Archie Moore Print, Vintage Boxing Poster, USA Retro Wall Art, Sports Gift, Black and White Sports Print

ARCHIE MOORE — a LostTeams editorial print telling the existing story of Archie Moore, 1952-1962.

Archie Moore holds the record for career knockouts. The figure usually given is one hundred and thirty-one. Nobody else is close, and nobody is going to get there, because nobody fights that often any more.

He turned professional in the mid-1930s. He did not get a shot at a world title until December 1952.

That gap is the story. Moore was avoided for the better part of two decades, in an era when champions and their managers chose opponents carefully and a dangerous man with no drawing power could simply be left out. He wrote letters to newspapers campaigning for a fight. He ran a publicity campaign for himself, which was unheard of.

When he finally got Joey Maxim, at thirty-six, he won the light heavyweight championship and then held it for nine years.

His defence was the crab or armadillo: forearms crossed high, elbows tight, chin behind the shoulder, almost nothing available to hit. It let him fight into his late forties without absorbing the punishment that finishes most fighters at thirty.

He went up to challenge Rocky Marciano for the heavyweight title in September 1955 and put him down in the second round with a right hand. Marciano got up and stopped him in the ninth. It was Marciano's last fight before retiring undefeated.

In November 1962 he fought a twenty-year-old Cassius Clay, who stopped him in four. Moore had been Clay's trainer briefly, and the two had not got on: Clay would not sweep the gym floor.

His exact birth year is disputed. He said 1916. His mother said 1913. He said his mother should know, and that he had been fighting since before she was counting.

In December 1958 he defended against Yvon Durelle in Montreal and was knocked down three times in the first round and once more in the fifth. He got up each time, worked out what Durelle was doing, and knocked him out in the eleventh. He was forty-two, or forty-five.

He also wrote. His book Any Boy Can, published in 1971, came out of the youth programme he ran, and the title was the point: he had spent his career being told that the door was closed.

He trained George Foreman later, and worked with young fighters in San Diego until he was very old. He died in 1998.

Hang it. One day someone will ask you what it is, and you will know where to begin.