Boxing Historian Brings Langford Back to Life
John McGrath - Tacoma News Tribune 3/4/09
Sam Langford was born on this date in 1886. He celebrated his last birthday in 1955, though how much celebrating was done is anybody’s guess.
Langford by then was blind, confined to the second-floor room of a Boston nursing home. His boxing career had taken him around the world – he met kings and queens, befriended Picasso, became a household name everywhere from Australia to Argentina – but in his final years, the world he’d been dispatched to meet and greet had deteriorated to a bed, a chair and a radio.
Shortly before his death, the caretaker at his nursing home asked Langford what he would do if his fondest wish were granted.
“Missus,” he said, “I’ve been everywhere I wanted to go, I’ve seen everything I wanted to see and I guess I’ve eaten just about everything there is to eat. Now I just want to sit here in my room and not cause you any trouble.”
Another visitor found the ex-fighter in a similarly contented mood.
“Don’t nobody need to feel for old Sam,” he said. “I had plenty of good times. I been all over the world. I fought maybe 600 fights, and every one was a pleasure.”
Edgewood boxing historian Clay Moyle recalls Langford’s irrepressible spirit with the familiarity of a close relative.
“I love that quote: ‘Don’t nobody need to feel sorry for old Sam,’ ” Moyle said the other day. “It tells you that despite all the hardships he faced, he kept an incredibly positive outlook.”
While growing up on Bainbridge Island, Moyle never had heard of Sam Langford. Though he enjoyed watching the occasional title fight on TV with his father and grandfather, Moyle was, foremost, a Sonics fan.
But 20 years ago, as he was going through a divorce, Moyle started working out at Seattle’s Hillman City Gym.
“I decided I wanted to learn how to box,” said Moyle, who will turn 52 in April. “The more I learned about boxing, the more curious I got about boxing history. And one name kept appearing in my research: Sam Langford.
“All the fighters and trainers from his era talked about his dominance, yet nobody remembers him. I thought, there’s got to be a story here.”
There were, it turns out, hundreds of stories, comprehensively assembled by Moyle into a biography published in May: “Sam Langford: Boxing’s Greatest Uncrowned Champion.”
The subtitle explains why Langford, described by sportswriting legend Grantland Rice as “about the best fighting man I’ve ever watched,” remains obscure to most fight fans born after 1930.
“You can argue he could’ve owned the title in any of five different weight classes,” Moyle said. “And there’s no doubt he could’ve been a champion in three.”
A multitude of forces conspired against the 5-foot-7 Langford. He was a black fighter who during his prime couldn’t coax the reigning heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, into a title match. Johnson saw no box-office benefits in facing a fellow black man.
A 20-year-old Langford had taken Johnson the maximum 15 rounds before losing a unanimous decision in 1906 – Johnson outweighed his challenger by at least 40 pounds, and was eight years older – a rematch, with a belt at stake, was out of the question.
Middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel was one of the rare white fighters willing to give Langford a chance, but those plans were scuttled when Ketchel, as John Lardner would later write, “was fatally shot in the back by the common-law husband of the lady who was cooking his breakfast.”
Langford also was a victim of his ferocious talent.
“The hell I feared no man,” Jack Dempsey once said. “There was one man, he was even smaller than I, and I wouldn’t fight him because I knew he would flatten me. I was afraid of Sam Langford.”
Given Langford’s unfulfilled championship hopes and subsequent physical problems – he refused to retire after suffering a detached retina, and eventually lost sight in both eyes – it would be convenient to frame his story as another boxing tragedy.
But if not for boxing, what kind of future awaited Langford after he left his Nova Scotia home at 15? He had little schooling and fewer prospects. He got by with a pair of fists that gained him a bit of wealth and lot of fame. And though neither was permanent, the ride was remarkable.
“Sam wasn’t educated, but he was smart,” Moyle said. “He bluffed opponents into fearing his right hand, but his knockout punch was a left hook.
“And he was quick-witted – writers were drawn to him. He’d light a cigar after a victory. When opponents would enter the ring, he’d laugh and joke with the fans. A lot of the antics we associate with Muhammad Ali, Sam was doing decades before.”
When Moyle began the biography, he was a seasoned historian but a rookie author. He now knows Rule No. 1 of the book-writing business: Regard the project as labor of love, but don’t expect it to pay any bills.
“I didn’t realize what I was getting into,” he said. “I’ve got a family and a full-time job, and the book was something I did on the side. It took seven years. But having finished it, I can tell you it’s the proudest achievement of my life.”
His subject’s fighting gusto must’ve rubbed off on Moyle.
His next project? A biography of heavyweight Billy Miske, who in 1923 literally arose from his death bed to accept a fight that would stock his house with Christmas gifts.
Although Miske’s bout occurred too long ago to be remembered by boxing fans, it was too much of an inspiration to be left forgotten by one.
For information on how to order Clay Moyle’s biography of Sam Langford, visit www.samlangford.com.
