You have just done it for me. I don't think that anybody would argue with Langford as the #1, because he won his series with the other two and dominated the division for years. Justifying who you have as #2 is harder. It seems that McVea was more highly regarded than Jeanette, and I get the idea that he was a more important chess peice in the division. He beat a couple of important contenders that Jeanette did not. For these reasons, I have gome against the majority.
You ever heard of the 49 round war that Jeanette and Mcvea had? boy if there was footage that would be epic i think there was like 37 knockdowns
I'm assuming you mean as a hw Sam (spent 5 year battering the cream of the hw division usurping jack as the king) Mcvey (was pretty much split with joe but in beating a prime sam he reached the pinnacle of the division which joe never quite managed to do) Jeannette (very close 3rd, when he got his shot at a prime sam he came up short)
It seems that the number of knockdowns might have been exagerated, but an incredible fight none the less.
There are other points that weigh in McVeas favour, notably his wins over Denver Ed Martin and Harry Wills. He seems to have given Wills a fairly one sided beatiing in one of their encounters, something that Langford never did.
As a h2h matchup I can't separate wills and mcvey they just seen evenly matched to me as both were able to exploit each other's weaknesses. Mcvey is often left behind in lists with these 3 due to langford's obvious greatness and jeannette's thrilling victory over mcvey. But I think his body of work is greatly underappreciated and as I say, I recognise him as king for a short while.
I still have Langford at number one, but the gap is narrowing as i look into it more, I dont think it is impossible to have him lowe, but it will depend how the other two records stand up to more scrutiny.
