Was Harry Wills a greater HEAVYWEIGHT than Sam Langford ?

[Sonny's jab]

Wills or Langford ?

Who rates higher at heavyweight ?

[Senya13]

Wills, of course.

[PowerPuncher]

Wills should rate far above Langford at HW. His resume is amazing, on resume alone he rates above Dempsey. Arguably Wills was the best HW in the world from 1912-1926

P4P Langford rates higher

[TBooze]

Wills as my #15 Heavy; Langford #16.

[janitor]

I think Langford.

The series between them dose not tell the whole story because Langford was on the decline when it started.

Wills to a certain extent swept up the remenats of the black dynamite trio, Langford, Jeanette, McVea.

Contemporary fighters were in awe of Langford while they saw Wills as ugly but efective.

[robert ungurean]

Langford was past his prime when he engaged in his series with Wills.
Langford also scored 2 clean KO'S over the much larger Wills.
As far as I know there arent any ring historians who saw them both fight that rate Wills as the better fighter,that vote is reserved for Langford.
From what Ive read I believe Wills to be a bit overated.
Even the esteemed Ray Arcel didnt think Wills was considered a great fighter.

[Marciano Frazier]

Well, firstly Wills beat Langford more often than not. Beside each other their best common opponents were Joe Jeanette and Sam McVea. Wills record against McVea is 2-2-0 and 1 NC, against Jeanette 1-0-0. Langfords record against McVea 5-2-6 and 2 NC, against Jeanette 7-3-4. If you compare their resumes against these 2 fighters Langford comes out slightly on top but Wills reigned a good time as coloured hw champion which should count as much if not more than beeing an ABC-beltholder. So they are pretty interchangable. For myself i rate Wills a bit higher because he got the better of Langford in most of their bouts. Langford was well past his prime for most of the Wills fights. And I don't consider being an ABC beltholder to effect a fighter's historical standing. Being "colored champion" is much more significant in my eyes, since the colored title actually represented a large portion of the division, wasn't full of bogus rankings and money-making maneuvers, and didn't constantly strip its own champions for no good reason.