18/09/2026
'This fighting business is like every other kind of business. You've got to keep on studying and learning all the time, and if you don't why, the folks that do will just pass you right by on the way to the top. A lot of people always wondered how it was that I kept bouncing around in those rings for so long and could keep right on whipping boys even after I got those there crows feet under my eyes and a lot of fat around my stomach and alI that. Well, it was because I was always studying fighting and learning new tricks and after I lost my shape and my speed and my eyesight, I was fighting with my head. When I started fighting, I said to myself, Little Thammy, you're a pretty bum fighter, and you ain't going to last long unless you do lots of learning. The fight business was one I liked better than all the rest, and I could make more money at it, and so I decided to stick right with it. And all the while I never stopped saying to myself that I was a pretty bum sort of fighter and I'd better do a lot of learning or I'd get licked right out of the business.
So, when I wasn't fighting I was going to fight shows and watching all the fighters to see what the best thing they had. When I'd see someone doing something new or using a punch better than I used it, I'd go to a gymnasium the next day and practice and practice and then go right on practicing until I learned the trick. When the moving pictures came and they showed pictures of fights where champions strutted their stuff, I'd almost go broke going to see those pictures. I'd keep right on going until I had got in my mind all the best tricks those boys did. The next day I'd go to the gym and grab me a few sparring partners and I'd tell him what tricks I learned and then we'd practice them until we learned it or he got dizzy. And if he got dizzy and didn't want to practice on it any longer. I'd get some other boy to work with me.'
- Sam Langford