had not been frozen out.

One thing that I always find difficult to evaluate from that ea is the impact of the weights on fighters. Nowadays with the extra weight divisions weight tend to very streamlined and people put a huge amount of emphasis on even a cople of pounds difference here and there and the potential impact it had.

Back in the MR decade they would all face each other at varous different weights and and often be conceding large amounts of weight to each other. Trying to classify them into what their natural weight classes would be at various points in their career is difficult. Its hard to estimate the impact of the weight had on various wins and contests they had with each other. Even between fights they would bounce between several weight classes and there was no real incentive for them to stick to one division and make weight because they were never going to get a title shot anyway. The impression I get is that the fighters didnt really bother with making weight back then because there was no real point. As a result you have fighters like Burley, Cocoa Kid, Williams etc often fighting at middleweight or above when they were probably comfortable welters had they wanted to make that weight.

I can't help but believe that the weight did make a major difference - boxing has been cleaned up a bit - less wrestling, low blows headbutts elbows and all - referees were quite a bit more lax back then so using the weight to push around would have been used more frequently. However I think this had the effect of toughening up the opponents so where the skill level differed by a fairly wide margin the smaller man still managed to win. Burley for example battered the capr out of a fighter weighing 68 pounds more than him. Much the same as now really only alot more fuss made of it.

Yeah its very hard to assess. The era had about 10-15 black fighters that for a while at least were routinely frozen out. Eventually Charles and Moore would outlast the others but for a while a tleast they were seriously frozen out.

But of that pool of guys: Charles, Moore, Bivins, Marshall, Johnson, Burley, Chase, Wade, Booker, Lytell, Williams, Cocoa Kid etc you basically had a group of fighters of all shapes and sizes thrown togther for a period and none of them really had any incentive to make weight limits for divisions. For instance Moore lost a fight to Bivins giving away near 20lb weight difference and a few weeks later fought another MR fighter whilst holding a 10lb weight advantage. Its very mis mash. It would be like having Hopkins, Mayweather, Jones, Taylor, Tarver, Mosely, Johnson, Wright etc all fighting among themselves for the best part of a decade with no real weight class to define fights.

rowley wrote:Who knows Shah, impossible to say whether they had fought two or three times whether Moore would have sussed him, he was not without intelligence or ring smarts. the rumour is Burley disliked Moore as he found him a bit arrogant and big headed so was far more aggressive than was the norm in the fight with some even going as far as to say he could have stopped him but chose to punish him over the full distance.

Chilling that such a skilled fighter could be taken apart so easily by another. 4 or 5 knockdowns. Although it might have been a different story in a rematch - he himself said I was never beaten so badly in my life - so the psychological scars may have been permament. I can see why you like him so much.

Here's a video with some pictures of the BMR and an short clip of Burley talking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BOHIxGiTzA

Cheers for that GG, first time I have seen that.

The interesting point for me is similar to what Manos has said, the champions of this era were the likes of Zale, Graziano, Lesnevich, Maxim and LaMotta, all great fighters in their own right but they simply weren't the best of their time. The strength of depth from welterweight through to light heavyweight was ridiculous so it's only natural that Moore fighting with such frequency against great opposition was going to lose a few.

Moore now perceived to be a great fighter and a great humble man was a bit of an arrogant sod in his younger days but knowing you're good enough for a title fight must have been infuriating. The rest of the BMR carried themselves with more dignity at the time and thought very little of him so were more inclined to try and punish him.

No worries mate.

I did a thread a while back looking at Moore's results against some of the best he faced, trying to bring his abilities into perspective regardless of longevity and the crux of my argument was the abilities of the BMR guys (and Charles) to get the better of him.

The truth of course was that nobody keeps a clean sheet when they fight great fighters so often and these guys all proved each other to be great. As you say, Moore in his forties was a long reigning champion, at his best his record doesn't make him stand out from the Murderers Row members. Makes you wonder how many long reigning champions simply never got the shot...

Thanks for the link Galveston, I'd never seen it either. I love that drawing of Burley crying in the ring with Robinson, Zivic etc. all running away saying "Nobody wants to play with me!"