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Was Sam Langford the Greatest Fighter in the History of Boxing?

Sam LangfordBy Travis Fleming

Sam Langford might have been the greatest fighter who has ever lived. He could box, he could punch and he could take a punch. Unfortunately there is little evidence in the way of footage or world titles to confirm this claim but there are many factors that point to it being legitimate.

Langford was born in Weymouth, Nova Scotia, Canada in 1883. At 15, he ran away from an abusive father and ended up in Massachusetts. He started his pro boxing career at age 19 in 1902 fighting as a lightweight out of Boston. Within a few years Langford had fought and beat one of the greatest lightweights of all time in Joe Gans, fought deserved to beat one of the greatest welterweights of all time in Barbados Joe Walcott, fought and beat the greatest middleweight of his day in Stanley Ketchel, fought and beat one of the greatest light heavyweights of all time in Philadelphia Jack Obrien and he also fought and beat a who’s who of great colored heavyweights of his day.

By the time he was done, Langford finished with a record of 179 wins with 128 KO’s against only 30 losses with only 9 of those losses being by KO (most when he had already lost much of his vision). The vast majority of these fights were against much bigger men at the top of the division.

Langford was only 5’7″ and weighed around 165lbs for the majority of his heavyweight career. He began as a lightweight and was regularly knocking out top tier heavyweights that were much larger within just a few years. Some of these opponents are considered great heavyweights that could have been champions had they not been black in a racist time like Langford himself who was denied a world title shot for the same reason. They included such greats as Harry Wills, Sam Mcvee and Joe Jeanette, all three of which Langford fought over 14 times each!

Manny Pacquiao caused a stir a few years back by moving from featherweight to welterweight and carrying his power, could you imagine him carrying it up to heavyweight along with a chin solid enough to take blows from men that stand over 6ft tall and weigh over 200lbs?

To put into perspective what Langford did, picture Julio Cesar Chavez moving all the way up to heavyweight after his first win over Roger Mayweather and notching knockout victories over Razor Ruddock, Frank Bruno and Tommy Morrison. Imagine Terrence Crawford going to heavyweight after his sensational knockout over Yuriorkis Gamboa and knocking out Tyson Fury, Alexander Povetkin and Bermane Stiverne. In reality what Langford accomplished is even greater than these modern day comparisons versus even better heavyweights and, for good measure, Langford also beat great lightweights, welterweights, middleweights and light heavyweights on the way up.
If the color line wasn’t drawn back then and Langford had any luck, he would have been the most incredible multi weight champion of all time. He had ridiculous longevity with a 24 year pro career spanning from 1902-1926.

Langford fought the great Jack Johnson once in 1904 for the colored heavyweight championship of the world. This was before Tommy Burns broke the color line to allow Johnson to be the first black man to challenge for and win the world heavyweight championship that Burns held. This was when Langford was new on the heavyweight scene and hadn’t yet developed into a real heavyweight after being a welterweight just a year earlier. Johnson won the fight by decision and never gave Langford a rematch in a time when colored heavyweights fought upwards of ten times against each other. When Johnson became the World Heavyweight Champ he would draw the color line himself stating no one would pay to watch two black guys fight and he would strictly defended against white opposition. Langford would develop into a legit heavyweight; even though he only weighed about 165 lbs, and would go on to win the colored heavyweight championship a record 5 times. He would never get a shot at the official world title.

Langford was rated the 3rd hardest puncher of all time by Ring Magazine and has been rated as anywhere from 4 to 8 on the list of greatest Heavyweights of all time by numerous historians and reputable publications. All this from a man who could have been a career welterweight had he not been good and powerful enough to beat the biggest and best fighters of his day.

As an aging fighter with vision loss he campaigned for a shot at Jack Dempsey’s World Heavyweight Championship, Dempsey later admitted he was scared of Langford and said that Langford would have flattened him had they fought.
By the end of his career Langford could barely see. He fought much of the latter part of his career with one eye. In 1926, not able to see punches coming anymore, he was forced to retire and eventually went totally blind. As an older man he was found living in poverty in Harlem, New York. A newspaper article that described his misfortune was published and raised enough donations for Langford to get successful eye surgery and live out his life in better comfort inside a nursing home where he died in 1956.

I urge all of you to consider Sam Langford when thinking of the greatest fighters in history. There will never be another who did what he did.

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