Straight Writes and Jabs: An Inside Look at Another Year in Boxing

Archie Moore Revisited

I interviewed Archie Moore at length in 1989, when I was writing Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times.As time passes, I’m ever more grateful that I met him. Archie Moore Revisited I Archie Moore was a self-educated man who brought a philosophical veneer to a hard brutal sport. He’s revered today, not for a handful of signature fights but as a symbol of skill, craftsmanship, and boxing genius who persevered in the face of adversity and overwhelming odds. Moore represents the greatest of boxing’s great and also the thousands of faceless fighters who toiled in his time. Late in life, he reminisced,“In the beginning, I fought for ten dollars a fight. Sometimes I was given a promise, nothing more. Guys like me, we were always marching, fighting, marching, fighting. Most of the time, it wasn’t much fun.” Moore fought professionally from the 1930s into the 1960s. For years, the Ring Record Book listed his first pro fight as a knockout on an undetermined date in 1935 over an opponent named Piano Man Jones (pos sibly a misnomer for Piano Mover Jones). Boxrec.com and Moore’s autobiography (The Archie Moore Story) reference his first opponent as one Billy Simms and say that the bout occurred on September 3, 1935. The Ring Record Book credits Moore with 199 wins (145 KOs), 26 losses (7 KOs by), and 8 draws. Boxrec.com (now a more reliable source) lists 185 wins (131 KOs),23 losses (7 KOs by),10 draws,and 1,474 rounds boxed.Those are staggering numbers. Facts blur when discussing Moore. He was a teller of tales, and even his date of birth is subject to conjecture. His mother said he was born on December 13, 1913. Moore claimed it was three years later. Information in a 1920 census report supports the 1916 date but is not fully dispositive of the matter. What’s known with certainty is that Moore was born in Benoit, Mississippi ; the son ofThomas and LenoraWright. His mother had previously STRAIGHT WRITES AND JABS 75 given birth at age fifteen to a daughter named Rachel.Two years later, Archibald LeeWright was born. Archie parents separated when was eighteen months old, and he was sent with his sister to St. Louis to live with his aunt and uncle, Cleveland andWillie Pearl Moore.At that time, he later explained,“I became Archie Lee Moore, for it saved many questions put to my aunt when we moved from house to house. Moore is my name, and it is the name my children have.” “I idolized my uncle and wanted to be like him,” Moore continued. “And I adore my auntie.Although she never had children of her own, she was a great mother in every sense. She gave us love and affection and taught us all the things a good mother should teach her children.” Moore went to Dumas and Jefferson grade schools and the Lincoln School, an all-black junior and senior high school in St. Louis. He learned the rudiments of boxing on the streets from friends and enemies alike. Then tragedy struck. Cleveland Moore died as a consequence of injuries suffered during an initiation rite into a fraternal organization. Soon after, Moore’s sister, who had married a man named Elihu Williams, died while giving birth to twins. One of the twins, a boy, died four months later.Auntie Willie took the other infant, a girl named June, in and raised her as her own. Meanwhile, Moore’s life was taking a downward turn. “Moral character is a very pliable thing,” he later noted.“It bends to circumstances.After my uncle’s death, I began to run wild. I turned to petty thievery for personal monetary reasons. Stealing was such an everyday way of life that it was accepted by all of us.We reasoned that it was a matter of survival, a way of life in tough Depression times. I knew that eventually I would be caught. But the desire to have a little spending money forced me to overlook this.” Moore began by stealing lead pipes and copper wiring out of empty houses and selling the material for scrap.Then he graduated to bolder crimes. He was arrested three times. On the third occasion, a friend named Arthur Knox disconnected the pole from which a streetcar drew electrical power from an overhead power line.The streetcar came to a halt; the motorman got out to put the...