AIR DATE:
EPISODE: Episode 30
The Cincinati Cobra, although not born in Cincinati, is featured on this episode, aka Charles Ezzard, a world heavyweight champion and the greatest pound for pound boxer of all time. On this show Neil discusses his heroes – boxers, trainers and coaches – from the ring on Talkin’ Fight Monday to Friday on YouTube or LIVE at talkinfight.com/live Weekday’s at 7pm EST (6:30 on Fridays) #boxinghistory @The World of Boxing!
.
.
.
#boxer #boxing #boxingtalkshow
Transcribed:
Hello there once again talking fight fans, glad you could join us because we’ve got neil the deal in the house and neil the deal is going to continue his series of bloody knuckles.
What do you got for us tonight? What do we got for us tonight? Graham? What do we got for us? Well, we got a pile of snow, a heck of a lot of cold uh are the leaves playing and are they playing this weekend? Are they playing monday? I hear they’re playing montreal tomorrow night.
Oh montreal, oh great yeah, oh yeah, did you hear about the two guys that montreal’s looking at uh picking up no yeah? They i saw their shirts the other day they were in the miners.
One said french, the other one said fries all right get on with boxing.
I know we’re just playing around okay, guys, thanks for coming out nice to see you graham thanks for having me out uh yeah, we had uh.
We had an interesting week with the uh, with this bleeder thing going on, so i don’t know we didn’t really uh plan on that.
It just kind of went that way, but um.
I want to thank you guys all again for coming out guys amanda.
How are you nice to see you uh amber any of my friends out there andy uh nice to see you buddy, so uh, listen! Basically, what we’re gon na do is we’re gon na talk about a guy named ezra, charles okay, graham ezra charles he’s a classic fighter.
From way back, i mean i didn’t see him fight live, obviously because i wasn’t even around, but i have his name he’s been mentioned with some of the best in the world in the heavyweight division uh, he was technically a light heavyweight.
He wasn’t quite a heavyweight, but back then i guess they just had to fight in the heavyweight division being light heavyweight right.
They didn’t really have that division built.
Yet i guess or something so he uh he came out.
He his nickname was the cincinnati cobra.
All right huh, the cincinnati cobra, so this individual, that’s a pretty cool name, although the funny part about it is he’s not from cincinnati, but he grew up in cincinnati.
So, let’s just get into who he is what he did.
What he’s all about who he fought? Et cetera and uh, we’ll have pay a little bit: hey r.
i.
p there, hazard, you’re uh.
You were one of the best in the world thanks a lot for all your time.
Buddy god bless you.
So here we go.
That’S uh! Ezra hazard charles born july 7, 1921 in lawrenceville, georgia, that’s lawrenceville, georgia.
He died, may 28 1975 at age, 56 years old, so he’s pretty young.
When he passed away uh.
Apparently he he got lou gehrig’s disease, graham lou, gehrig’s disease.
I don’t know much about it, but i know it’s it’s some sort of it’s not very good to be getting that, like obviously so yeah he ended up passing away very prematurely.
You know what i mean very prematurely, all right, so he was a this is.
This is really interesting.
Graham, can you hear me? Okay tonight yeah yeah yeah loud and clear? Oh okay, cool! I don’t hear a beep over there, so i i never know what you’re doing right.
I don’t know so.
Anyways, i’m listening all right, all right cool! All! Right so um, the interesting part about part about ezard was: i had no clue again.
Obviously um.
He started his amateur career in the featherweight division.
So if you look at this logically, then he went from the featherweight division, all the way to the heavyweight division.
Like now, there’s a jumping weight class, that’s like a hundred pounds or something you know so this is.
This is apparently what he what he did when he was when he was younger right.
So uh he’s known he’s really known around the world as one of the best pound profound fighters of all time.
All right so he’s everybody who’s in the boxing world.
That’S been around uh.
The old timers will tell you he was um.
He was a fantastic fighter and and and he is ranked number one pound for pound in the world – all time, graham he’s the actual number one which i did not know.
I do know him, so i i checked out a bunch of his fights today and uh and yeah.
He has this really slick.
Defense like his defense, is really slick.
He had a point on like punching accuracy was point on foot.
