Battle of the green greats: Charles vs Robinson; December 1942

Ezz

 

Ezzard Charles takes this. It is one thing outboxing LaMotta, but Charles had just come off beating Burley. The added weight for this one would tell dramatically IMO

 

Probably Ezzard due to the weight difference, but it's probably a fight that Ray would have avoided.

 

Charles -fairly easily. Robinson would have been a sick maniac to fight him in '42.

When you have two guys with roughly the same abilities and experience, go with the one who outweighs the other by 18 lbs.

 

Wow interesting fight. I'll go against the grain and pick Robinson. I'm sure LaMotta was no Charles when it came to skills and Charles did beat Burley, but Robinson despite being the smaller man had a better chin. I think he might get outboxed by Charles for the majority of the fight, but I think Robinson probably stops him late. Similiar to Leonard-Hearns.

 

In 1942 Robinson is 8 years away from fighting full time at the Middle weight limit. Starting in 1947 most of his fights he weigs at or near the light middleweight limit. Charles on the other hand is starting to out grow the middleweight limit. It is easier to gain weight than it is to lose weight which would give Robinson an advantage. However, Charles is only 21. So is Robinson who is 2 months older than Charles.
They both fought on the sane card 12/1/1942 in Cleveland, Ohio. So why not make that date the match up? Also to make things more even lets take the fight out of Ohio since Charles is from Cincinnati. It won't be in New York either.
Going in to the fight Robinson is 38-0. He has wins over Sammy Angott, Marty Servo, Fritzie Zivic, Jake LaMotta & Izzy Jannazzo.
Charles is 27-2-1. He has losses to. Ken Overlin & Kid Tunero. His draw was also with Ken Overlin. His big wins are over Charley Burley & Joey Maxim.
Onpaper Robinson has the better resume. However Charles 2 wins over Burley are better than Robinson has done so far.
Weights Robinson weighs in at 145 Charles at 160. 145 is what Robinson weighed that night and having given a lot of weight to LaMotta, I think he would do it again. Charles weighed 166 in real life. I think that at his young age he should be able to make 160. The only red flag I see is that he weighed 165½ 1 and a half months before.
Charles has a half inch advantage in height and reach which means their about even in size.
When all things are even. The bigger stronger and faster wins this goes for all sports not just boxing. Charles is that guy here. He wins a close 15 round decision over Robinson.

The after effects. Tony Zale is the reigning middleweight champion. It is concivable that Charles with this win over Robinson could have gotten a shot at Zale, but I think Zale would have fought Billy Conn in Feb of 1943. A fight won by Conn. No championship was on the line. I think Charles would have beaten Zale as well. With World War 2 going on Zale did not fight till 1946 thous frezzing the championship up. In other words it was Feb 1943 or never for Charles to win a championship at Middle weight. He would also have the opition of facing Gus Lesnevich in Oct 1943 for the light heavyweight championship. This is like with Zale if he would have gotten the deserved oppertunity after defeating Robinson. It is very possible that he'd still be avoided and have to weight till he was a heavyweight to get his championship shot.
As for Robinson. I don't think his career is effected too much by the loss. He's four years away from winning the championship at Welterweight. I can't see the loss having much of an impact on his career in the long term.

 

Aside from LaMotta, Robby wasn't messing around with middleweights much at this stage, and I don't think he would have had the power necessary to hurt Ezz. (Maxim outweighed the Cobra by over 15 pounds in Ezzard's October 1942 HW debut.) Nor would Ray have enjoyed the height and reach advantages necessary to stay away as needed. Ezz obtained his first huge win in November 1941 over brilliant 31 year old veteran ATG stylist Teddy Yarosz (by then with well over 100 wins under his belt). And he drew with Overlin in a March 1942 rematch. Robinson is not outboxing Charles.

If LaMotta could drop and hurt SRR, and nearly knock Ray out in fight two, then Charles could definitely pull it off. Keep in mind Robinson-LaMotta I was SRR's debut against a MW opponent. Charles-Robinson was never a genuinely viable pairing in reality. Ezz's combination of size, skills and smarts would have simply been too much for Ray, certainly in December 1942. (Was this matchup ever even suggested in the press at the time?)

 

If anyone gets stopped in this fight it would be Robinson.

 

Never heard about that - too big of a weight difference most probably.

 

I've also expressed before the belief that the disparity in weight between Robby and Burley would have likewise been too much for this pairing to have been genuinely credible at any time. It's popular to say Ray ducked Charley, but check the chronology of their weights on their respective records. Burley last boxed under the WW limit during the 1930s, while Ray was still an amateur FW and LW. In fact, Robinson competed under 140 until 1942, a year in which Charley came in at 160 for Holman Williams. (A 20 pound disparity is four pounds more than Ray conceded in his defeat to Jake, the biggest weight discrepancy in their long rivalry.) SRR dethroned LaMotta at MW seven months after Burley retired. Fighting Charley had nothing to do with Robby earning a WW or LW title shot (and he definitely should have challenged Angott for Sammy's championship at 135 in their rematch), so I don't really have an issue with Robinson and Burley never squaring off.