At his peak, Ezzard Charles whipped Moore, Burley, Bivins, Maxim, Lloyd Marshall and Elmer ‘Violent’ Ray: Meet the prime-time Cincinnati Cobra.

30.12.05 - By MIKE CASEY: To all but true boxing fans and connoisseurs, he was the moderate heavyweight champion who beat a much adored legend and came heroically close to beating another.

You have to wonder if Ezzard Mack Charles, the great Cincinnati Cobra, ever grew sick of people asking him about his fights with Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano. Tap Ezzard’s name into your search engine and the names of Louis and Marciano will invariably pop up just as often.

Charles was a slick and skilful heavyweight when he beat the ageing Louis in 1950, and in the final stages of his dying greatness when he ran Rocky to the wire in the first meeting at Yankee Stadium in 1954.

But the greatest Ezzard Charles, the lithe and dangerous fighting machine that could do it all, wasn’t even a heavyweight. Nothing ever seemed to fit as comfortably as it should have done with Ezzard, as bad luck and untimely circumstances combined to fashion a fractured and frequently misunderstood career. The young Cobra beat many an illustrious opponent with his precise and educated punching, yet Lady Luck seemed to bite him back just as often.

The record book can be as cold and unfeeling as a computer in telling us the story of a man’s life, offering up the bare details and perhaps the occasional, explanatory asterisk. In the case of Charles, numerous asterisks and explanations are required. The standard bio of Ezzard continues to be a perfect example of a square peg being jammed into a round hole: his date of birth, his birthplace, a quick skip through his amateur career and then a straight jump into his reign as a low key heavyweight champion. You won’t find as much as a cursory nod to the greatest years Charles ever had as an exceptional middleweight who blossomed into one of the greatest light-heavyweights ever seen.

For the real Ezzard Charles was the biggest nugget in a goldmine of outstanding talent in the early to late forties.