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As far as Langford being past his best, you can find a number of contemporary reports stating that by 1914 Langford was already "slipping" or other wording describing a decline in his over skill/ability, and those words would be written by those who followed his career in time and had a lot more room for comparision than do we do some 90 years later with our limited viewing of Langford...
And as far as Langford being blind, he lost the eyesight in his left eye during a "fixed fight" with Fred Fulton in the summer of 1917, and I believe I've read in the past that the doctors actually had to take the left eye out at some point and replace it with a glass one. After losing the sight in his left, his sight in his right eye rapidly decreased due to cataracts that formed, and it was in Jan of 1918 when he became "legally blind" in that eye, as well, due to the fact that he could then only see a few feet in front of him. He had a few operations to try to correct his vision in his right eye, and while some gave him some very momentary relief, none proved successful for any length of time (the last effort to say his eyesight came in the mid 30's, I believe, which by that time Langford had long since been in the dark).
You guys could check the records to see how that relates to Langford & Wills' matchups, but speaking of Wills, I'm certainly not going to fault anyone who thinks Wills was the slightly better heavyweight over Langford. In fact, when I came up with that earlier list I was quite tempted to put Wills in the #1 spot and I actually did start typing his name there before changing it to Langford. Along with Jackson (who doesn't have the win resume of the other two), to me Langford & Wills are the standout contenders in the historical sense of things, as all three of them seem to have the edge over others in the amount of respect they garnered during their respective times, how they were spoken of by both their peers and in the press, and things of that nature...All three of them would also feature in my own personal ranking of the top 20 (or top 25 at the least for Jackson) heavyweights in history.
And as far as Langford being blind, he lost the eyesight in his left eye during a "fixed fight" with Fred Fulton in the summer of 1917, and I believe I've read in the past that the doctors actually had to take the left eye out at some point and replace it with a glass one. After losing the sight in his left, his sight in his right eye rapidly decreased due to cataracts that formed, and it was in Jan of 1918 when he became "legally blind" in that eye, as well, due to the fact that he could then only see a few feet in front of him. He had a few operations to try to correct his vision in his right eye, and while some gave him some very momentary relief, none proved successful for any length of time (the last effort to say his eyesight came in the mid 30's, I believe, which by that time Langford had long since been in the dark).
You guys could check the records to see how that relates to Langford & Wills' matchups, but speaking of Wills, I'm certainly not going to fault anyone who thinks Wills was the slightly better heavyweight over Langford. In fact, when I came up with that earlier list I was quite tempted to put Wills in the #1 spot and I actually did start typing his name there before changing it to Langford. Along with Jackson (who doesn't have the win resume of the other two), to me Langford & Wills are the standout contenders in the historical sense of things, as all three of them seem to have the edge over others in the amount of respect they garnered during their respective times, how they were spoken of by both their peers and in the press, and things of that nature...All three of them would also feature in my own personal ranking of the top 20 (or top 25 at the least for Jackson) heavyweights in history.
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