Did the 1940s light heavyweight champions duck Ezzard Charles?

There were no title fights for most of his win streak. Fox was ranked ahead of Charles at the end of 1946 and got the first US lineal title shot in over 5 years. At the end of 1947 Charles and Moore were ranked higher but Fox got the rematch anyway. That was really the only time Charles was snubbed before going up to HW full time.

Charles was one of 4 included in the tournament to decide the LHW duration champion in 42/43. Thats where he lost to Bivins. After the Bivins and Marshall losses Charles did not fight again(and start his win streak) until December 1944. At this point the duration title had been done away with a few months earlier. Its never "announced" but this is when it ceases to be mentioned in sources. There were no title fights until the lineal belt unfroze. Lesnevich fought the Commonwealth champ Mills in the UK in 1946 then Fox in the US in 1947.

According to boxrec Lesnevich v Fox I seems like one of those fights where it was lopsided but Fox had Lesnevich in trouble once. Per boxer rec

"Except for the 3rd - when Billy Fox set off his only explosion and all but flattened the champ - and the 4th, when Gus was still recovering from the fireworks, Fox didn't take a round"

What does "explosion", "flattened" and "fireworks" mean exactly? Its hard to judge by just words. If someone has video of that 3rd round maybe we could decide for ourselves how warranted that rematch was? Because presumably that was the reason. Either way Lesnevich took Fox out right away in the rematch.

If the duration title had continued and we follow the lineage Charles would have presumably become duration or interim champion in May 1946 when he beat Archie Moore.

 

Lesnevich seems to have been open to the idea of defending against Charles. In June 1947 it looked like a done deal that they would fight in September that year. Then it fell apart and the problem seems to have been Charles himself. At the time he was getting ready to fight heavyweight contender Elmer Ray and was reluctant to commit to anything else until that was done - presumably because he was hoping an impressive win might bag him a shot at Joe Louis.

Charles lost to Ray which cost him some prestige, and at the same time Lesnevich scored wins against Melio Bettina and Tami Mauriello, and had his own eyes on a shot at Louis. There was another attempt to get them together in 1948 but they couldn't agree on a date and venue, and Lesnevich signed to fight Fox instead.

https://ibb.co/MDCDRDQP
https://ibb.co/5hNgpZ3w