Originally Posted by btown32
Okay John, I had this discussion with a lot of the long-time forum members when we were beta testing and getting ready to launch the new database. I am interested to see what your opinion is of Sam Langford's "10" rating? I do not feel that this is justified, specifically because most of the previous elite HW's were re-rated at a higher level. Peter Jackson went from a "12" to "13", others improved such as Norton, Holmes, Klitschko, Lewis, Frazier, Dempsey, etc. Langford was left untouched. Here is my opinion; I believe that Langford was one of the greatest fighters of all time. Again, I realize that he did a lot of his best work at the lower levels and was blind in one eye by the time that he had most of his fights at the HW's. I think that that point is a positive towards improving his rating along with the fact that most of his peers, McVey, Wills, Jackson, etc, considered him one of the best. He also had the respect of the "mainstream" fighting community at the time and wasn't given the opportunities like most of the black fighters at the time. If Oliver McCall has been re-rated as a "10," Langford is a historically better fighter than that! Floyd Patterson and Ken Norton went from a "9" to a "10" and I believe that Langford's body of work is much greater than those two (and I am a Ken Norton fan, just came along in a tough time otherwise I am sure that he would have been a world champion over a span of time). Sure he was a smaller built fighter but he is a much better boxer than some of the guys rated at the same level or better than him, Bowe, Holyfield, Klitschko, McCall, Norton, Uzcudun, Ellis. I only mention these modern fighters because I am not really sure how to compare them against the older fighters that I didn't really get a chance to see. Thanks
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