Boxing News magazine review

‘Boxing News’ magazine:
George Zeleny says this tome dispels some of the myths and is well told and researched

The Sam Langford story is one of the most fascinating in boxing history. It’s fully of remarkable episodes, apocryphal stories, triumph, frustration, disaster and, ultimately recognition.

Clay Moyle has produced a prodigious book on Langford’s life that is a must for any boxing fan with even the slightest interest in those early times.

Langford boxed for 23 years from 1902 until 1925. Standing only 5 ft 7 in and rarely weighing above middleweight, he fought them all, including future world heavyweight legend Jack Johnson at age 20.

Boxing mythology has it that Johnson was given such a hard fight by Sam that Jack refused to fight him again. Moyle’s honest account of the battle tells a different story.

The young Langford was soundly beaten, dropped three times and battered and bloodied at the final bell. Certainly Johnson refused to defend his title against him once he had become champion, but that was more a matter of logistics and finance and the racial climate of the era in which they fought.

Many of the great stories about Langford passed down over the years are hard to substantiate and the author dispels two. There was the time when Sam allegedly shook hands with his opponent, prompting the complaint that it wasn’t the last round. “It is for you,” Sam reportedly replied.

Moyle believes the story is true, but as he found it applied to four different opponents, he dispelled it.

The same applies to Langford entering the ring, measuring opponent Bill Tate for size and looking intently at the canvas prior to depositing him there. In some versions, he even draws a chalk outline of Tate’s body and lands him accurately inside it!

Yet none of the newspaper accounts of Langford’s many fighs with Tate reported the incident.

Disappointing as this is for true Langford admirers, the book covers his life and career in such carefully researched detail that it doesn’t matter. The most important fight reports are lengthy and well-written. Sam is portrayed as a fun-loving guy who wore expensive cloths, smoked large cigars and enjoyed “the fast life”. He spent any money he made with abandon.

Amazingly, the night before a fight with renowned “Fireman” Jim Flynn in 1908, Sam got drunk. He had to be put to bed by his old friend Charley “Kid” Bell, but the next day was as right as rain and knocked Flynn out in the first round.

Langford was prepared to travel to get fights, campaigning all over America, in England and Australia. Yet he never managed to challenge for a world title at any of the top four weights. He met many of the great black fighters of the time who received similar treatment: Joe Jeannette (on 14 occasions), Sam McVey (13), and Harry Wills (16), a total of 43 fights.

He continued in the ring too long and descriptions of his final ring days, when he fought virtually blind and “could only defend himself when he was in a clinch”, are sad.

Moyle spares us nothing of this, recounting how a blind Sam was knocked down by cars and the operations to try and save his sight.

The familiar ending of his life is covered in the chapter “The Forgotten Man”, New York Herald Tribune writer Al Laney discovered Langford living alone, blind and destitute, in a run-down New York hotel. Langford’s telling comment was: “Don’t nobody need feel sorry for old Sam. I had plenty of good times. I been all over the world. I fought maybe 600 fights and every one was a pleasure.”

Myle’s portrayal of Langford is rightly called Boxing’s Greatest Uncrowned Champion. Little film footage of Langford survives but his 1911 fight with Bill Lang in England can be viewed. The film is patchy and damaged but Langford’s undoubted ability still shines through.

Clips can be viewed on YouTube.

Moyle has done a formidable job. The hardback looks great, with a wonderfully clear photo of Langford-Lang on the front cover. Inside are many original Langford photographs never before published.

The book is thoroughly researched and detailed with an easy-going style that is a comfortable read despite the odd typo. Putting reference notes at the end of a chapter is a distraction but that is a minor criticism.

This book has not been published in Britain yet but can be obtained (and signed) from the author on the website: www.samlangford.com, for $35.”