From ‘The University of Eighth Avenue,’ 1955

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

After Sam tutored with Professor Byers he grew as well as improved, but he improved a lot faster than he grew. He beat Gans, at approximately even weights, but when he fought Jack Johnson, one of the best heavyweights who ever lived, he spotted him twenty-seven pounds. Langford weighed 158, Johnson 185. Sam was twenty-six, according to Nat Fleischer, or twenty-five, according to Sam, and Johnson twenty-eight was a succes d’estime for the scholastic approach to boxing, but Johnson, an anti-intellectual, would never give him another fight.


Johnson, by then older and slower, did fight another middleweight in 1909 – Stanley Ketchel, the Michigan Assassin. Ketchel’s biographers, for the most part exponents of the raw-nature, or blinded-with-blood-he-swung-again school of fight writing, turn literary handsprings when they tell how Ketchel, too, knocked Johnson down. But Johnson got up and took him with one punch. There was a direct line of comparison between Langford and Ketchel as middleweights. They boxed a six round no-decision bout in Philadelphia which was followed by a newspaper scandal; the critics accused Langford of carrying Ketchel. Nobody accused Ketchel of carrying Langford. I asked Sam once if he had carried Ketchel, and he said, “He was a good man. I couldn’t knock him out in six rounds.”


Their artistic statures have been transposed in retrospect. The late, blessed Philedelphia Jack O’Brien fought both of them. He considered Kechel “a bum distinguished only by the tumultous but ill-directed ferocity of his assault.” (That is the way Jack liked to talk.) Ketchel did knock Mr. O’Brien non compos his remarkable mentis in the last nine seconds of a ten-round bout (there was no decision, and O’Brien always contended he won on points). Jack attributed his belated mishap to negligence induced by contempt. He said Langford, though, had a “mystic quality.”


“When he appeared upon the scene of combat you knew you were cooked,” Jack said.


Mr. O’Brien was, in five.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use