I've been thinking about this with langford and wills. Langford beat jeanette a stupid amount of times, the thing is tho, throughout this period jeanette was likely the highest ranked fighter outside of langford and johnson. Can we really give a lot of credit and say "langford beat the highest ranked fighter of his era 9 times" or should we stop giving credit after victory number 3?
The Langford-Wills-Jeanette-McVey fights : Some of these fights were probably not particularly serious contests. Sometimes they outright fakes or frauds, or sparring. And they were not always in good condition. But sometimes they were absolute wars between a couple of primed fighters. Wills v Thompson so many times was a joke, but they had to make a living somehow. The white fighters did similar thing, but they often had a few more opponents to shuffle around than the black fighters had. As far as credit goes, it has to be studied case by case, I suppose.
yes that's my view. it's interesting because the rating of langford and wills in particular changes drastically if you put in a cut off point.
Losers like Joe Walcott might say other wise, which took a few more tries to finally get the win that counts. I not sure about were to "Rank" the black era of Langford's time, becuase like said before, a good number were fix. I not saying a mob was running the thing. Sam and Joe pretty much knew they were going to fight again and again, so better saved there bodys for other pay check pretty much.
The issue is era as well, Langford and Jeanette where the top 2 for a long while, but if you've beat someone 3 times you're getting as much credit as you can IMO
