Max Schmeling vs Sam Langford

He essentialy did say it:

“My boy (Joe Louis) is still two years removed from his prime. By then I will have him in Langford’s class.”

 

He called Max a one punch fighter among other faint praise.
As i said he considered Sam the greatest fighter of them all.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...&pg=3588,4460614&dq=schmeling+blackburn&hl=en

 

He suggests Louis lost because he was posing for the cameras.
I think that's nonsense.


Max Schmeling was a great fighter.
Sam may have been "the greatest of them all" but few here would accept that he was the greatest heavyweight ever.

 

Im re-posting some lovely quotes from Janitor here
I don't know if you think this is made up stuff like Sam destroying freekin Dempsey
or some unfair american conspiracy against euro fighters but its kindda a no brainer Sam would tear Max apart!

Re: Would Langford Be Badly Beaten BY Modern Heavies?
Fireman Flynn

“I fought most of the heavyweights, including Dempsey and Johnson, but Sam could stretch a guy colder than any of them. When Langford hit me it felt like somebody had slugged me with a baseball bat. It was like taking ether. You just went to sleep.”

“If you ask me, Il say that the hardest hitter I ever went up against was Sam Langford”.

Gunboat Smith

On being asked who was the best he ever fought (he fought Dempsey and Wills).

“That’s an easy one. Sam Langford and nobody came close to being as good as he was at his peak”

“Langford vs Dempsey both in their prime would have been bad news for Dempsey. He could be hit with a right hand and if anybody had a right hand it was the tar baby. I will go further and declare that Langford would have waded through every heavyweight champion we’ve had including the current soldier boy Joe Louis. Louis is a great champ, but he is inclined to get hot and bothered when the going gets rough. Langford was as cool as an iceberg every minute that he was in there. He never lost his head.”

Joe Jeanette

“Sam would have been champion any time Johnson would have given him a fight and Johnson knew it better than anybody”

“How that baby could hit. Nobody else could hit like that. Well, maybe Joe Louis could but Sam only weighed 160lbs. Joe Louis was about 195.”

Jack Blackburn

“My boy (Joe Louis) is still two years removed from his prime. By then I will have him in Langford’s class.”

Joe Williams

On being asked how Sam Langford would do against Joe Louis.

“Just too much of a fighter. There wasn’t anything Sam couldn’t do and if he had a weakness then nobody ever found out what it was. I have plenty of respect for Joe Louis as a hitter, but I can’t see him hitting Sam hard enough to make him mad”
Harry Wills

“He was a real professional, the kind of fighter you’d like to be but know that however hard you try you’ll never make it. Sam never made a mistake, he always held command and when he knocked me out in New Orleans, I thought I had been killed.”
“He was marvellous as a fighting man, I'd venture to say unbeatable in his prime.”

John L Sullivan

“Jim Jeffries has gone to the place that forbids him from facing a young strong fellow like Jack Johnson and he will never enter the ring again. Sam Langford is the worlds best and he can trim Johnson, Ketchel, Papke and the rest one after the other. Johnson knows this and is sidestepping his fellow fighter at every turn of the road.”
Top

 

Of course it's all made up stuff. Does Sam destroy Dempsey ? I don't know. I'd be making it up if I said one way or another.
Do you think Sam destroys Dempsey ?
Do you think Sam would beat champion Johnson "any time Johnson would give him a shot" ?

Max Schmeling was underrated by a lot of Americans who thought his style was "amateurish" or whatever. A fair amount of them thought Stribling would be too much for him. They gave him no chance against Louis. It's not an "unfair conspiracy", it's just a bit of under-rating. It happens.

Schmeling was a great fighter. He beat Joe Louis.
Hence it's not a "no brainer" that Sam tears him apart. Langford never beat anyone like a Joe Louis, nor did he beat anyone who beat anyone like a Joe Louis. The best that can be said is that Sam was said to be like a Joe Louis.
I tend to say a man who can KO the young Joe Louis would be favoured to beat Sam Langford.

 

Do you think Sam destroys Dempsey ?
Well since jack wouldn't enter a ring with Sam what do u suppose he thought?


Max Schmeling was underrated by a lot of Americans who thought his style was "amateurish" or whatever. A fair amount of them thought Stribling would be too much for him. They gave him no chance against Louis. It's not an "unfair conspiracy", it's just a bit of under-rating. It happens.

Schmeling was a great fighter. He beat Joe Louis.
Hence it's not a "no brainer" that Sam tears him apart. Langford never beat anyone like a Joe Louis, nor did he beat anyone who beat anyone like a Joe Louis. The best that can be said is that Sam was said to be like a Joe Louis.
I tend to say a man who can KO the young Joe Louis would be favoured to beat Sam Langford

Your getting very carried away with this win.
Joe was a two year pro straying from proper training banging lottsa groupies and he paid the price. You hold it up like an example of full flower Joe Louis and it most surely wasn't.

 

Sam didn't have a lot of patient, well-schooled counterpunchers in his day, not insofar as any film has revealed to me. Maybe Fitz, a great trap setter, but they didn't coincide much.

People tend to overrated Langford's stay at heavyweight. As overachieving as he was at the weight, he lost A LOT there, also. Sure, he KO'd Wills late in a a single fight but Wills beat him many more times and KO'd him in return a couple times.

I will have to go with the guy with the better tenure at the weight. Sorry to break hearts out there. I still rank Sam in my top-3 pound for pound.

 

In Schmeling's defense, wouldn't the same appear true if I replaced Langford with Louis?

 

As far as I know, he turned down a fight with Langford in 1916. He thought he wasn't ready for Langford.

Those are the same excuses that come up with a lot of fighters.
Joe Louis was already considered a great fighter being compared to Langford, he was #1 in the world, he register some of his most convincing career performances before that fight (most notably his win over Max Baer).

I'm not arguing it was a 100% Louis. I would say Schmeling was probaby past his best by then. I'm not getting carried away with it, but I am giving Schmeling the credit he deserves.
Also, Schmeling convincingly beat Mickey Walker, Jack Sharkey (robbed), Paolino Uzcudun, Young Stribling, Johnny Risko. So it's not as if the Louis win was the only thing he did.

I would certainly expect Schmeling to have done very well against the likes of Jim Flynn, Joe Jeanette, Sam McVey and Gunboat Smith, etc. for what it's worth.

 

Langford was a better trapsmith even than Schmeling or Louis, who are themselves among the best in the divisions history.

 

Langford was floored around 30 times, his chin was good, but not concrete.

 

That's a crock of ****. Nothing on film shows this to be true. I would go as far to say Schmeling clearly looks better on film than Langford.

 

I wasn't relying entirely on the limited available film for my assesment of Langfords finishing ability. If you study the fight reports, and look at who he stopped and how, it will lead you to some startling conclusions.