My argument for Sam Langford being #1 lb for lb all-time

1. could have been champion at lightweight, welterweight, middleweight, light heavy and heavy. i think if this was accomplished he'd be a consensus #1 among fight enthusiasts.

2. with the era sam fought in, he had to play by a different set of rules. carrying lesser fighters some of the time and having to fight other future hall of famers and much larger, good fighters over and over again. jim johnson x12, mcvey x15, wills x17, jeannette x14, blackburn x 6, you get the idea

3. he was 5' 6" 1/2 fighting mainly at heavyweight. he was the smaller man the majority of his career. this, imo, deserves a lot of consideration when you're talking about lb for lb.

4. his resume and level of opposition. he fought everybody and was the most avoided fighter ever at the same time. 293 fights.

5. this is the big one for me, the footage we have of him. the lang and jeannette fights show me a lot. at his height and usually being the smaller man, sam was a destroyer. there's no question he would have been great in any era.

i'm not a big list guy but it's upsetting when you see some all-time lb for lb lists when langford is completely left off. this is just from ignorance of his career and probably the fact that he fought so long ago. i could go on but i think when you put everything together, no other fighter has what sam had and that's even with the lack of opportunities because of the time he fought in. sam is not the beautiful fighting machine that robinson was but when i take into account resume, h2h and skill, i always end up with langford as my #1.

 

Real nice summary man. Langford was a beast. He hung in there with ketchel and gave him hell too by all accounts and most thought he got the better.

 

Amen, brother.

The only ones I have in the same esteem are Greb and Robinson.

 

agreed. if i had a list i'd have ezzard charles close to these fighters as well.

 

thanks. yes, if i recall correctly, langford was the heavier man in that fight. ketchel was a great fighter and it's too bad sam never got his shot at the middleweight title.

 

Armstrong too. Langford should definitely be in the top 5.

 

He could never have been the lightweight champion, even with modern weigh-in procedure. He had to to make 138 at 3 PM the day of the fight, he struggled very hard to make it, spent time on the road before going on the scales, but only reduced to 140 pounds. The lightweight limit was 133 lbs.

 

My top five consists of Robinson, Greb, Langford, Armstrong and Charles. They're all pretty much interchangable for the most part, with the exception that I don't think I'd place Charles inside the top three.

 

according to clay moyle's book, langford weighed 136 the day of the fight and the lightweight limit for the fight was 135. boxrec lists langford's weight as 140 i believe. in moyle's book, it's written that langford was announced as lightweight champion after the fight but it wasn't until the next day when they took the title away from him because he was a pound over the limit.

i've read different things on the fight but the one consistent thing i've seen is that gans was in no shape to fight from drinking the night before. still give sam a lot of credit here. he was a complete novice at this point.

 

I think he's got as legitimate a claim as anyone for that #1 all-time title, whatever that may mean. I say that not to dismiss the idea at all, only to illustrate the point that it's most likely impossible to accurately split the kind of hairs one would need to to separate him from the likes of Robinson, Armstrong, Greb, et. al........

 

agreed. all of us look at different things when grading fighters. i think those other fighters had more of a level playing field than sam did in his time and that's part of the reason i rank him at #1.

 

Head to head, I can't think of a worse nightmare for any man to face. He would have been an absolute ***** to fight.

 

It must be remembered that when Sam Langford fought Stanley Ketchel in
1910, Langford was about 12 pounds heavier than Ketchel for that bout and Ketchel was at that time supposedly on opium use and in such dissaray that Ketchel went to recuperate at the home of Col. Dickerson in Conway, Missouri, where he was shot and killed five months after the Langford fight...Ketchel was a "shot" fighter, no pun intended...
I have in historical order :
Fitz
Langford
Greb
Armstrong
Robinson : in my top five, because they beat heavier top fighters and
have the record to prove it...

 

"according to clay moyle's book, langford weighed 136 the day of the fight and the lightweight limit for the fight was 135."

I see that I did list the lightweight limit as 135 in the Langford book. Would have to do some research now to see where I got that and if it is in fact accurate. I know that when Gans fought Holly on Bainbridge Island (WA) in July of 1906 that the Seattle Times a newspaper indicated that both men agreed to weigh-in under 135 pounds while the lightweight limit was 133 pounds and see that's the figure listed as the limit for his title fight two months later against Battling Nelson. Bottom line, Langford was over the lightweight limit at the time he fought Gans. I don't believe I have his official weight for any of the fights that Sam fought earlier in 1903.

 

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