The Murderers Row - Explain their style

Oh, Greg.

 

Do we have 1 or 2 fights of Burleys? You can only honestly assess what you've seen. We have none of the rest. From what I've seen Burley was a great judge of distance, rolled his weight from 1 foot to another to set traps or make feints and lean back and counter, his footwork I find similar to Floyd Mayweathers, very much a radar type fighter looking to slip shots, a side on boxer that likes to slip back and counter his right over the jab, great use of angles, also seems to potshot allot. Similar to FMJ except Burley actually knows how to throw a proper punch, this could be partly because hes a smaller man fighting a LHW too.

Archie Moore was a Burley fan and he based his style on Burley's a bit imo using some of his moves.

 

I can't think of anybody since Burley who I would compare his style to.

He is a "what if technical boxing had taken a diferent path back in the 1920s"
type of proposition.

 

It was your description of his styles that tickled me, not your stance on his evolution as a fighter.

 

There's film of Lloyd Marshall. I've heard comparisons with Archie Moore although I'm not sure if they're 100% accurate.

 

How come oakland billy smith never gets a mention he beat harold johnson, jack chase, lloyd marshall and got a draw with archie moore, he never got a title shot, does he even get a mention in the book your reading gp pater?

 

It seems many of the "murderer's row" had quite unorthodox styles. Burley, Moore - Marshall if he was similar to Moore - and also Walcott, who could be said to have spent a large part of his career on "murderer's row" before he got his shot. Like Moore did.

That could well be because they probably wasn't that well managed and trained in their formative years, and therefore in large part adopted very personal styles. But some of their moves seems to have been incorporated in the text book to a degree later on. For example Moore's upper body movement and cross armed guard.

Were these guys the first slick, unorthodox technicians, perhaps? How important have they've been for the evolution of boxing? Who are their heirs today? Toney, Hopkins?

 

Hopkins and Toney both name Ezzard Charles, Archie Moore, Jersey Joe Walcott as inspirations so I guess they could be considered the "heirs" of these fighters.

Charley Burley's former sparring parner A.J. Nelson said Roy Jones reminded him of Burley.

 

Interesting. Thanks.

 

That's who I would compare him to.

Maybe Marshall could be compared to Wilfredo Gomez? :think

 

There is plenty of film on Walcott and Moore. And Moore was in turn influenced by Burley it seems. Then we also have the perhaps most influential trainer post WWII, Eddie Futch, who was a huge Burley fan.