Sam Langford underated as a heavyweight?

[The Great John L]

The only way that I see that it could get better is to elminate several weight classes and kill off all the alphabet soup titles and having only one champion per division, but thats not going to happen, so boxing will continue to gradually die little by little until it is nothing but a memory.

But barry even if you eliminate weight classes and the four families, you still don't have the infrastructure of gyms and trainers that existed 50+ years ago. The recent news of Kronk is even more proof of the quickening death of the sport we love.

The simple question is how can we produce boxers without gyms and trainers? Hell, we had boxing as part of gym class in my akron ohio jr high in the early 70's. There were also about 6 or 7 pretty good boxing gyms with competent trainers in the area back then. And my father told me there were 2 or 3 times as many back in the 40's.

It would be like trying to produce baseball players without the minor leagues, high school and college baseball. Or pro football without the NCAA footbal programs.

Of course, these are just comments on boxing in the US. Obviously, there seems to be quite a bit of support for boxing in east euro contries, so we will continue to see more ranked fighters coming from these countries. Maybe we've got another Klitschko in our future?

[barry]

I know that we will never have the total number of fighters like in the older days, but eliminating the classes and killing the titles, except one would sure bring about interesting and worthy matches just about every week of the year. Breaking the classes and titles down would make things exciting again and if a fighter wanted to be a champion he would actually have to fight for and the best would always be fighting the best...It may not do anything for boxing, but then again it may bring back a lot of interest and put big matches back on network TV and it might, just might bring back a resurgence to where the old gyms open back up and more people become interested...maybe not, but I would sure like to see it tried.

[The Great John L]

I know that we will never have the total number of fighters like in the older days, but eliminating the classes and killing the titles, except one would sure bring about interesting and worthy matches just about every week of the year. Breaking the classes and titles down would make things exciting again and if a fighter wanted to be a champion he would actually have to fight for and the best would always be fighting the best...It may not do anything for boxing, but then again it may bring back a lot of interest and put big matches back on network TV and it might, just might bring back a resurgence to where the old gyms open back up and more people become interested...maybe not, but I would sure like to see it tried.

Yes, I would like to see that as well. Just out of curiousity, how many boxing gyms are there in your nearest major city? Can you even find them in the phone book?

[barry]

None in the phone book, if there are any around where I live. I think there use to be one in Bristol, TN, which is about an hour, hour and a half drive, but if not there then I would say the nearest would be in Roanoke, though I don't know of any there either...maybe between Greensboro and Charlotte, NC, which is around a two hour drive. Regardless it would be well over an hour drive to any boxing gym...sad really.

[The Great John L]

Very sad indeed. Pretty hard to produce quality fighters without gyms. Makes it even more amazing that we still get an occasional gem like Toney or RJJ.

[BrocktonBlockbuster49]

a prime 1912 langford tears apart fred fulton with ease. fulton DID NOT beat the best heavyweight version of langford.

Based on what? When has Langford ever beaten a man of Fulton's or Lewis's or Bowe's size? And you can't limit a man's heavyweight prime to two years.

barry said

>>>When has Langford ever beaten a man of Fulton's or Lewis's or Bowe's size?<<<


“Big” Bill Tate—6’ 6”—230
Andre Anderson—230lbs, don’t recall his exact height, but it 6+ feet
Harry Wills—6’ 3”--215
Sandy Ferguson--6'3" around 220lbs
Bob Armstrong---6' 3"—215
“Battling” Jim Johnson—6’ 3”—220
“Tiny” Jim Herman---I think he was around 6’4”
George Godfrey—6’ 3”--230





theres ur answer,


and by the way sam langford kayoed harry wills(nearly same size as fulton) TWICE. did i mention harry wills was the much better heavyweight than fulton and knocked fulton out easily??

[Cojimar 1945]

Before stopping Wills in their 1914 bout Langford apparently absorbed horriffic punishment getting knocked down a number of times and battered mercilessly for a long time. A truly incredible back from the brink win.