Right after Willard won the title vs Johnson, Willard immediately drew the color line publicly. This effects his legacy greatly. Let's say Willard wasn't such a bad champion and actually fought his top contenders in 1915 15 rounds how does he do vs Langford and wills?
I don't think this is as straightforward as first glance might suggest By the end of 1915 Langford was 32, and dropping a few dec's. Wills most notable wins were a win over Langford in 15 and one over McVey the same year.He also lost to McVey in Dec that year and in Nov 1914 Langford knocked him out.
You don't have to look far to find contemporary articles criticizing Jack Johnson for not fighting Sam Langford, or Jack Dempsey for not fighting Harry Wills. I have never seen an article criticizing Jess Willard for not fighting Sam Langford or Harry Wills. The fight that everybody wanted to see seems to have been Willard Fulton. Other fighters who were discussed as possible challengers for Willard, include Frank Moran, Carl Morris, Battling Levinsky and Jack Dillon. It is a little surprising that Wills was not widely touted as a challenger, but I think it took a while for people to grasp how good he really was.
Right. There was talk of Willard meeting Wills in an eliminator before Wills could meet Dempsey in his first defence though
Racial politics. Willard had done his bit for the white race by dethroning Johnson. The (white) press weren't ready to push forward a black challenger on Willard. I'd be surprised if articles criticizing Willard don't exist in the Baltimore/Washington Afro American newspapers .
We know that in hindsight, but Fulton had a better claim to a title shot, while Willard actually held the title.
I am not sure that we can chalk it up to racial politics to be honest. The same newspapers that made no criticism of Willard, were very quick to criticize Dempsey for not fighting Wills. It seems that for whatever reason, the media were slow to cotton on to how good Wills was.
The contemporary logic seems to have worked a bit like this: Fulton dominates Langford in a way that nobody has before, while Wills is still getting mixed results with him. He then makes a fairly clean sweep of the top white contenders, beating Weinert, Morris, Smith, McMahon and Moran. With no crystal ball to see Fulton's future losses, and Wills future wins, it is not hard to see why many people thought that Fulton was the best available contender.