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4 unusual facts about World Colored Heavyweight Championship


Sam Langford

title= World Colored Heavyweight Champion

Langford was the World Colored Heavyweight Champion, a title vacated by Johnson after he won the World Championship, a record five times.

Sandy Ferguson

These fighters included the future Light Heavyweight Champion of the World, Battling Levinsky and the holder of the World Colored Heavyweight Championship, Sam McVey.

World Colored Heavyweight Championship

The title continued to exist until the reign of Joe Louis as universally recognized champ as the color bar against black heavyweights was enforced during and for a generation after Jack Johnson's reign as world champ.


World Colored Welterweight Championship

The ascension of Henry Armstrong as the world welterweight champ on 31 May 1938 (when he beat Barney Ross) seemingly made the title redundant (the World Colored Heavyweight Championship expired when Joe Louis became world heavyweight champ in 1937 and the World Colored Middleweight Championship became defunct for 16 years after Tiger Flowers won the world middleweight title in 1926), but it was still contested during Armstrong's reign.


see also