Tommy Loughran : Does anyone rate him down for "drawing the color line" ?

McVey ,Bravo,Tommy Loughran [not one of favorites] feared no man... If he did not fight a black contender, I can assure you it was not BECAUSE of fear of injury..Most of the top lIGHT hEAVYWEIGHT CONTENDERS ,WHO DREW CROUDS were white at that time.Loughran was an amazingly self-confident boxer ,who given the chance,would have fought the great Jack Dempsey...Yes black fighters of those days were often avoided, but as I have posted before,all of us are products of our times,even some of the holier than thow critics of today...Experience teaches us all, and we cannot constantly berate our ancestors of yesterday...Even are old boxers of yesterday, who cannot defend their reputations, deserve a "fair" referee...They were no angels then,as we are not today...Leave Tommy Loughran"s reputation alone....After all, my HERO Joe Louis avoided many top black heavyweights of his prime times...Was Louis SCARED ? I think not....

 

I wont go as far as to say better but I will say quicker and speed makes for a far different match up ... as far as better, let the numbers of a level playing field be interpreted as one sees fit ..

It's not racist to make an obvious observation. I think honesty is key. There is an excellent doc out right now on HBO about Larry Bird and Magic Johnson and Magic is exceptional in his insight and honesty. He says that coming up in college there was a lot of skepticism by black players regarding Bird and how he would match up against the best of the black players ... Magic went on in complete honesty to describe the difference in the games and it was deep. I'm not saying anything different here.

 

Re: "Tommy Loughran : Does anyone rate him down for 'drawing the color line' ?"

I try to be even handed, without imposing my modern standards on the boxers in hindsight. I generally don't rate any fighters down because of fighters they never fought, for whatever reason. I give them credit for the good fighters they did fight, and no credit for the good fighters they never fought. Of course, I might have rated some of them higher had they fought more of their good contemporaries, so, in that respect, I might be rating them lower than I would have...but I don't actually deduct anything from any of them, based on what might have been.

 

I agree, Burt. And all so-called avoided fighters were not always avoided strictly due to the color of their skins. Aren't the two best heavyweights today avoiding each other? We all know why, and understand why, but that doesn't change the fact that both men's legacies could possibly improve if they fought each other.

 

PLease list your ten fastest (hand speed) heavyweight and light heavyweight fighters ..

Ali
Patterson
Johnson
Holmes
Dokes
Walcott
Tyson
Holyfield
Charles
Tunney

are my top ten off the top of my head and this is just a list of heavyweight champions ....

 

Tubbs was quick.

 

Greb fought as a light heavy and was as quick or quicker than anyone listed there both of hand and foot speed.

you say yourself that you make general comparisons based on observation but like I said this in itself can lead to racist and false observations i.e. blacks are more ignorant or prone to criminal acts.

 

Louis's management was thinking economically, and blacks versus blacks was a bust -even if one of them was Louis.

Burt, I would agree that Loughran's avoidance was not rooted in fear. The fact is, he probably would have defeated Tiger Flowers had he fought him. No, Loughran's problem was that he did not challenge the thinking of his time. We are "all products of our times" indeed, but we are not automatons. There are a million false positives (ie: whites even former slaveowners) who resisted the majority views about slavery, about equality -and the burden is on those who didn't to come up with a good reason. "I was only following the crowd" is not a good reason.

Very unfortunately, Irish-Americans had much antipathy towards African Americans ever since their migration to the north in the aftermath of slavery. Irish immigrants came to these shores looking for work at around the same time that former slaves and their children were moving north, and though there was comparatively little racism in Ireland in the 19th century, it was bred in the soil in America. It was about jobs -which back then was about whether or not you would feed your family. Blackness became an excuse to limit the competition with your own (Irish/white) kind.

Now, given this, it is quite possible that Loughren was either (a) steeped in the particularly rabid brand of east coast Irish American racism or (b) he found an excuse to limit his pugilistic threats. God knows he had enough.

