Why is Burley ranked so high?

There's no two ways about it; Williams and Marshall can both rank above Burley very confortably. Burley is ranked so highly because of his extraordinary style, captured near his prime against a bigger opponent on film, his own excellent resume which is outstanding, pound for pound nicities (Burley is smaller than Marshall, for example) and finally, as you mention, contemporary opinion. There are some accounts of those that saw Burley in the flesh that literally rank him as the best fighter they ever saw, and he was hugely admired by both Futch and Moore, to the exclusion of all other fighters in the case of more, who perhaps has the most expansive ledger in the history of the fight game for quality of opponents faced.

 

Just a note on Zivic-Armstrong, Burley had a hand injury around that time and was basically out of contention for that particular title shot. Having said that, Burley's repeated advances were rebuffed, supposedly, with the explanation that Armstrong was going to vacate and move back down to lighweight.

I think Zivic's duck is the slipperiest one, which is a little unfair given that he matched Burley 3 times.

 

Yeah, there are multiple quotes on the subject. He also named Eddie Booker, but was more likely to mention Burley. It has to be noted that the two became friends.

Burley offered up a careers best payday to Robinson and Robinson turned it down. That much seems to be true. Having said that, so did guys like LaMotta and Cerdan, Burley was basically a problem that nobody needed. It should be noted that Burley was at no time the #1 contender for any title that Robinson ever held. So it's what you like.

Yeah, it's fair to be cautios, that's for sure. On the other hand, Futch ranked him as the #1 ever to hail from Pittsburgh according to Larry Holmes, and Greb hailed from that city. It's hard to ignore these guys when you get to thinking about who they were and what they knew about the sport.

Who knows? Marshall did move onto the LHW division, so perhaps a rematch wasn't a gimme given that Burley was never going to be big enough for that division. Additionally, it was a clear win for Marshall, perhaps the two felt the mattered was settled.

As an aside, Burley is supposed to have fought Marshall with a broken hand. I'm satisfied that no MW in history can beat Lloyd under those circumstances.

 

Indeed. It also seems to have been the final straw as far as Burley stepping up to MW went.

 

Robinson, Cochrane, Armstrong, LaMotta and Cerdan are all supposed to have declined an invitation to the dance at some point or another, so yeah, assuming he does as well as some of use would have expected him to do with that level of competition his monumental standing would have been enhanced.

 

Conn declined Burley because he was in pursuit of Louis. Even a Burley die-hard can't hold that against Billy.