How good was Sam Langford?

A criminally underrated technician especially on this forum, his performance against Jeannette bordered on mastery.

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He was obviously a product of his time in terms of style and approach; but he does show elements that would translate to more modern eras. Throws some short tight punches in the clinch that seem to affect the opponents on film pretty badly. Puts them together pretty well when his opponent is hurt. Pretty good shot selection. Good head movement; good rear hand parry. Isn't the most fleet flooted and has a limited workrate but that was the nature of the game pre Walker Law.

With larger gloves, he probably throws more and uses the jab less to push his opponent off/away and more to score points. Either way, he's a defensively sound slugger from what I see on film and that's a tough out for anyone regardless of era.

 

Excellent point here - reports of Langford as a LW-WW emphasize his long range boxing skill.

As he filled out in weight & faced increasingly bigger opponents, he transitioned into a stalking technician w/ dynamite in both hands.

In terms of both style & career progression, I would say he was most comparable to Archie Moore.

 

There's no mastery on display here ,only a pair brawlers slinging hands out of a primitive stance that would be tightened up later as the sport evolved.

neither of them fought out of boxing stance , they fought from a fighters stance. That's what they were ; fighters not boxers.
Lengthy periods were spent pulling, pushing and grappling. No concept of how to inside box between them.

Defence non existent. Leading with heads in a straight line , hands at the hips.

Fighters not boxers.

Carl Froch would iron them both out in brutal fashion.

 

Can Wlad beat him dino?

 

He was better than Moore for sure. Just a great fighter the likes of which we'll probably never see again.

 

My number was based on the false impression he had 254 fights and subtracted the fights he had when he stopped fighting at MW from the HW fights he seemingly already had. So the 60 number for the other weight classes should still be close. Boxer rec lists 254 as his total while his list of fights is more than that. This means he had more HW fights the 60 guesstimate would stay the same.

Yes the one LHW fight was the O Brien fight which was for the LHW title that no one had contested in over 5 years. Its important to consider LHW didn't really exist in the years between 1905 and 1912. The Flynn fight while in the LHW limit was probably considered a HW fight. Everyone wanted to fight at HW or MW and whether they were in the LHW limit was besides the point the way someone being in the Bridgerweight limit is now. But if we count the Flynn fight as LHW ok thats 2 fights out of hundreds.

 

Langford won the NSC title in 1909 and the IBU title in 1913. Both of which are ancestors of the WBC. Langford was never lineal champion.

Sam Langford is listed in some places 5 ft 6 1/2 and others 5 ft 7 1/2. If the latter is his real height you are correct.

 

Those are both minor titles. Langford won plenty of minor and regional titles, but he never won an actual, recognised world title. Ancestry is irrelevant, at the time he wasn't recognised a world champion nor should we try to justify that to flatter Langford.

 

Those are not minor titles. And either way those titles came with the recognition of much of the world. Some claimants didn't even have formally recognized belts and neither did the lineal champion. This was the very beginning of sanctioning bodies. But Langford had both.

 

I'm not sure where you're getting the 254 fights from.

246 (178-30-38) fights are listed at the top of his Boxrec page, but that doesn't include no decision bouts that go the distance. Boxrec actually lists 314 fights (210-43-53-8).

Langford also moved around a lot in weight. He contested fights at both MW and LHW after he first fought at HW.

According to my notes, Langford contested around 237 x fights at HW and about 77 x below HW, including around 16 at LHW.

The LHW title was effectively frozen for some of Langford's career, but my point stands, that at different points in his career, Langford should be favoured over every other active fighter at LW, WW, MW, LHW and HW. He's certainly unique in all of boxing history in that regard.

 

On Sam Langfords boxer rec page at the top of the page next to its picture it says fights and rounds this is where I got it from. Below the picture on top of the list of fights are the words box pro with the actual number of fights listed. I usually use the top number for my records and thats the confusion. For most eras this works just fine it updates for active fighters like a charm but for early fighters theres something seriously wrong with their system.

