Ezzard Charles: A Boxing Life by William Dettloff (review)

Ezzard Charles was prizefighting's heavyweight champion from June 1949 to July 1951, but he spent most of his career as a light heavyweight and a member of what came to be known as Black Murderer's Row, a brilliant group of 1940s African American middleweights and light heavyweights that included Charlie Burley, Lloyd Marshall, Holman Williams, Herbert "Cocoa Kid" Lewis Hardwick, and Jack Chase. Although he rose to the top of this group, Charles failed to negotiate a shot at the light heavyweight title and win it; he is, nonetheless, widely regarded as one of the top light-heavyweight fighters of all time. Charles's record against the great light-heavyweight Archie Moore was 3–0, and he consolidated the heavyweight title with victories over Jersey Joe Walcott in 1949 and Joe Louis in 1950. When Charles lost the heavyweight title in a rematch to Walcott, he ended a consecutive winning streak of twenty-four fights stretching over four years, during which he was in his prime. In all, Charles fought professionally from 1940 through 1955, compiling a record of 93–25–1 (52 KO).

The most important contribution of Dettloff's work is to provide a thorough chronicle of Charles's career, reminding us of a figure who is often overlooked or forgotten altogether. As a straightforward biography that focuses on Charles's competitive record, Dettloff's book mostly shines. His coverage of particular fights is exceptionally engaging, such as Charles's tragic victory over the youthful middleweight Sam Baroudi. The few times that Dettloff ventures into providing broader historical context, however, the content becomes wobbly: "There had always been fixed fights, but it wasn't until the do-gooders and the religious nuts and the politicians outlawed alcohol in the 1920s that the mob in America began to move on the fight game" (18). When he occasionally interrupts the competitive story to provide information on Charles's personal life, such as his philandering, Dettloff is uncritical: "[Charles's wife] was a smart woman who knew how the world worked, so she knew that a man like Ezzard was going to be a man. . . . [W]omen were going to throw themselves at him and there was only so much temptation a man could resist" (140). The book would also have benefited from a thorough copyediting; it has the feel of having been hurried to press, suffering from numerous redundancies in structure. Although it is well researched and Dettloff, formerly a senior writer for The Ring magazine, is obviously expert and comfortable writing about prizefighting, the narrative contains too many clich's and is surprisingly colloquial, even for one penned by a sports journalist. To be sure, general readers will not be bothered by all this so much, but it does needlessly mar an otherwise good, important book.

Ultimately, Dettloff succeeds with his subtitle. From his poor upbringing in rural Georgia by his abandoned mother and then in Cincinnati by his grandmother to his rise to fame and fortune in the ring to his decline in retirement as a has-been who eventually lost everything, even dying relatively young in 1975 from the dreaded amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease), Ezzard Charles epitomized the mid-twentieth-century American boxer's life. Amid the fame and fortune, there was a sad overtone about Charles's story, highlighted by the Baroudi fight and later the fact that fans never really forgave him for dethroning the beloved Joe Louis. The press and public scorned Charles because, as a heavyweight, he fought cautiously, avoiding the risk of being knocked out by a heavier adversary, contenting himself with out-maneuvering and out-boxing his opponents. He rarely displayed the knockout punch of Louis, Walcott, or Rocky Marciano, to whom he lost twice late in his career in attempts to regain the heavyweight crown, and most prizefight fans celebrate the knockout and despise the decision. Even during his competitive prime, then, Charles was underappreciated. One contemporary summarized...