Tough Beyond Belief

17 September 1954.  The second Rocky Marciano-Ezzard Charles title match was a real slugfest.  Charles had gone the distance in their first fight, something only a few had done.  In the 6th round Charles opens a serious cut to Rocky's nose, and some thought the fight should have been stopped. Both these guys could hit and Charles, the Cincinnati Cobra, could hit very hard indeed, plus he could move like a ballet dancer.  At two minutes 36 seconds of the 8th round Rocky hits Charles on the chin with his Suzy Q, an overhand right that had won him the title. That, as we say, is all she wrote.
Charles hit so hard he killed Sam Baroudi in a Light Heavyweight match and was so remorseful he almost quit.  He won the vacant WBA title against Jersey Joe Walcott on June 22, 1949, outboxing the champion over 15 rounds.  He secured the undisputed lineal championship by outpointing Joe Louis, no mean feat.  In 1968, age 47, he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.  At a fundraiser for him Rocky Marciano said that Charles was the bravest man he had ever fought.  Ezzard Charles spent his last years in a nursing home and died in 1975, age 53.  It breaks my heart thinking of this magnificent man confined to a wheelchair.  

Pow.

Charles was also a respected double bass player who played with some of the jazz greats in the 1940s and 1950s at such notable places as Birdland (jazz composer George Russell wrote the famous tune “Ezz-Thetic” in his honor). He was very close with Rocky Marciano and a neighbor and friend of Muhammad Ali when they both lived on 85th Street in Chicago. Charles also starred in one motion picture: Mau Mau Drums, an independent (and unreleased) jungle-adventure film shot in and around Cincinnati in 1960 by filmmaker Earl Schwieterman.