ARCHIE MOORE
Boxing, it has been remarked, is the poor man’s ticket to fame and fortune. He may never fulfill his dream of becoming world champion; but if he has enough talent to make a few decent paydays, he can escape the grinding poverty he was, typically, born into. Out of destitution come the hungry, willing to earn with their fists what society would otherwise withhold. Their story, almost always, is one of desperation and stubborn hope.
Archie Moore, by his own admission, was saved by boxing. Born in 1913, the son of a Mississippi farm labourer, in an America where to be Black was automatically to be oppressed, he fell into petty wrongdoing as an adolescent, and was well on his way to becoming a full-fledged juvenile delinquent, when somebody talked him into trying his luck as a fighter. He enrolled in a gym, where it was quickly apparent that he had enormous talent. Turning pro at a young age, and growing into his body, he became one of the most formidable light-heavyweights in ring history. As such, he ruled as world champion for ten years, and was still at the top of his game at the ripe age of forty-nine, defeating rivals half his age — as he once remarked, “It’s not these old grey hairs they respect: it’s these old grey fists”.
His road to the championship, however, was unfairly difficult. He had dominated his weight-class for a long time, fighting often and making it a policy to win by knockout, in case the refereeing was crooked. Obviously, he was the best light-heavyweight around. In fact, so obvious was this that the crooks, who ran organized boxing, back then denied him a chance to challenge for the title: he would inevitably dethrone the champion, Joey Maxim, and the crooks had a vested interest in having the champion retain his title. This skulduggery continued for some time, until a couple of journalists, wanting to see fair play, made a scandal of it. Moore, for his part, offered to fight the champion for free. Between them, they forced the champ’s hand, or at least the hand of whoever was running the champion’s career. So, belatedly, Moore was given his chance, in 1952, and won the title he already owned except in name, punishing Maxim non-stop for fifteen rounds — and doing so again in two return bouts. When he won the championship, he was thirty-nine years old, an age when most pugilists are either retired or punch-drunk, or anyway past their prime.
Punch-drunk was never a possibility for Moore. Defensively, he was so skilled that he once went seven years without getting his nose bloodied. And even when an opponent’s punch did penetrate his armature, he made a fine art of rolling with the punch to take the sting out of it. Offensively, his record speaks for itself: over a long career, he had 229 bouts, winning most of them, 131 by knockout (most careers add up to about 50 bouts); and even when he only won on points, he displayed ring technique of a virtuosio order. In addition to these physical skills, he had probably the finest tactical sense of his time.
Easily disposing of challenges by other light-heavyweights, Moore occasionally put on a bit of weight and tackled the heavyweights. Late in his career, he lost to Cassius Clay (aka Mohammed Ali) at his brilliant early best, and to Rocky Marciano at the height of his powers This would seem to bear out the adage that a good big man will always beat a good small man. But there are exceptions to that rule. And when Moore fought Nino Valdes, a top-ranked heavyweight who outweighed him by fifty pounds, he won the bout by simply out-maneouvring the Cuban: the fight took place outdoors, in the evening, with the sun low in the sky; so adroit was Moore’s ringcraft that he commandeered the western half of the ring throughout, with his back to the sun, forcing his opponent to defend himself with the sun in his eyes, thus turning him into an outsize punching-bag.
Stepping back into his own weight-class, Moore became famous for dieting down to 175 pounds. He loved the publicity involved, and used it to his advantage, encouraging opponents to think that semi-starvation had sapped his strength. This ploy was amusingly a factor in his title defence against the Commonwealth champion, Yolande Pompey. During the first round, Moore analyzed Pompey’s ability and reckoned he had nothing much to fear from him. So for the next several rounds, to give the paying customers some entertainment, he put on an act as a worn-out has-been, weakened by weight-loss — Liebling said it was a performance worthy of Stanislavsky. He allowed Pompey to punch away at will, though an acute observer would have noticed that half the punches landed in mid-air and the other half were rendered harmless by riding with them. By the time this had gone on for eight more rounds, Moore had Pompey convinced that victory was his for the asking. So, in the tenth round, Moore lured Pompey into wild incaution. He sagged into the ropes, apparently in exhaustion, with his arms hanging down by his sides. Pompey advanced upon him triumphantly, with his guard down. Suddenly, the tired old man became a galvanized warrior, with a supercharged right arm. One punch settled the matter: it left Pompey groggy and defenceless, unable to counter the ensuing onslaught by this forty-three-year-old thespian turned gladiator; the referee had to stop the fight, to save Pompey from serious injury,
His famous fight against Yvon Durelle, the Canadian champion, was altogether a different story; and it goes to show that even a genius can miscalculate. Durelle was simply a brawler, brave and very strong, but quite deficient in basic skills. Moore knew this, and unwisely took a successful outcome for granted. Early in the first round, Durelle caught him with a sucker punch that almost finished the matter right there. Moore just beat the count, but was woozy, and had to survive two more knockdowns before the round was over. Between rounds, he didn’t sit down on his stool, but remained standing, to send Durelle the message that he was just fine thankyou, and waved cheerily to him in the opposite corner. This was barefaced deception on Moore’s part: he was actually just hanging on, and it took him several rounds of careful, patient recuperation, outwitting Durelle as best he could, before he was able to take control of the fight. Even at that, he had to survive one more knockdown, and only after that did he establish true mastery, and won by a knockout in the eleventh round. He gave Durelle a second crack at the title, and stopped him in round three.
The lesson learned, Moore never again took stupid risks. He was, in fact, a highly intelligent man. And the older he got, the cannier he became, relying greatly on experience to keep him out of trouble, and seeking, by cunning and vigilance, the exact moment and stance and timing to unleash his still devastating punch. When he was forty-four, for instance, he stepped into the ring with an up-and-coming twenty-two year old called Tony Anthony. The challenger swarmed all over him, with youthful energy, but not for long: it quickly became apparent to him that these shenanigans were getting him nowhere against this monument of tradition, of the noble art of self-defence. So he settled in for the long haul, to try anything else that might work. This was exactly the kind of situation that Moore thrived on: the battle became, so to speak, general versus subaltern. After it was all over in the seventh round, Moore said some kindly things about the challenger’s pluck and future potential. “But,” he added, “they shouldn’t send a boy out to do a man’s job.”
Moore’s last title defence, when he was forty-nine, was against another young man, Griulio Rinaldi, who was the champion of Italy. He spent the opening rounds assessing his opponent, who was a completely unknown quantity to him. Then, satisfied with his findings, he went to work, delivering a few selective body-punches, designed to take the stuffing out. Liebling said he rather resembled a surgeon poking a patient’s torso here and there, as though asking “Is this where it hurts? Or here? Or here?” The operation was a success. Not long afterwards, the surgeon hung up his gloves.
Always graceful and gracious in his profession, Moore was equally so in retirement. He gave back to the sport, serving as the esteemed coach of the Olympic boxing team from Nigeria. He gave back to society by founding a movement to help young boys develop self-esteem and sound values. And he continued to give, as he always had, to his family, adored by his many children. When he died, in old age, the ring lost one of its great masters.
