Harry Wills Articles

After such an encouraging start... I thought we had come so far together.

 

I came so far for beauty
I left so much behind
My patience and my family
My masterpiece unsigned
I thought I'd be rewarded
For such a lonely choice
And surely she would answer
To such a very hopeless voice.

 

There is a big difference between fighting drunks in a bar and fighting a huge black man who is an excellent athlete and a trained experienced fighter.

 

If they were going into an organised bareknuckle fight for money, why would they be drunk? :think

I was taking issue with Seamus calling Jack Dempsey a coward.


Huge black man? Being black would make him doubly tough I suppose :think

Dempsey of course specialized in koing huge men, and belted them around every day in sparring.
Here is one who drew with Wills, sparring with his employer.

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You have merely stated the obvious , to no apparent purpose.:huh

 

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Everbody knows the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows that the war is over

Everybody knows that the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight is fixed

The poor stay poor the rich get rich

Thats how it goes

 

I like to make people feel at home.

 

Thanks for posting all of these Boilermaker, there was a lot here I hadn't read before and it was pretty darn interesting.

Obviously, Wills dominated the series of fights with Langford but I found the following quotes on his part concerning Sam of interest. Some I was already familiar with, but parts of these are new to me:

"In my opinion Sam was the greatest fighter that ever lived. At any rate, he was the greatest hitter. I learned more about fighting from him than all the others put together although he never tried to teach me anything."

"Talk about hitting! Well, I’ve met some hard punchers in my times, and all I can say is that the hardest blows any of them ever landed on me were like a slap in the face from a woman compared with those bone crushing wallops of Langford. They seemed to go right through you.

When Sam hit you in the body you’d kind of look around half expecting to see his glove sticking out of your back. When it hit you in the chin – well when that happened you didn’t think at all until they brought you back to life again."

"Langford was the best blocker I ever saw. He could catch blows in his gloves like a ballplayer catches a baseball. Most fighters are satisfied to block and let it go at that, but Sam would catch a punch in one hand and hit you with the other at the same time. That is one of the many reasons why he was so dangerous."

But, there was a lot of very interesting material contained in these articles on a variety of subjects. Good stuff!

 

THis is a terrific read and I thank you for posting it .

 

Great stuff B!

 

I just think that some people allow their outrage at the unjust treatment of black contenders during this period to cloud their judgment.

From a historical perspective, it probably isn't even worth asking whether the color line was a good thing or a bad thing!

 

The contemporary opinion had Wills as CLEARLY the most logical and deserving contender for the title. I have been posting articles and commentaries on the other thread to this opinion. They are numerous and emphatic. Qualifying Wills as anything but that would be intellectually dishonest.

 

I am not disputing this.