Elmo John "Kid Violent" Ray

Major puncher, shrouded in legend. For starters, nobody's sure what year he was born, although most put it around 1910/11...and until a few years ago his date of death was unknown as well! (it was 1987. There are threads on this very forum as recently as the last decade asking whether he was still alive!)

Then we have the downright cinematic origin story of his rise to fame - with Charley Burley's manager Tommy O'Loughlin walking into a bar. He orders a drink and laments that he can't find any worthy competition for his man. The barkeep jerks a thumb outside, where O'Loughlin finds a statuesque specimen sitting atop the hood of a Model T and chewing an apple. He was invited to spar Burley, and accounts of what happened next vary wildly.

As per O'Loughlin, it was supposed to be just good work for Burley, but ended up giving him a fright with Ray giving him the business. I've seen @McGrain give another version, where Elmer "tries it on" and Burley "sparked him".

(It turned out, btw, that he wasn't just some parking lot layabout lunk that O'Loughlin had stumbled across. Ray was already a veteran of some seventy-odd fights, winning a bit more than half of them but with double-digit losses and double-digit draws and never able to build serious momentum without any major backing.)

Either way, his reputation for viciousness reached one Joseph Louis "Brown Bomber" Barrows' ears, and the war of words that would transpire next between him and the former world champ haunted Ray for the rest of his fighting days. O'Loughlin tried putting together an exhibition contest between Louis and Ray (Joe was then in the midst of his WWII charity relief efforts and essentially did nothing but exhibitions for four full years from '42 until '46). Joe balked, saying that he didn't think Elmo had the maturity and discipline to discern the material difference and point of an exhibition versus a real competitive bloodsport match. He worried that Ray would be unwilling to simply put on a demonstration of skill to entertain, and would go for broke to win by "swinging for keeps" until one man or the other got hurt. Louis basically said, in a somewhat patronizing but not overly unkind way, "not right now".

Well, that didn't sit well with Ray. He began boasting publicly that Joe Louis was scared of him. He put Joe's face as an inset on his fight posters with this little factoid as caption to help sell tickets.

Guess how well that sat with Joe? For the whole second half of the decade, he would deny Ray a title opportunity.

It cannot be said that Ray wasn't building himself into a worthy contender during that period, either. O'Loughlin had matched him early in their partnership with Elbert Sylvester "Turkey" Thompson - a somewhat similar fighter in the sense that both were hot and cold entities with aggressive styles and powerful left-hookers. The first meeting was a No Contest - but under modern rules should have been awarded to Ray by DQ. The ref acknowledged that Thompson hit him low in the 6th round, but when Ray complained of the fact and was unable to continue because of it, they simply threw out the match.

Ray and Thompson fought a rematch, and it was a KO1 blitz for Turkey. O'Loughlin was about ready to write Elmo Ray off, but what followed is perhaps among the greatest "screw that, I'll show you!" runs in the history of the sport.

Over the next 3½ years, Ray would go a startling 50-0 with 44 knockouts. Granted not all of it was stellar opposition but that did include a SD victory over Arnold Raymond "Jersey Joe Walcott" Cream (reportedly coming perilously close to stopping a groggy Walcott late), and knocking Lee Hulver "The Battling Bartender" Savold out cold in 2. This was during a period where Savold was otherwise unknockoutable - having not been stopped in 40 bouts over 5 years prior, and he wouldn't be stopped again until five years later, by Joe Louis.

He would lose a MD to Walcott in their rematch, only to rebound with an upset over top contender and 2-1 favorite Ezzard Mack "Cincinnati Cobra" Charles. In the rematch with Charles, he would get thumbed in the retina, effectively bringing his career to an end (he fought four more times, losing lastly twice in a row and suffering concussions in both defeats)

He did finally link up with Joe Louis for a pair of exhibitions in 1949. Half-blind at this point, Ray got his ass handed to him as Joe "swung for keeps" on him.

Whew. I haven't even gotten to some of the crazier details yet.

First, there is the "Alligator Miracle". The story goes, Ray and O'Loughlin were standing on a NYC sidewalk watched in amazement when a coffin sized box fell off the back of a truck and split open, revealing a live and incensed twelve foot alligator. It was said to have lunged for a child, with Ray intervening and subduing the animal just in time. Some felt the whole incident - which led to Ray being offered a Carnegie Medal for Bravery - was staged by O'Loughlin to drum up publicity for the upcoming first Ray vs. Walcott match.

Then we have the fact that he went by a completely different nickname in his early, pre-O'Loughlin career (he would take on "Kid Violent" during that 50-0 run in the mid-forties). He was in those days called "Bearcat" Ray, with that honorific being applied to any pugilist whose primary weapon was the left hook. He fought a blistering fourteen bout rivalry with "Bearcat" Obie Dia Walker of Georgia, an iron chinned little tank of a man giving up 5" of height and 6" of reach to Ray. He went 8-4-2 against Walker, earning the Floridian undisputed supremacy among southeastern United States bearcats.

 

No film footage, which sucks.

 

In particular I'd love to see the Savold kayo, at least one installment of the Bearcat Walker rivalry, and the Joe Walcott and Ezzard Charles bouts.

Honestly, gun to my head, if you offered me substantive intact footage of either Elmo Ray or Harry Greb - just based on descriptions of their styles aesthetically ...I'm going Ray. I know that is probably sacrilege to many boxing historians, and if I were curating a World Boxing Museum, might change my answer. But just for personal enjoyment... yeah.

 

@George Crowcroft it has to feel good knowing that even a stud like Elmo Ray was barely a top 15 win for your boy Ezzard.

 

Few more tidbits of mystery:

• How did Ray get his vaunted physique & power? The old-fashioned way, of course - growing up on a farm and performing daily manual labor from early childhood. This musculature would help not only in his prizefighting career but also with his alligator wrestling hobby (the "Miracle" wasn't his first brush with the big aquatic reptiles!)

• Oh, and in lieu of any kind of amateur career, before he built up any steam in the pros and entered into the Bearcat Wars against Obie Walker (that refrigerator on legs, the penultimate World Colored Heavyweight Champion of the late-stage color bar era), teen Elmo would compete in "battle royals" - staged by whites for their entertainment, with "ten big negroes in the ring, one hand tied behind their backs" and left to sort it out. He is said to have been last man standing in about two dozen of these.

• What became of Ray from 1949 until 1987? Hardly a soul knows. There is no public information covering the last nearly four decades of his life.

 

Teach a hayseed to fire anything but a haymaker, and you've got yourself a killer.

 

It was actually Elmo. He fought under the names Bearcat Ray and later Elmer Ray.

His birth & death certificates both listed "Elmo John Ray".