A contribution to the Dempsey Wills debate

Mendoza is fond of quoting the likes of Smith ,the insinuation being he is a brother historian ,which he has referred to himself as in the past, this time Mr Smith has put him firmly in his place.

 

No he didn't, Greb other than Dempsey was the leading HW, he dominated Gibbons, Brennan and Miske and Dempsey fought them instead of Greb. Greb was also constantly calling Dempsey out

 

I wouldn't credit dempsey much if he beat greb therefore I won't hold it against him for not facing him.

 

It would have been a much better win than Gibbons, Miske, Brennan, Carpentier, Morris based on the fact Greb beat 3 of those men and performed better against common opponents. The only 2 you could argue had better HW legacies in the period were Fulton and Willard (Sharkey too but he came much later). And Fulton didn't perform nearly as well against Miske as Greb and Willard was 37 and inactive for 3years

Frankly if you wouldn't rate beating Greb as a very credible win, you must hold the rest of Dempsey's resume in pretty low esteem

Dempsey was a marketing phenomenon and maybe the original 'cherry picker'. According to Klompton, who's the most researched poster on the era, Firpo and Carpentier were hyped up with the sole purpose of facing Dempsey. I'm not saying Dempsey was a hype job but he was protected from the best contenders, who knows he may have beaten them but he didn't prove he would or could have. If you can make millions taking easy fights it makes more sense to the boxer than risking it all and getting brain damaged or humiliated versus a much tougher fighter, for perhaps less money.

 

That's a nice story, not sure I agree with the latter though, I haven't seen enough of Langford to make a judgement on who I'd rank as flat out better. Dempsey was simply loaded and helped his common man

 

It's the whole weight issue. Greb was a mw and a small lhw it's amazing he beat these hw's but it's hard for me to think of him as a hw.

Consider the hw scene 8 years ago, toney dominated ruiz, holyfield and peter. But a victory over toney at hw doesn't really mean much imo.

I see it as low risk low reward tbh. It's better imo beating the natural hw that made the mw's seen great.

I'm not saying a win is worthless but I don't see it as particularly legacy enhancing. Not like a win over wills and maybe even langford would be.

I see dempsey as borderline top ten along with liston.

 

Greb weighed 170lbs for a few of his fights and not just no1 at MW but no1 at LHW, he wasn't much smaller than Dempsey really about 15-20lbs in it, he was the same size as Gibbons/Carpetier pretty much and many consider Gibbons to be Dempsey's best win. He'd be the same size as Fitz/Loughran, bigger than Walker - and men who beat them got their due credit. Lets not forget Charles, Moore, Patterson - all ex MWs and the best wins for Marciano/Walcott/Liston

But anyway the question is - why didn't the fight happen? Greb was desperate for this fight before and after Dempsey was champ. Personally I think his management and Dempsey just didn't fancy the trickier better opponents, he may have possibly beat them, but why bother when you can make millions without fighting them?

 

:good

 

I have no idea why the fight didn't happen, i'm just saying I have a hard time calling greb a hw.

 

I understand that Greb wanted a Dempsey fight and I can see Kearns wanting no part of it as Greb could have been a terrible spoiler but fail to see how Greb, who had to fight for his life v.s. Norfolk was actually going to survive fiften rounds with a prime Dempsey .. the rub to me is that on one hand we hear how Greb feasted on heavyweights but when his bouts with Norfolk come up we hear "well what do you expect ? He gave up 15 pounds." Well he'd be giving up close to twenty of solid muscle against a prime Dempsey ... go figure ...

 

Tunney went life and death with MW Greb how is he going to handle Dempsey...oh no wait.....and Greb beat him anyway