Elmer "Violent" Ray: His age, early career, and major fights

Elmer Ray is an intriguing fighter, and one on whom information is scarce. He had an outstanding record, but has received very little media coverage, and there is no surviving film of any of his fights. In addition, much of his career, particularly early on, is oddly mysterious and difficult to sort through. This has all made me exceedingly curious, and in recent months, I've spent a fair deal of time sifting for information on him, largely from old magazine and newspaper accounts. I wanted to share some of my more interesting findings here, and discuss the confusing points which still remain.

Here's some background on Ray:
In the years before he became a famous professional boxer, he rose to prominence in the southern battle royale circuit- battle royales being a fight game from that time period in which 10 competitors would be put into the ring with each other and have an "all-against-all" throw-down until only one was left. Ray won 61 battle royales and supposedly once knocked out nine opponents with one hand behind his back during a match in New Orleans, earning himself the title "King of the Battle Royale." According to the Traverse City Eagle, March 11, 1946,

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He also had a reputation as an alligator wrestler. When he held camp near his home town in Florida, he would scare his manager to death by going out into the mud and wrestling 'gators, often to entertain tourists. In fact, he was so comfortable around them that he was known to casually play with them and let them eat out of his hand.

All-in-all, I think the nickname "Violent" fits him just fine. Interesting side note- after WWII, Ray's rather outspoken and creative manager, Tommy O'Loughlin, apparently tried to rechristen him "Elmer 'Atomic' Ray," but it didn't stick.

Now, on to the confusing parts:

First, His Age and Early Record

Ray is listed on boxrec as having been born in March 10th, 1910, but elsewhere on the internet is listed as having been born in October, and, in one newspaper account I've seen, is said to have been born in May. But even odder is the age discrepancy; some accounts have him born in 1910 and hence being in his late 30s at the time of all of his major fights, but others have him at seven years younger. Accounts of the Charles fights disagree on whether he was 31 or 38 at the time of the fights! I've seen one other article which clarifies that Ray himself was not sure how old he was, but even then, a seven year discrepancy in age is hard to account for.

Now, boxrec used to list Ray as having had a series of fights in the late '20s, before taking an inexplicable six-year layoff and then coming back in 1936. However, I have seen it said that the '20s fights were considered "suspect," and they have now been removed from his boxrec record. Still further, I've seen at least one article which specifically describes Ray as having taken up boxing in 1936. If the '20s fights did happen, then the age issue is more or less resolved, since he would've had to have been having professional heavyweight fights when he was 10 years old in order for the younger age to be true, but if they are spurious (which now seems likely), then the younger age actually fits much better with the timeline of his career in a lot of ways, since that would make Ray 19 when he turned pro in 1936 (a typical age for turning professional) and would have him peaking in his mid-late twenties (also typical) before starting to decline in his early thirties, instead of turning pro at 16, having a few fights and then being inactive for six years, coming back in his late twenties and then finally rising to the top of the division in his late thirties, which would be extremely unusual in that era, particularly for a swarming-style fighter like Ray. In addition, I've been able to find no evidence anywhere of Ray dying, and if he's lived to the present day, a younger birth date seems more likely.

The answer to this question could change the way one would look at Ray's record in the late '30s through early '40s. If he was a 19-to-20-year old who probably wasn't completely physically mature and had no prior one-on-one boxing experience, then his results in those years are cast in a considerably different light than if he was an older guy who had had some pro boxing matches a few years back and gone on a layoff.

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I'd also like to bring information about some of Ray's major fights to light.

For starters, the first Turkey Thompson fight:
This was a No Contest, resulting from a low blow by Thompson that incapacitated Ray in round six of their match. Looking through accounts of the match, it seems that Ray was apparently creaming Thompson before the NC and that Thompson actually threw two hard, flagrant low blows, one in the second and one in the sixth, possibly to bail himself out of trouble. The Modesto Bee account, August 10th, 1943, reads, "Turkey Thompson still wore his crown today after a match with a tough Floridian named Elmer Ray, who punched his better known opponent around the ring for six rounds only to have Referee Lee Ramage atop the bout with no decision after Ray had been fouled twice," and according to the Fresno Bee Republican, "Ray had won all five rounds and was out in front in the sixth when he was hurt by a low blow and Ramage stopped the bout."

I don't know about you, but it sounds to me like Ray was pretty badly ripped off in this fight. Under many commissions, I would expect that to be a DQ win for him. The fact that the somewhat inexperienced Ray was pitching a shut-out over Thompson through five-and-a-half rounds is quite impressive. One of the main knocks on Ray legacy-wise is that he has a rather thin resume against top opponents; close wins over future champs Walcott and Charles, a blow-out over middle-tier contender Savold, and not too much after that. If you threw a dominant win over Turkey Thompson (which it seems he really should have) into the mix, then his resume really wouldn't look so terribly thin.

