Which weight class would Sam Langford be rated in if there has to be one. He's always ranked in the top 10 p4p all time, rightfully, but when it comes to ranking him in single weight classes he doesn't seem to get much mention, would it be Light Heavy ?, and how high do you all rate him there.
Sam Langford, who is more like Top 3 P4P of all time alongside Robinson and Greb, is often ranked Top 10 in LHW when people are forced to rank him in one weight class. Other than beating Philadephia Jack O Brien, I don't see much names that he fought at 175 as he fought a lot more at heavyweight. Honestly, if I were forced to rank him in 1 weight class, I would put him as a Top 10 or 15 Middleweight as everyone seems to forget that he beat Stanley Ketchel handily and knocked out Tiger Flowers at the age of 40. For weight climbing legends like Langford, Walker, and Pacquiao, it is often very difficult to rank these guys under 1 weight class.
Langford was a Heavyweight for the majority of his career. He probably spent more time there than any other weight combined, actually. If you had to generalize him in one division, that would be it. I feel like people want to skirt around that point because it doesn’t seem to jive with their ranking of him as one of the ultimate pound for pound greats. To be fair, most of those years he was past his prime. To say the least. In a more modern era, his eyesight probably would’ve rendered him ineligible to even compete past the late 1910s (?) or so. Still, he was likely prime for a good 3+ years there. Probably more than in any other specific weight class. I suppose that’s how it would go for a supremely athletic endomorph prone to weight fluctuations. Tough to narrow a 24 year career down to a specific time frame where said weight stayed relatively consistent. I’m sure he’d have managed it better in an era that gave him a fairer shake.
