BoxRec

I've heard that Nat Fleischer was once posed the following question in The Ring magazine: "In what round would it take Sam Langford to catch up to Harry Greb and stop him?"

Fleischer's answer: "I don't think that Sam Langford would ever catch up to Harry Greb."

Does anybody know which issue it was? Does anyone have another source for it?

- Well, Greb did fight reputed cousin Willie Langford early in 1918, winning a 6rd decision, so maybe that's what ol' Nat was thinking about.

He had something of a bias about Sam Langford, ranking Johnson over him when Sam exceeded Johnson's entire career numbers between the years that Sam first fought him and the time Johnson lost his title. 1918 was about the last half decent year Sam had while Greb was heating up. Sam could be outboxed at times, but until 1918 I'd have to pick Sam since Greb had a hard time with Kid Norfolk. Sam was 3 grades up the fight scale compared to Norfolk. I can see Sam knocking him cold. Maybe if they fought 10-20x as Sam liked to do, Greb might win a few, but obviously Greb would have to be favored from 1918 on when Sam was half blind and well on his way to near full blind.

Maybe it wasn't a thing against Langford so much as it was thing for Johnson. He had a tendency to rate his friends higher. And when you are talking about two men who could reasonably be placed atop the all-time p-4-p list, I imagine there are good arguments on both sides. But for me, it's really about the source. It's an interesting quote, if anything, but not worth much without a credible source to back it.