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Second, the 1946 Walcott fight:
This one was a razor-thin split decision for Ray. While this match was very close, from the accounts I've seen of it, there seems to be pretty widespread agreement that Ray did deserve the slim nod. According to Sid Roth, "the Violent One, whom they had kept out of lucrative Madison Square Garden for so long, had a clear winning edge." The New York Times account had it 6-4 for Ray, and every account I've come across has either indicated Ray had a slight edge or just called the match "close" or "closer-than-the-buttons-on-your-vest" or somesuch.

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And lastly, the first Ezzard Charles fight:
The boxrec page for this match has a somewhat misleading description, quoting the RING Magazine account, which says that Charles "apparently won handily," making the fight out to be a flagrant robbery. Having looked through several other accounts, I no longer believe this to be accurate. Opinions seem pretty evenly split as to who deserved this decision.
The United Press scorecard had it 5-4-1 for Ray, while the Associated Press card scored the match 5-4-1 for Charles. Here is the description from the Middlesboro Daily News account: "The gallery gods went into ranting hysterics last night when the burly negro who once wrestled alligators for a living smashed the myth which was Ezzard Charles. The boxing bigwigs, who had been grooming Charles for a fight with Joe Louis, laughed. Once more they had given Joe Louis, the heavyweight champion, an excuse to dodge the violent one. For from 10 rows back it looked like Charles all the way. He danced and jabbed and landed a lot on Ray's bobbing pate and Elmer's busy elbows. But inside 10 rows you could see the devastation wrought by Ray's jarring hooks, blasts which raised the sheaf of Ezzard's cheek. “No holding,” was the continual admonition of referee Eddie Joseph. But Ezzard, of the winged retreating feet, had to hold for his life, and in doing so he made of Elmer Ray a modern Sam Langford."
According to the Nevada State Journal, "Ezzard had clicked off 15 straight victories since he received his discharge from the army 18 months ago, including nine knockouts, but he was unable to overcome his heavier and more experienced opponent, and he was unable to score a single knock-down against rugged Ray, who kept marching in, bobbing and weaving and throwing hooks to body and head. Although Ray admits to 31, which would make him at least five years older than his opponent, it was Ray who finished stronger in the 10th round and thereby apparently wrapped up the bout by a close margin."

 

Exactly. The data is so heavily conflicting on how old he was and when his career started as to make it nearly impossible to set forth a reliable timeline of events.

True, but given the above information, that would more or less make them 1-1, and Ray's dominance over Thompson in their previous encounter suggests to me that this may have been a bit of a fluke, with Thompson's puncher's chance coming into effect. In accounts of Ray's fights over the next year or so, there are notes that he was loudly campaigning for another crack at Thompson, but never received it.

I did note that at the end of my first post on this thread.

This is true; as I said, "

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I differ slightly on this one. Thompson was never near the top while Louis was active champion. He rose to the upper ranks in the early '40s while Louis was on hiatus, then went on a losing streak leading to a two-and-a-half-year layoff at about the same time Louis returned from the service. And ultimately, he never had the kind of winning streak or upper-tier wins Ray put together.
Louis dodging Charles doesn't exactly fit with the chronology here, since Charles didn't start consistently fighting at heavyweight (or post that win over Ray) until mid-1948, when Louis was fighting Walcott and announcing his retirement. Ray's wins over Walcott and Charles both came while Louis was off hiatus and didn't already have an imminent title match lined up, as did his 50-fight winning streak and three-year run as one of the top two contenders. In other words, the chronology here makes a shot for Ray look much more readily merited during Louis' active stint as champion than one for Thompson or Charles.

That said, I think that ultimately, the fact that Ray never received a title shot was the result of his race and his failure to really "seal the deal" and make it so that there was no way to skirt around him. A black contender in that era had to make himself absolutely undeniably eminent in order to receive a shot at the championship. Walcott, who, like Ray, was a black man coming out of nowhere after fighting in obscurity during the Great Depression, had to beat practically the entire rest of the top 10 in order to receive a shot at Louis. In that sense, I think Walcott's much less threatening public image (the friendly old family man and black cinderella man) helped him along, because all of the white contenders were willing to fight him, and when he took them apart it was hard to deny him- Ray had to stick to fighting almost exclusively black men, aside from Savold.

If Ray had managed to win the Walcott rematch or had beaten Walcott or Charles convincingly in any of their encounters, then I don't doubt he would have received a shot at Louis. As such, I don't believe this can be looked at as a Johnson-Langford or Dempsey-Wills type of situation; it isn't a blight on Louis' legacy that he never fought Ray. That said, though, I think Ray was among the best and most outstanding contenders to not receive a shot at the championship.

 

That happened in 1949 when Ray and Louis were both recently retired. The article I quoted above was from 1946, and at that time, Louis did, in fact, refuse to fight exhibitions or spar against Ray.

