Tommy Loughran Appreciation Thread

Expect some guys to pop in mentioning him drawing the colour line.

 

Well...Archie Moore was fairly black...so... someone will have to mention it on principle alone.

 

"He'd never stop throwing punches. But he wouldn't do that with me. See, everybody he fought backed up, and I didn't. I moved in on him. I got him before he had a chance to get set and I don't think he ever figured that out..... Then I wou8ld get back and catch his punches, because they were all hooks, and the only thing I had to watch was his head, but he didn't butt. Ofcourse, I could've stopped that with an uppercut, but if you do that you expose yourself to a hook, and he was a hooker and consequently I didn't take any chances. He had an extraordinary ability along the lines of endurance. He never seemed to run out of wind. The last 5 rounds I murdered him. And I learned from that, that's why I learned to like 15 round bouts. We were trained, our conditioning was such that we didn't get tired. Today I think the whole thing is lost.


- Tommy Loughran on fighting Harry Greb

from "In this Corner...!" by Peter Heller

 

Yeah, I agree. People focus too much on what did not happen, what perhaps would have happened and what would happen if "..." instead of appreciating what actually happened.

 

He fought Greb 5 or 6 times (lost count), Tunney, Sharkey, Braddock, Baer, Levinsky and scores of others. I doubt he was ducking anybody. Great and beautiful fighter. Buried about 40 minutes from my home.

 

This quote always cracks me up. Loughran was an ego maniac who if you read all of his interviews etc really believed he never lost fight. In all of the fights he had against Greb he only won 1 and drew 1 and the results of both of those were disputed. The 15 rounder in which he says he murdered Greb in the final five rounds was clearly won by Greb in what was a pretty poor fight and the reports make it clear that Greb won a majority of those final five rounds.

 

Once shook Archie Moore's hand in the late 1940s,at At Stillman's Gym
where he was a spectator...He had a coffee color complexion and
sharply dressed...

 

He's one of my favorite fighters. I envy you that.

In green: Not my coffee. My coffee looks like black strap molasses. Same consistency also.

 

Loughran was also an early supporter of Floyd Patterson. He did draw the color line, it was no secret, but it is not like he was some horrible racist. It would have been interesting to find his reasons, if only to shed some light as to why even men like Loughran refused to face black opponents. It is difficult to make sense of the practise from the perspective of today's day and age as things are so different. Perhaps he did not want to risk any trouble, race riots, I don't know.

Anyway, Loughran developed a very unique style which worked extremely well for him. He did fight nearly all of the top light heavyweight contenders in his time and the one he truly missed out on was another fight with Jack Delaney by around 1927 to settle the score. These were two men with comparable styles, with Delaney having a bigger punch, Loughran having more toughness, thus his ability to hang in there with heavyweights unlike Delaney (who was also the slightly smaller man).

Some footage of old Loughran:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtSAlPeF-XQ[/ame]

 

If you see the footage of him sparring with Dempsey you can see why. He handled Jack just as well as Tunney did.