Yes for about 2 years Langford fought at HW and MW but after the end of 1907 it seems he was done with MW. I accounted for that with the 60. Langfords weight records are incomplete but by looking at the opponents it seems he was done with MW. HW doesn't have a weight minimum being under 175 or being 160 doesn't mean you aren't a HW the same way it means in other weight classes. Maybe they've since changed it if they haven't its certainly hasn't been relevant in awhile but at this time you did not need to exceed 175 or even 160 pounds to fight at HW. Langford was at his HW peak at 160 pounds he bulked up massively in 1913 and never came down anywhere near 175 again. This is also the year Wills and Gunboat burst on to the scene as the best black and white HWs respectively. They were substantially larger than the best HWs of 1912 and earlier as would the rest of that generation. So I think he was adapting. Up to that point he'd proven he could fight the best HWs at 160-170.

If hes got a few more MW/LHW fights though it doesn't change the point that Langford was a career HW who fought at other weight classes when he was young. His HW resume isn't impacted at all by splitting his career.

During this time there were lots of fighters fighting at both HW and LHW full time and I have a really interesting stat about that. I keep records of how many HW and LHW contenders someone fought regardless what weight the fight was. Guys who fought for a world title or major eliminators. And at HW Langford has the most HW contenders fought at 78. At LHW hes got 3 or 4. O Brien, Schreck, Kid Norfolk and Jack Fitzgerald(who i usually don't count). This shows that at HW Langford was only fighting HW lifers too. No Miske, Gibbons, Dillon, Levinsky, Carpentier, Weinart or anyone who really made noise at LHW. And while I haven't made MW versions of my files because it's a lot of work I'd expect that to be mostly the same.

The LHW title was frozen until 1912 because all the pre Dillon claimants including Langford had no interest in it. Its like Bridgerweight today. Okolie wins instantly bounces and parlays that into a HW ranking. While the period from 1905-1910 was a golden age for small HWs with a lot of power thats the very reason there was no purpose for the weight class. Anyone who could make noise at LHW just went to HW instead.

And I'm not saying Langford wouldn't be favored over everyone at all those weights. Langford is higher P4P than any HW. I'm saying his resumes mainly in one weight class. Hes not one of these P4P greats that split their careers fairly evenly at many weight classes ruining their seperate all time standing in all of them. Hes an ATG HW with cameos at other weight class.

 

Ok, I can see where you have gone wrong referring to the headline figures only on Langford's Boxrec page.

FYI, his complete record, including no decision bouts, is displayed against Langford's name on his opponents Boxrec pages. E.g. his final opponent was Brad Simmons, if you look on Simmons Boxrec page it lists Langfords record as 209-43-53 going into that bout.

Yes, as I specified, around 237 of Langford's fights were contested at HW and around 77 below. FYI, that 237 includes fights where Langford weighed below 175lbs and even below 160lbs, but were contested at HW nonetheless, because of the weight of his opponent.

 

Oh I look at it all the list all the time I just never made the connection the list was so much more than 254. When I clicked on an individual fight I'd noticed the number was different for older fighters but it always seemed to be a small difference. I thought the discrepancy was a few fights that might have been unofficial fights or something. Theres all sorts of historical disagreements about no contests etc so I just chalked it up as that. This woke me up to how severe the difference is.

237-77 isn't that off my original guesstimate.


Such fights are HW fights. Many HW title fights meet those conditions. HW at least in the early eras is different than the other weight classes in that it doesn't have any hard barriers to entry.

Another consideration is at this time 175 is not the universal LHW limit yet. It doesn't become so until after 1920 and Walkers Law. Wikipedia says the NSC set the limit at 168 in 1909. And I know at the start many considered 165 the limit. This goes for all the original(or somewhat original) weight classes. MW at times was 158 and 154. 175 was not a brand new number in 1920 but it wasn't universial. The sport was balkanized countrys and states did not have a uniform idea of these rules. There were multiple LHW title fights in the 1910s where both guys were over 175 pounds. In the case of Miske v Levinsky they were 182 and 188. Weinart was 185 for the Dillon rematch. These were plainly HW fights. But this was a time where everyone did not agree on the rules of the sport.

 

I give the benefit of doubt to those the colorline held back rather than those who benefitted from it

Yes, it is a contrarian stance and yeah it is more or less just to make consensus squirm.

Doesn't change the truth to it. By calling Jack Dempsey HW champion of the world and referring to Sam as some kind of lesser champion you are upholding racist propaganda.