Sam Langford

Author : Steven Edwin Laffoley
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781897426500
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.0X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Pulling No Punches written by Steven Edwin Laffoley and published by . This book was released on 2013-07-10 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey called Sam Langford from Weymouth Falls, Nova Scotia, “The greatest fighter we’ve ever had.” And champion Jack Johnson stated he “he was the toughest little son-of-a-bitch that ever lived.” Celebrated New York boxing writer Hype Igoe said he was “the greatest fighter, pound for pound, who ever lived,” while New York sports writer Joe Williams said he “was probably the best the ring ever saw.” Langford was so good that many boxers refused to fight him, so good that he took bouts with bigger men just to get a match, so good that he once fought the greatest boxer of his age, Jack Johnson, who was forty pounds heavier and a good foot taller—and still went the distance. Yet, for all the ferocity of his talent, Sam Langford (1883-1956) could not outbox fistic fate. From his first bout in 1902 until his last a quarter century later, he battled boxing’s colour barrier that kept him from being world champion in three different weight classes. Still, he refused to be knocked down and relentlessly pursued a title shot until he was nearly forty. When, in 1923, he approached Jack Kearns, the manager of then heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, for a title bout, the wily Kearns looked over the nearly blind, well-past-his-prime boxer, and shook his head. “We were looking for someone easier,” he sighed. He was just that good. When Langford could no longer get his title shot, he retired from the ring in 1926 and soon faded from the public mind—until the serious compilers of lists that recognize boxing’s all-time greatest began including his name, and he found himself becoming a legend. His official record says he fought 250 bouts, but he remembered fighting more than 500. And he loved to talk about them all, loved the stories that shaped the contours of his life and loved the absolute truth and less-than-certain tales that wove themselves into his boxing legend. Of course, this was as it should have been, because for him, great boxing was as much about the battles’ tales as it was about the battles themselves. This is the story of Sam Langford.

Author : Randy Roberts
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 9780252071485
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jack Dempsey written by Randy Roberts and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of Jack Dempsey, Heavyweight Champion of the World from 1919-1926.

Author : Mark Allen Baker
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476639876
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The World Colored Heavyweight Championship, 1876-1937 written by Mark Allen Baker and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For six decades the World Colored Heavyweight Championship was a useful tool of racial oppression--the existence of the title far more important to the white public than its succession of champions. It took some extraordinary individuals, most notably Jack Johnson, to challenge "the color line" in the ring, although the title and the black fighters who contended for it continued until the reign of Joe Louis a generation later. This history traces the advent and demise of the Championship, the stories of the 28 professional athletes who won it, and the demarcation of the color line both in and out of the ring.

Author : Theresa Runstedtler
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520280113
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner written by Theresa Runstedtler and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the life and boxing career of Jack Johnson.

Author : Clay Moyle
Publisher : Win by Ko Publications
ISBN 13 : 9780979982248
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Billy Miske written by Clay Moyle and published by Win by Ko Publications. This book was released on 2011 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hall of Fame boxer Billy Miske was arguably the most courageous and inspirational figure in boxing history, and his story is long overdue. During a career that was impeded and cut short as a result of his ongoing battle with a terminal illness, he fought a number of the greatest fighters who ever lived, including Jack Dillon, Harry Greb, and Jack Dempsey.

Author : Colleen Aycock
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786461888
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The First Black Boxing Champions written by Colleen Aycock and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents fifteen chapters of biography of African American and black champions and challengers of the early prize ring. They range from Tom Molineaux, a slave who won freedom and fame in the ring in the early 1800s; to Joe Gans, the first African American world champion; to the flamboyant Jack Johnson, deemed such a threat to white society that film of his defeat of former champion and “Great White Hope” Jim Jeffries was banned across much of the country. Photographs, period drawings, cartoons, and fight posters enhance the biographies. Round-by-round coverage of select historic fights is included, as is a foreword by Hall-of-Fame boxing announcer Al Bernstein.

Author : Colleen Aycock
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786493364
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Joe Gans written by Colleen Aycock and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-11-21 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joe Gans captured the world lightweight title in 1902, becoming the first black American world title holder in any sport. Gans was a master strategist and tactician, and one of the earliest practitioners of “scientific” boxing. As a black champion reigning during the Jim Crow era, he endured physical assaults, a stolen title, bankruptcy, and numerous attempts to destroy his reputation. Four short years after successfully defending his title in the 42-round “Greatest Fight of the Century,” Joe Gans was dead of tuberculosis. This biography features original round-by-round ringside telegraph reports of his most famous and controversial fights, a complete fight history, photographs, and early newspaper drawings and cartoons.

Author : John Demont
Publisher : McClelland & Stewart
ISBN 13 : 0771025130
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Long Way Home written by John Demont and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The province's premier journalist tells the story he was born to write. No journalist has travelled the back roads, hidden vales and fog-soaked coves of Nova Scotia as widely as John DeMont. No writer has spent as much time considering its peculiar warp and weft of humanity, geography and history. The Long Way Home is the summation of DeMont's years of travel, research and thought. It tells the story of what is, from the European view of things, the oldest part of Canada. Before Confederation it was also the richest, but now Nova Scotia is among the poorest. Its defining myths and stories are mostly about loss and sheer determination. Equal parts narrative, memoir and meditation, The Long Way Home chronicles with enthralling clarity a complex and multi-dimensional story: the overwhelming of the first peoples and the arrival of a mélange of pioneers who carved out pockets of the wilderness; the random acts and unexplained mysteries; the shameful achievements and noble failures; the rapture and misery; the twists of destiny and the cold-heartedness of fate. This is the biography of a place that has been hardened by history. A place full of reminders of how great a province it has been and how great—with the right circumstances and a little luck—it could be again.

Author : Kevin Smith
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9780738511368
Total Pages : 134 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Boston's Boxing Heritage written by Kevin Smith and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2002-10-01 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boston's Boxing Heritage: Prizefighting from 1882 to 1955 chronicles the rich history of prizefighting in Boston and the many characters that made the Hub city the home of champions. It is not only a pictorial history of the sport but also a tale of heroes and villains, gangsters and mobsters, contenders and bums, trainers and newspapermen, straight men and cheats. It is a saga of ethnicity and race, of color barriers broken and neighborhood rivalries settled and rekindled. At its core this story is truly about a city and its relationship with a sport. Boston's Boxing Heritage: Prizefighting from 1882 to 1955 covers the early bareknuckle years of boxing through the sport's post-World War II boom. When Boston's John L. Sullivan won the heavyweight crown from Paddy Ryan in 1882, he took prizefighting from an illegal, red-light district pastime to the country's most popular sport and in essence put Bean Town on the sporting map. For the next sixty years, Boston remained one of the elite cities in the boxing world spawning ring immortals such as George "Little Chocolate" Dixon, Joe "the Barbados Demon" Wolcott, William "Honey" Mellody, Rocky Marciano, Jack "the Boston Gob" Sharkey, and Sam "the Boston Tar Baby" Langford.

Author : Randy L. Swope
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476634637
Total Pages : 198 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Leo Houck written by Randy L. Swope and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-01-16 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While many of his peers began their careers as farmers and factory workers, Leo Florian Houck became a boxing sensation at age 14, enabling him to support his mother and six siblings after his father's death. Houck's career really took off in 1911 with a 20-round victory over world-class welterweight Harry Lewis in Paris. During 1913 Leo became the leading middleweight contender in America. This biography details Houck's early years in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, his long career in the ring--including 200 fights--and his 27 years as Penn State's legendary boxing coach.