Speed was amazing and his ring rate or his uh work rate was just amazing like in each fight you could see, he was just he’s, he’s pushing the pace, pushing the pace, pushing the pace pushing the base, so he wasn’t one to sit around right.
He just he just went out guys and he was very successful at it um, so he was ranked by box rec.
This is i’m just going to tell you guys in december 2020, graham so that’s like what just last year december 2020, that was when he was given the greatest power.
Boxer of all time was like last year.
So that’s that’s pretty good and uh.
He won more uh heavyweight fights than any other heavyweight champion in the history of uh heavyweights, so he won uh more fights than any other heavyweight.
So that’s another interesting one.
So we’ll talk a little bit about his um about his amateur career here, so he represented the united states in 1939 in chicago with the um.
He was the golden gloves champion gold medal winner in the middleweight division.
All right, which is interesting, so he’s gone from featherweight to middleweight, and then he went from middleweight to heavyweight.
So all right.
So then, in 39 as well, he went because he won that the regional chicago was his regional.
Then he went to the nationals and uh.
He won the u.
s national championship, gold medal 1939 in san francisco in the world in the middleweight division again.
So in in 39 he was a middleweight, so he started.
He literally started his amateur career in 38 and he was a featherweight and then he went into the middleweight division uh with his amateur career and he ended up uh 42-0.
So he’s he did pretty good.
You know as an amateur he did.
You know he was 42-0 and uh and the year before that in 38, when he was the featherweight, he won some titles.
I’Ve never heard of this before.
Graham, i don’t know if you guys have if anybody’s heard of this guys.
Let me know it’s uh, the diamond belt middleweight championship of the world diamond belt.
No, i have never heard of the diamond belt so guys if you guys got any info about the diamond belt heavyweight championship, we’ll check that out too actually was the middleweight championship.
So that’s interesting stuff.
You know i mean what the heck, so he turned pro 1940 and uh.
He had a total fight record of 121 fights, which is a lot of fights graham 121 fights, he won, 95 fights and he had 52 kos out of those 95 wins and 25 losses, and one draw so his uh his knockout percentage was was uh.
40.
43.
All right so 43 is really not that bad.
It really is not that bad, so anything over 50.
If you get into the 60, then it’s really good.
Anything above 60 is is super good, so he went uh.
He turned pro.
He went.
He started off 17-0 right off the hop and uh.
Then then the then the war started, so he was drafted and served in the military.
He wasn’t able to fight for a few years because he went to the u.
s military and uh.
He came out of there and right away.
The first fight he had when he came out was um was um like the big one that he had.
He won the the vacant national boxing association, heavyweight title when he out pointed basically a majority decision, jersey, joe walcott, on june 22nd, 1949.
.
So he, basically, you know, went to war, came back out of war and his first fight back he’s fighting for the tie.
The vacant title right, it’s triggering you know, i don’t know so.
In 1950, he had to fight his his boyhood idol, which was joe lewis right.
So he fought joe lewis, his idol and uh out pointed him as well.
He beat joe lewis yeah.
He beat joe lewis and uh he.
He literally said it was like a highlight of his career, just to be in the ring with joe lewis.
You know what i mean, so he had to fight him.
So i guess he did his best and he did.
He did pretty good, he won the fight right, so he was uh.
He was also had a big big bunch of fights against rocky marciano and those were the ones that i watched today was one of those.
So it was.
I watched two of them.
You fought marciano twice, i watched them both and uh.
One was at yankee stadium, june, 19th, 1954 and uh.
It was a 15 round majority decision for uh, marciano, so charles lost to marciano.
Then they had the rematch, um and uh in the rematch.
Apparently, this is part of our bleeder segment here guys, because this was the fight i was watching and looking for charles basically split uh marciano’s nose in two pieces.
It kind of went like this like right down the middle.
It was in two, so chunks was like whoa like the ref wanted to stop the fight.
The corner guys wanted to stop the fight and marciano did not want to stop the fight, so they just patched him up and he ended up knocking charles out in the eighth round, with his actually nose in two pieces, one piece on each side under each eye.
It was the weirdest thing when you watch the fight you’ll be like whoa.
I never knew rocky mercy on all.
