Writers on Fighters: August Wilson & Charley Burley
M. Abduh
3 November 2025

Many call Charley Burley the “uncrowned champion.” He was a dangerous fighter. So dangerous that several great champions (including Marcel Cerdan & the greatest pound-for-pound fighter in history, Sugar Ray Robinson) refused to face him. He belonged to a group of fighters known as “Black Murderers’ Row,” a name born of injustice & fear. They were Black men denied opportunity, men who beat opponents to death.

Burley fought from welterweight to middleweight, but he was known for knocking out heavyweights. As respected as he was in the boxing world, he never got a title shot. He never saw the big purses. So, he returned to his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, & worked as a garbage man.

At the time, Burley lived across the street from a boy who would become one of America’s greatest playwrights, August Wilson. Wilson went on to write an epic cycle of ten plays, each capturing a decade in the life of Black America during the twentieth century. Perhaps his most famous is Fences, set in 1957 & featuring the central character Troy Maxson. Few know that Troy Maxson was based on Charley Burley.

Wilson’s father, a European baker & a notorious drunk, was rarely around, & Burley became something of a surrogate father to him. Wilson said of Burley, “They call him the uncrowned champion. He was in Bert Sugar’s 100 Best Boxers of All Time. That’s a lot of boxers we’re talking about there. And he lived directly across the street from me, and since I grew up without a father, he was really a very strong male image for me in my life. And the fact that he went and knocked people out only added to the intrigue, the mystique of the male being conqueror.”

Professor Laurence Glasco summed up the relationship, saying that Burley was Wilson’s first idea of what it meant to be a Black man. He admired Burley because “when he walked down the street, guys looked at him with pride and awe.”

Just as Burley was denied a title shot, especially by white fighters, Troy was denied the chance to play in the major leagues. Despite their greatness, racism kept both men from rank & riches. Two men from Pittsburgh’s Hill District, both working the rubbish instead of reaching glory in their games.

Wilson captured that contradiction in Fences, the glory & the frustration of being Black in America. From the life of one of boxing’s greatest fighters, he created one of the stage’s greatest characters.