I don't excuse slaveholders. I hope they're all in hell. Nor can we excuse Loughran (though I'd bet he's in heaven). John Brown stands in rebuke to Jefferson Davis and his ilk.

Greb stands in rebuke to Loughran.

That second fight against Norfolk in Boston is so stunning not because of the sheer violence of it, but because Greb didn't need to fight Norfolk! Greb was middleweight champion, Norfolk was the third ranked LHW in the world, and he was very dangerous. Norfolk, Greb knew, was the man who began his blindness, and he was black.

Let's look at this:

Greb had at least three great reasons not to fight Norfolk. Hell, it didn't even make any damn sense to fight him.

But he did anyway.

Because he is a great fighter.

Loughran is and can only be LESS OF A FIGHTER because he didn't.

 

Let's let Tiger Flowers end this discussion.

Jack Dempsey invited Tiger Flowers to come into his camp as a sparring partner to help him train for Gene Tunney. Flowers refused -publically. Why? Because Dempsey publically criticized Greb for giving a black man (Flowers) a title shot. Flowers, though he had a reputation that was akin to a house slave, was more adamant about his rights than most would believe. He wasn't as meek as he was portrayed. And he was offended that Dempsey would criticize Greb for an opportunity granted to him to make some money and win a major title.

Flowers also publically challenged Tommy Loughran. Loughran publically drew the color line. The newspapers criticized Loughran about this (as they often did, even in the 1920s many journalists saw right through that nonsense). So what does Loughran do? He issued an odd challenge. He offered to fight Flowers privately. And of course, never followed up. Before anyone gets excited, this was a way for those white fighters who drew the color line to save face. Others had also done it, and never followed up.

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Stonehand ,i agree with most of your points ala Tommy Loughran not meeting black opponents of his time...But you or I can never truly know the reasons,his great record is deplete of suitable black opponents...Probably he was part of the "herd ",not a leader of that very biased times That does not make Tommy Loughran a villian of boxing in the twenties, but as I believe a product of his insensitive times...Were he living today Loughran would be a product of todays less biased times,I truly believe....
Harry Greb my ultimate boxing hero is something else...He fought everyone,almost weekly, didn't know color, weight, style etc...I wonder why Greb ,with only the use of one eye,would fight so often, traveling from town to town,hotel to hotel, against such larger men, completely color blind, in a career totaling 299 fights ? What was his motivation ? Money,lust for battle, or something else ?Why when almost blind, in his remaining eye, did Greb risk complete blindness, fighting his last few years ? What made this one in a century fighter tick,aside from his physical attributes ? Alas, we shall never know....B.B.

 

Again, as I said, lets go with the facts. In the post Joe Louis era, moving forward through the fifties to the sixties to the present day do your own math. To me it is very clear. With a playing field that leveled, dominance by white fighters, which was overwhelming pre-1940 became a thing of the past. Many use the immigrant evolutionary argument and that factors to some degree but that is not the whole enchilade by a long shot.

My point is that every champion who fought in color lined eras has a serious asterick next to his name in my book, period. Tommy Loughran fought 23 years, had 172 recorded bouts and never fought a black man. In my book that has a huge pardon the expression , black mark on his record.

BTW, Greb actually did fight a few black fighters and it's interesting to note putting aside Tunney, Norfalk gave him two of his toughest bouts and Flowers beat him. Yes Greb was old and had mileage but so did Flowers. And why did Flowers give him so much trouble? Speed.

 

he grant, Yes Tiger Flowers won two controversial decisions in Greb's last two fights,in 1926..But Greb beat Tiger Flowers in 1924, while at the tail end of Harry's career...But it wasn't Flowers great speed that troubled Greb as much as Tiger Flowers being a southpaw..Southpaws are tough for anyone, anytime...Incidentally, if it was just "speed "that made Tiger Flowers such a tough opponent for the fading Greb, why did Jack Delaney Ko Tiger Flowers, 3 times in two fights in 1925 ?
P.S. No disgrace for Tiger Flowers ,because Jack Delaney was some great and now forgotten 165 poundeer...