Dont know if he is or not but on boxrec they dont show the date of his death so maybe hes still with us. Btw is there any footafe of Ray's fights?
maybe and what i know...no. i have an image that we might find him in a shack leaning leisurely in the south in a rocking chair and pipe with a ton of his fights in the cellar....and a few greb fights for good measure...i can dream cant i. there was a search for him a few years ago but nobody found anything. they found jimmy bivins who is still reasonably healthy and happy. but find a grave hasn't found anything or even a conclusive family called ray in the area....for all we know he was called ray elmer or bart ash or donald trump so little is known about him outside of boxing.
Here's a photograph of Elmer's niece Carolyn Christian holding the award plaque she accepted on Ray's behalf upon his 2010 induction into the Florida BHOF, on their website: www.floridaboxinghalloffame.com/2010_Photos/INDUCTION/P1019003_op_604x805.jpg If he was still alive last year, that would have been more newsworthy than if he had passed on, so my presumption is that she's accepting on behalf of a departed family member. In any event, it would seem the Florida BHOF is the source to contact for further details.
Nice find. There's surprisingly little knowledge on Elmer Ray after his boxing career ended, considering he was once the top contender for Joe Louis's heavyweight title.
meh you guys aren't upto date. in the 50's elmer changed his name to sonny. he embarked on a pretty succesful 2nd career that saw him crowned HW champ in his 60's vs floyd patterson.
D,I don't know if he is still alive today,but he sure was alive in 1946 when I saw Ray ko Lee Savold at Ebbett's Field,home of the old Brooklyn Dodgers. I lived about 1 mile from Ebbett's Field . Elmer Ray's later loss in 1947 to Jersey Joe Walcott,put a damper on any shot with Joe Louis.:hi:
Any detailed observations of this brief combat, and your impressions of Ray, are of course always welcomed here. Sid Peaks, the final opponent Ray defeated, would be 86 years old now if still alive (and his boxrec profile does not list a DOB either), and his last opponent, John Holman (for whom there's also no DOB currently listed), would now be 84, so any further first hand lucid accounts of what Ray was like in the ring will likely have to come from ringside eyewitness observers like yourself, rather than anybody who actually shared the ring with him.
D,I can't recall much about the bout other than my impression was there were good reasons for Elmer Ray being avoided by prominent heavyweights of that time.He was an earlier edition of Ron Lyle with better boxing skills .
[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Ray[/ame] According to wikipedia he is still alive. This content is protected
Burt, "an earlier edition of Ron Lyle with better boxing skills" is just the sort of analogy detail I was looking for you to contribute. All I could find on a quick search of Google Images were a few action shots of Ray in competition against Walcott and Charles, along with a few posed photographs. Anything at all beyond a few snapshots is better than nothing, and you delivered something more than still pictures freezing an instant in time.:thumbsup
Sonny is still going as 100 year old Sam Peter. From what I've read, Ray earned his nickname "Violent" (although it may have been Violet at first) by being aggressive and unrelenting in the ring. Probably comparable to Ron Lyle in his early career, when he'd always throw caution in the air, but later on Lyle liked to lay back and let the opponents come to him.