You know that was about probably as close as he came to losing, because you know it didn’t look good for him.
When i saw that today i was like holy moses man, he actually just kept it.
You know he’s a tough guy that marciano, obviously 49-0.
That’S pretty tough right, so he’s also the only man to go 15 rounds with marciano ever right, so that in itself is, is a pretty big accolade to be able to say: oh yeah, i’m the only guy that was able to handle marciano for 15 rounds right.
The one time, the other time he got knocked out in the eighth round, so we’re moving on in 1968.
We were talking about it before he was diagnosed with lou gehrig’s disease, which is a degenerate, uh nerve thing.
I believe, and it’s a very very, very, very terrible way to actually exist and it’s not not good at all.
So he was a completely disabled gram like completely and lived in a nursing home from 1968 till his death in 75.
.
So and he didn’t go anywhere.
Couldn’T do anything couldn’t talk, couldn’t do anything poor guy, so anyways we’ll talk about his awards, because we want to talk more about his good things.
You know what i mean: the good parts and the all the fun stuff and what he did and how they’re remembering him uh in the boxing community, and maybe you guys out there will be remembering him a little bit too.
You know what i mean, though he was inducted into the international boxing hall of fame in 1990 and 2002.
He was ranked uh 13th best fighter in the last 80 years.
All right, so that’s pretty big.
In 2006 he was named 11th greatest fighter of all time of all time by a box research organization, boxing research and uh 2007 espn espn, ranked in 27th greatest all-time heavyweight of all time.
They ranked him.
I checked out the ranking grim.
They ranked ezzard higher than tyson holmes and uh jake lamotta.
As far as heavyweights are concerned, like right, i was like whoa okay, i mean he was all we weren’t around when he was fighting.
So we can’t really do the you know in our minds.
We don’t really know you know what i mean like we see tyson.
We see these guys, but we don’t see him so and uh 2008 boxing magazine rated him the best light heavyweight ever ever the best light heavyweight.
So he was basically, i think, a light heavyweight that had was forced to fight in the heavyweight division, because you know he i don’t even know if there was a uh there’s another question for you guys was there a? Was there a light heavyweight division in 1940? I don’t think there was and bert sugar.
We always talk about bird sugar.
We’Re gon na do something on bird sugar.
Graham, i ever loved that little guy bird sugar.
He had the hat.
You know like a little cowboy type, haddish thing and the glasses and the whole deal right, and he was like a little guy right and uh.
He had him as the seventh greatest heavyweight of all time.
Bird sugar ranked him seventh greatest of all time and he knows his stuff.
Like i keep saying, i watched bird sugar since i was six or seven years old and uh, he was really uh.
He was a really good analyst.
Actually he he really got into it.
You know very in-depth guy, very in-depth, so notable fights guys for ezra uh charles we talked about them charles versus marciano, one and two second, one is where his nose gets split in two pieces.
So if you want to, you know, put the kids to bed earlier that night, you might want to do that.
That’S like pretty weird uh ezra versus jersey, joe walcott, again uh.
He fought him a couple of times.
I think four times three or four times, probably or something any of them were really good.
I watched a couple of them today and uh charles versus joe lewis, right ezra, charles versus joe lewis.
I watched that and uh.
That was a great fight right in itself.
They were all like 15 rounds, uh, unanimous decisions or split decisions or all his fights were.
He had 52 kos, but a lot of them.
I guess, went to decisions right out of 100.
You know right so hey great career on the guy uh.
He goes down in history as one of the best, absolutely no doubt about it.
You just never hear about these poor guys anymore, so we’re just trying to talk a little bit about some history.
I love history right.
This is my favorite favorite things in school history.
You know and uh gym sports, so thanks a lot for coming out guys thanks for the likes the shares, all the subscriptions, all that jazz and uh keep them coming.
It’S been fantastic, stay warm stay, safe! Have yourselves a really nice weekend and uh we’ll see you on monday? I guess: will we graham correct all right guys your normal times, seven o’clock, seven o’clock, okay, yep, seven o’clock, monday i’ll – be here? Hopefully you will be too and uh we’ll see.
You then take care of yourselves have a safe weekend.
Thanks graham take care man we’ll see you in a bit.
There are no reviews yet.