"Who killed Davey Moore/Why an’ what’s the reason for?/'Not me,' says the man whose fists/Laid him low in a cloud of mist"

"Who came here from Cuba’s door/Where boxing ain’t allowed no more/'I hit him, yes, it’s true/ But that’s what I am paid to do/Don’t say "murder," don’t say "kill"/It was destiny, it was God’s will.'"



Bob Dylan put those words in the mouth of Ultiminio Ramos Zaqueira — Sugar Ramos — who came here from Cuba's door after Fidel Castro banned all professional sports. Ramos — who was only 5'4½" — won the featherweight crown from Davey Moore on March 21, 1963. Moore — who was only 5'2" — was favored to win, but after the 10th round Moore conceded, and shortly after that, Moore said to his manager, Willie Ketchum, “My head, Willie, it hurts something awful!” 3 days later, Moore died. Now, it's 54 years after that, and Sugar Ramos has died (NYT).

“It was my night, my glory,” he told Sports Illustrated in 1964. “I won fair and square. I beat him after he almost knocked me silly in the seventh round. I came back and beat him good. Then he dies, and nobody remembers that Ramos fought a good fight and won.”

Here's something Bob Dylan said when he performed the song in 1964:

This a song about a boxer.... It's got nothing to do with boxing, it's just a song about a boxer really. And, uh, it's not even having to do with a boxer, really. It's got nothing to do with nothing. But I fit all these words together... that's all... It's taken directly from the newspapers, Nothing's been changed... Except for the words.

How many Bob Dylan songs are about boxing? He sings Paul Simon's song "The Boxer." Of his own songs, besides "Davey Moore," there's the song about Hurricane Carter. ("Rubin could take a man out with just one punch/But he never did like to talk about it all that much/It’s my work, he’d say, and I do it for pay...") And there's "I Shall Be Free No. 10":

I was shadow-boxing earlier in the day
I figured I was ready for Cassius Clay
I said “Fee, fie, fo, fum, Cassius Clay, here I come
26, 27, 28, 29, I’m gonna make your face look just like mine
Five, four, three, two, one, Cassius Clay you’d better run
99, 100, 101, 102, your ma won’t even recognize you
14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, gonna knock him clean right out of his spleen

I guess Dylan got over his censoriousness about boxing. "Who Killed Davey Moore?" — which I think was written about a year earlier — seems like a flat-out condemnation of the sport of boxing, blaming everybody. After Davey Moore died, there were demands that boxing should be outlawed. Dylan's protest song is part of that. "I Shall Be Free No. 10" goes with Dylan's turn away from protest, the 1964 album "Another Side of Bob Dylan." Who knows how serious Dylan ever was about condemning boxing? Maybe he was just carelessly ripping something out of the newspaper and it had "nothing to do with nothing" for him. "I Shall Be Free" — unlike the earlier "Davey Moore" — is about personal freedom. It's Rabelaisian:

I’m gonna grow my hair down to my feet so strange
So I look like a walking mountain range
And I’m gonna ride into Omaha on a horse
Out to the country club and the golf course
Carry The New York Times, shoot a few holes, blow their minds

ADDED: "Bob Dylans Boxing Addiction":

Bob Dylan owns the complex that includes The 18th Street Coffee House in Santa Monica. It has or had a gym in the back. Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini trained Bob Dylan there. In Ray’s word’s “Bob has his own private gym. Best gym I’ve ever been in. On the wall there are pictures of Joe Louis, Ali, Frazier, Muddy Waters, the Rolling Stones. The heavyweights of boxing and music. First time I was over there we were sparring and just to keep him honest I would tap him with a left or right....