I have been reading alot of late about fighters like Mcvey and Jeanette. I already have a very healthy knowledge on Langford and have always felt as though Sam would be the top of this crop of guys. But the more I learn about some of the others the more it makes me wonder. I just wanted to get the boards thoughts on who was the best? How would some of them do today or in different eras? I know alot of them fought each other and some of these fights were amazing, Mcvey-Jeanette comes to mind!! Just wanted to get some thoughts... Sam Langford, Sam McVey, Joe Jeanette, Harry Wills and Peter Jackson.
Sam Langford is definitely the p4p greatest amongst them, but overall I will opt for Peter Jackson. It is only an educated (I hope) guess.
Actually based on actual h2h Jackson has even the claim to be better P4P than Langford , as he was even smaller and stopped him , but Langford the P4P GOAT in my list as random as it cums , he always in the #1. P4P Jackson must come 2nd and Jeannette 3rd. H2H will need further boxrecing.
That would've been "Young" Peter Jackson, not "The Black Prince", which is who the threadstarter was referring to. "The Baltimore Demon" also won just one of their 6 meetings, so I hardly see how that would give him a claim to a higher ranking than Langford based on that one result, anyway.
I will interpret the question as being which of them was best at heavyweight since few will contest that Sam Langford was the greatest pound for pound. Langford and Wills have two of the deepest heavyweight resumes of all time, even relative to Joe Louis and Muhamad Ali. They arguably have the destinction of having fought more elite level fighters at heavyweight than anybody else. Langford was a master finisher, one of the best that the heavyweight division has ever seen. Wills was a tough tough veteran who had been in the ring with virtualy any type of heavyweight oponent you could imagine multiple times and generaly had the better of it. While Peter Jackson did not atain the depth of resume of Langford or Wills he was verry verry dominant relative to the rest of the division at his peak. Both Corbett and Fitzsimmons named him as the GOAT and he probably was the best heavyweight between Sullivan and Jeffries, for all we know perhaps beyond this period. Between Jackson, Langford and Wills it is verry hard to choose a number 1 and a strong case could be made for any of them. My personal choice is Sam Langford based on the combination of depth and quality in his resume. I personaly rank him among my top 10 all time heavyweights today.
Well I meant "The Baltimore Demon" really. A stoppage counts more than a decision in my sorting , granted if legal .
I totaly agree. however, accepting that wills was not built up or groomed in the traditional way and perhaps thrown in at the deep end early in his career (jack johnson was also) harry did lose to a lot of these guys the first couple of times around. there is also the argument that height and weight diferential was rarely negledgable when wils fought. langford beat wills until he got just too old then I think wills won all their fights after sam was past 34 years old. wills had 6 years and size on his side. Ed smith and jeanette were past 40 for some of their fights with wills. When Wills lost to Mcvey he was 25 no longer a novice in skills or age.And when Jeff Clark beat Wills Harry was25 with over 20 recorded fights.So Apart from the Cotton ko ,when Wills had only 5 fights unbeaten ,against a man with 2 wins out of 7 fights he was really prime for his losses.I think wills is just behind Jeanette ,Mcvey and Langford. that said wills had a tremendous winning streak but did languish too long on the colored circuit before he landed fights that could move him up against white contenders for the "other" world title.
I used to rank Wills behind McVea but I dont anymore. I rank him behind Langford for the reasions you listed, but I think that his later body of work in the Dempsey era drags him ahead of McVea and Jeanette.