I'm not familiar with the shot you're talking about.

 

Thanks.

Well, so far as I can tell, he was freelance for the first few years of his pro career in the late '30s. He picked up manager/promoter Tommy O'Loughlin in mid-1940. Here's a snippet on O'Loughlin from the Traverse City Eagle, March 11th, 1946:

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O'Loughlin's money/influence/training apparently gave Ray quite a boost, as his record prior to meeting O'Loughlin, according to boxrec, was 7-7-1, and afterwards a brilliant 74-5, with two of those losses coming in his final two fights- he had a run of nine years with a 74-3 record, the only losses coming against Walcott, Charles and Thompson (all of whom he beat or should've had wins over in other encounters).

 

My indicating that I thought it was "a bit of a fluke" wasn't meant to indicate that it was something Thompson couldn't/wouldn't have ordinarily been capable of doing, but rather that I don't think it's what would usually have happened between those two. In other words, in their first fight, Ray showed the ability to consistently dominate Thompson for five-and-a-half rounds, and through most of their careers, Ray overall comes across as the better fighter from what I can see. I tend to think that if they fought, say, 10 times, Ray would probably win about seven.

This is yet another case where one guy (Thompson) has fairly unimpressive total knockout numbers, but a lot of impressive knockouts and knockdowns over name opponents, while the other guy (Ray) has monstrous knockout numbers, but didn't really deliver against top opponents.

After a slow start to his career (only two knockouts in his first 15 fights listed on boxrec), Ray's knockout numbers are downright scary. He had a 50-0 (44 KOs) run in 44-47, and ran up 17 consecutive knockouts in less than a year going into the 1946 Walcott fight, all of them but one coming in the first five rounds. In fact, aside from Walcott and Charles, Ray literally knocked out every single man he fought from 1944 through 1948. You like knockouts over bigger men- after those first 15 fights, Ray's record against opponents listed as weighing 200 or more is 21-2 with 19 knockouts (one of those losses coming whilst he was shot in '49). He knocked out a fair few men who at least briefly made the top 10 during his run in guys like Daniels, Peaks, Riviera and Chaney.
His blow-out over Savold is very impressive, as Savold hadn't been stopped in his last 40 fights and wouldn't be stopped again for another five years and 15 fights afterwards, both of those runs including numerous matches against elite opposition. According to the NY Times account, Ray knocked Savold through the ropes with a right hand early in round two, Savold climbed back in off the ring apron, and Ray promptly hit him with a short right to the jaw that knocked him out cold flat on his face. Ray's knockout percentage is impressive at just over 65%, and he went 59-2 with 52 knockouts, or about 84%, in his prime years. That is a much higher ratio than Thompson ever put together.

All of that said, though, Ray's upper-tier resume in terms of knockouts is decidedly thin. His only real impressive knockout over a serious contender is the Savold fight, and he didn't really demonstrate his power in his fights with Walcott, Charles or Thompson. Thompson blows him out of the water in this regard. Flicking across their boxrec records, I see four common opponents, throwing out John Holman, who they both lost to while they were shot. Ray went 5-1 (4 KOs) to Thompson's 4-1 (3 KOs)- similar results, really, and not very telling against the fairly low caliber of opposition their common opponents largely represent.

Ultimately, it seems very hard to say who really hit harder between these guys, particularly without film. From the accounts I've read, Thompson seems to have been a short, stout, crude brawler with a big punch and a sturdy chin who went out there winging haymakers. On the other hand, Ray sounds like a considerably more skillful fighter, a bobber and weaver with superior height, reach and speed. Perhaps Ray was able to polish off lower-and-mid-level guys with that kind of frightening effectiveness and consistency because of his combination of speed, skill and aggressiveness, but didn't have quite the pure power of a Thompson against big-name guys. Or maybe Ray fought somewhat more reservedly against more dangerous opponents and focused more on winning rounds instead of pressing for the knockout, while Thompson was more one-dimensional. I also think it's true that Ray really didn't get many chances to prove his power against elite opposition during his peak run- the Thompson fights were a little before Ray really hit his stride, and even then, Thompson was a very durable and hard-hitting guy, and Walcott and Charles were both extremely difficult to stop in their primes (Walcott stopped only by Marciano and Louis from 1941-53, Charles stopped only by Marciano and Walcott from 44-54). Ray did destroy Savold. If guys like Oma, Pastor, Nova, Mauriello, etc. would have gotten in the ring with him, I think Ray would likely have accumulated a much more impressive high-level knockout resume than the one he actually has.

Yes, but Ray was well over the hill by 1949, as was Louis. Was Thompson ever a candidate for exhibitions with Louis? I assume you needed to sign up or somesuch in order to be considered for fighting an exhibition with an ex-champ.