How good was Sam Langford?

No chance.. he lost to Harry Wills like a dozen times.

Greb is the GOAT.

 

Well did you look at when Langford lost to Wills and the state he was in?

 

Limited footage quantity and quality in his prime makes a like for like technical comparison with his modern counterparts all but futile.

There's no questioning his greatness, based on what he achieved in his own era, though.

Can you imagine a 5ft 7ins teenager beating Duran at LW, generally being considered to have been on the better side of a draw with Hearns a year later at WW, before going on to beat Hagler over 6-rounds as well going 6-3-5 with Tim Witherspoon and 7-2-6 Pinklon Thomas whilst considerably outweighed, despite being comfortably above his own best fighting weight? No? Nor can I, but if you try, you'll get a rough insight into why Langford is a lock for a well researched top 5 p4p all time and has an argument for the GOAT slot.

 

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He was never the best at one weightclass but was always a trouble for all kind of weights he found,I thought he might drew with Duran.

 

Who are you talking about? Langford? In his own time?

If so, I disagree. He was slightly over the limit when he beat Gans, so arguable whether he was ever the best at LW. There was probably an ever so brief period he could have made the then LW limit and been favoured over every other active boxer.

He was generally considered to have got the better end of a draw with BJW, so I think can be credibly argued as the best WW for a short while.

There's very little doubt in my mind he was the best HW in the world for a short time, when the ageing Johnson was well past prime, whilst Sam was still in his own prime and Wills was green.

Whilst I'd need to think about it more deeply to pinpoint the time periods, he almost certainly would have been capable of beating anyone at both 160lbs and 175lbs at different points during his career.

I have Langford #3 p4p all time, behind the more consistent SRR and Greb, but he's the only boxer in history for whom a credible argument could be made the at different points in his career, he was the best fighter in the world from LW to HW and every weight division inbetween.

 

I think this a important point raised. But I also wonder if for some fighters back then the number of total fights may have also been slightly overexaggerated or even more than that as well.

I am sure one day we will get more information but it will be hard to impossible to ever know these things exactly.

 

Boxrec only list a fight on the combatants records if it has a verifiable source.

For example, Jimmy Wilde is said to have had 700 fights, but Boxrec have only been able to find what they consider to be credible sources for 143 of them, so they list him as having competed in 143 contests. Whilst I suspect the 700 was an exaggeration (certainly for official, sanctioned, professional boxing contests), I also strongly suspect he had more than 143 professional bouts.

The more obscure the fighter (bearing in mind that even most ATGs will have began their careers with a low profile), particularly from eras 100+ years ago, the more incomplete Boxrec will have their records.

 

Don't get me wrong he's an ATG no doubt but some people have him as the greatest ever and I just don't think that's the case at all.. His best win is over an old Joe Gans who fought a laboured decision the day before, was only a couple weeks removed from being beaten by Blackburn, and who had the wear and tear of 150 fights on him. That's Langford's best win and yeah it's Joe Gans but he wasn't anywhere close to his best, he was smaller than Sam too.

 

I meant all time though.

But you have a point,in his time he was able to become the best in each division he fought in, arguably of course.

 

Easily Top ten pound for pound no matter who else is on your list

 

A myth. His record is chock full of potato peelers and bums picked off the soup line.

He wouldn't even beat Zab Judah.

 

Completely agree.

I would think in many cases it's still more fights than we know but not as much as the fighters themselves claim as they say at least in terms of pro bouts.

 

Ah, apologies, I follow you now.

No, I don't think he ranks as the greatest of all time, or even top 10, in any one weight division, bases solely on bouts contested in each of those divisions, because he spread himself so thin.

Taken as a whole, factoring in his relative lack of size onto his HW accomplishments, and he's a lock for the top 5 p4p all time, imo.

 

He looks pretty average on film quite honestly:

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Better than most of the guys of that era who we have surviving film of but still rather crude. Kid Chocolate, Gans, Tunney, Gibbons, Wilde, Lynch, and Loughran all look more polished than Langford to my eyes anyhow. Big puncher, sometimes inconsistent, never a champion, and has been extensively bloviated about on this forum.