Sam Langford

Boxer

• Born: March 4, 1883
• Birthplace: Weymouth Falls, Nova Scotia, Canada
• Died: January 12, 1956
• Place of death: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Sport: Boxing

Early Life

Sam E. Langford was born in Weymouth Falls, Nova Scotia, Canada, on March 4, 1883. His great-grandfather, an escaped slave, was said to have arrived in Nova Scotia from New Jersey in 1793. Sam’s father worked as a sailor, farmer, lumberjack, and dockworker in the Weymouth area. Like all of the men of the Langford family, he was known for his physical strength and love of fighting. Because of abuse suffered at the hands of his father, Sam left home at an early age and for several years traveled around, surviving by whatever work he could find. He eventually arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, where he secured a job as a janitor at the Lennox Athletic Club operated by Joe Woodson, a local fight manager. There, his decision to become a boxer was made.

The Road to Excellence

Having learned his craft by sparring with the fighters training at Woodson’s gym, Sam, in 1902, embarked on a brief amateur career. He won the local amateur featherweight title that same year and shortly thereafter, turned professional. Within a relatively short period of time, he had grown into a welterweight at 147 pounds.

Since boxing at this time was largely unregulated, boxers frequently fought outside of their primary weight class. One of Sam’s most significant early victories occurred in December of 1903, when he scored a 15-round decision over the great lightweight champion Joe Gans. Even more important was a closely contested loss to later heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in 1906. Although maintaining a clear height and weight advantage over Sam, Johnson never gave him a chance to fight for the heavyweight title after winning it in 1908.

The Emerging Champion

Over the twenty-four years of his professional boxing career, Sam had an amazing number of fights, although not unprecedented for the time period. He fought more than three hundred times. He averaged one fight a month during much of his career, although in some years, he fought at a much higher rate. In 1920, for example, he fought twenty-three times. Inevitably, he fought some of the same opponents more than once. In fact, Sam fought many of the best fighters of his day numerous times. Among these were heavyweights Harry Wills, whom he fought twenty-three times; Sam McVey, fifteen times; and Joe Jeanette, fourteen times. At 5 feet 7 inches in height and weighing between 165 and 180 pounds in his prime, Sam was at a distinct size disadvantage against these individuals, but he fought them all on even terms. He also engaged in bouts with several lighter weight boxing greats of the time period, including welterweight champion Joe Walcott, with whom he gained a draw in 1904; middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel, with whom he fought to a sixth-round no decision in 1910; and later middleweight champion Tiger Flowers, whom he knocked out in the second round in 1922.

After his draw with Walcott for the welterweight title in 1904, Sam did not fight for a championship again until late in his career. During his reign as heavyweight champion, from 1908 to 1915, Johnson refused to fight him. Then, after Johnson lost the title, for more than twenty years, no African American was given a chance to fight for the heavyweight championship because of racial prejudice resulting from Johnson’s success against white fighters and his flamboyant lifestyle as champion. Finally, in 1923, at the age of forty, Sam fought for and won the Mexican heavyweight title, which he defended several times the same year.

Continuing the Story

In 1917, in a fight with Fred Fulton, Sam severely injured his left eye; in his 1922 bout with Flowers his right eye was injured as well. He fought the remainder of his career barely able to see. He often described the experience of fighting in this condition, stating that, in his fight for the Mexican title, he simply felt around until he knew his opponent was close to him and then threw the punch that scored the knockout. In 1924 and again during his retirement, he underwent eye surgeries, none of which were completely successful.

During his career Sam earned a good deal of money. There are newspaper accounts of him returning to his hometown surrounded by a large entourage of sparring partners and assistants. In the end, however, he ended up blind, without money, and living in a run-down apartment in Harlem. During his retirement he was hospitalized at least twice for injuries suffered when hit by vehicles while attempting to cross streets. In 1944, a newspaper article written about him brought knowledge of his plight to the public, and a trust fund was set up in his behalf. He spent his last years living with his daughter in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sam died on January 12, 1956, at the age of seventy-two.

Summary

Sam Langford is considered one of the top boxers in the history of the sport who never won or even fought for—other than the 1904 welterweight title bout—a world championship. In large part, this was because of the racial prejudice of the time, especially in regard to the heavyweight division. As evidence of his greatness, in 1955, Sam became the first nonchampion to be elected to the Ring magazine Boxing Hall of Fame. The famous boxing writer Nat Fleischer ranked Sam in seventh place on his 1958 list of the all-time best heavyweights, despite his small size and that he never fought for the world title.

Bibliography

Fleischer, Nat. Fifty Years at Ringside. New York: Greenwood, 1969. Print.

Moyle, Clay. Sam Langford: Boxing's Greatest Uncrowned Champion. Seattle: Bennett, 2008. Print.

Myler, Patrick. A Century of Boxing Greats: Inside the Ring with the Hundred Best Fighters. London: Robson, 1999. Print.

Smith, Kevin. Boston’s Boxing Heritage: Prizefighting from 1882 to 1955. Charleston: Arcadia, 2002. Print.