Sugar Ray Robinson ducked Charley Burley???!

I think thats a lot of the problem here...though its pretty clear Robinson opted out not to fight Burley and actually walked out of a contract to fight Cocoa Kid....timing played its role in Robinson not fighting a lot of the Murders Row.

As for the Cocoa Kid fight..Im not so sure of the details of that. I think Kid was bought in as a late replacement for a fight Robinson had in the late 40's..Robinson was cool with it but then decided to pull the plug..why Im not sure but I believe I theorized at the time of reading the article that the Gavilan rematch for SRR's welter title had been signed at the start of that month and maybe he just didnt think it was a smart fight to take on short notice with an impending title fight.
But an interesting tid bit that Im sure most know anyway.. Cocoa Kid dropped Robinson in sparring, not sure when but have seen that in a couple of sources.

 

Mcgrain do you know anything of the career high offer Burleys management made to Robinson?

 

I'd assume the offer was made prior to Robinson being an official champ. Robinson was pretty much the unoffical lightweight and welterweight champ years before he officially won the title and was a massive draw

 

I hear the fight was close to being set up in 1942, when both fought in the same card, with Burley fighting George Wilson, Robinson fighting Dick Banner. Both opponents were tomato cans but the point was to showcase the skills of the two fighters in order to hype a potential fight in the future. Robinson however was not obligated to fight Burley by any means, with Burley now campaigning as a middleweight while Robinson was still attempting to get a title shot at the elusive Freddie 'Red' Cochrane. It is said that no one was interested in making a fight between Robinson and Cochrane, because it would have been a brutal mismatch in favour of the challenger.

 

Interesting that. How would you see it going? Obviously Zale is slipping at the time a match would have been made.

Definitly, he kinda just came around towards the end of their careers when they were campaigning more at Middleweight. A green Robinson could have been matched with afew of them but that would have been counter productive for Robinson IMO, at the stage in his career.

Didnt know that. Thanks for that. But dropping someone in sparring aint a big deal, for me anyway.

Thats a right kick in the balls, you expect an easy night and you end up with this hard hard fight or exhibition.

But when Robinson was raising to prominence as a Welterweight, Burley was fighting more at Middleweight than he had been before. He even had admitted to giving up on trying to lure Cochrane into a fight.

1942 was Burleys best year IMO. He really had some impressive victories the only thing is by mid 1942 he had lost to Charles twice and then by 1943 lost twice more to Marshall and Williams.

also Burley didnt fight a 'George Wilson' in 42.

 

http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...g=3805,3157557&dq=charley+burley+wilson&hl=en

http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...pg=5673,800082&dq=charley+burley+wilson&hl=en

It was a 'Wilson' nonetheless.

 

Was looking at my Burley book, didnt think to put Wilson with Sammy Wilson

But soon after beating Wilson he lost two bouts to Ezzard Charles (although he did beat Williams in the interim) it would still detract from his prestige at that precise moment in time.

 

Burley would have been fighting Robinson instead of Charles though had Robinson accepted an offer to fight Burley. Surely Burley did not realize what a fighting machine he would run into when taking on 20 year old, 20-2 Ezzard Charles.

 

Burley really is impressive, a proper technician but in an odd way. Did everything well and some spectacularly well.

Suppose you are right. Yeh. At the time though Burley was campaigning as a Middleweight, as he hadnt weighed under the Welter limit that year, although he probably could have.

Must have been a shcok for Burley, maybe not the second time around though. One of the most impressive set of vistories in history IMO

 

Zivic says here that while Robinson was the best boxer he fought (Armstrong the best fighter), Burley was probably the smartest and "hardest to fight".

http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...IBAJ&pg=1421,6358251&dq=burley+robinson&hl=en

 

Thanks for that