The term ‘uncrowned champion’ has been used and abused throughout boxing history, but this middleweight contender won that title the hard way.
Charley Burley was born on September 6, 1917, in Bessemer, the only son of a total of seven children born to a black father and an Irish mother. He would move to Pittsburgh as a child after his father’s death, and became interested in boxing at a young age. He had a successful amateur career crowned by an invitation to participate in the Olympic Trials before the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, which he refused to attend due to his objection to the Nazi regime.
He made his professional debut in 1936, fighting as a welterweight. Very soon he would find himself fighting within the confines of what would become known as “Killer’s Row”, a group of black fighters who were shunned by most other fighters on the planet, including some of his own.
In an effort to escape that situation, Burley would sometimes fight men much heavier than himself, being outweight by as much as 70 pounds in a heavyweight fight at one point. Even in that hostile setting, Burley was never stopped in his 98 pro fights, even though he faced some of the greatest men of his era who would step into the ring with him, including names like Fritzie Zivic, Archie Moore, Billy Soose. and EzzardCharles. Some of his best fights were against other members of Murderer’s Row like Cocoa Kid and Holman Williams.
The names of those who politely refused to intervene with Burley are equally revealing: Billy Conn, Marcel Cerdan, and even the great Sugar Ray Robinson reportedly turned down any and all chances to get in the ring with Burley, who had a reputation for being a teacher. defensive player and a solid puncher with uncanny technical ability and deadly accuracy.
In an era where boxing was in the hands of the mob and some other dark forces, the sport conspired to deny Burley a title shot at any kind of world championship available at the time, both at welterweight and middleweight. He defeated several past or future world champions, including Zivic and Moore, who once called him “the greatest fighter of all time”, echoing a sentiment also expressed by legendary trainer Eddie Futch and many other connoisseurs of that epoch.
Burley retired in 1950, going 83-12-2 and 1 no contest, with 50 stoppage wins. Although he was only 32 at the time, he left behind a frustrating career and took a menial job as a garbage collector to make ends meet.
He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1992.
