Greg Page

Definitely a very skilled heavyweight. He had a really fluid, natural sort of style. Did he have the potential to be great? I'm not sure. He definitely could have left a better legacy I feel, given his talents.

I remember reading an article which dealt with Gerrie Coetzee's choice of opponent for his first title defense.
His camp were confident about their chances versus Page and expressed as much in a conversation with Angelo Dundee.
Apparently Dundee's eyes widened and told them to look for another opponent. When asked why, Dundee emphatically replied that Page was all wrong for Coetzee.

Coetzee's camp persisted with the Page selection and the rest is history.

 

When you really look at it, are any great heavyweight's physical tools or athleticism THAT much more pronounced than a decent contender's? I dare say not. It's not about that. It's about mentality. Page had every natural gift any fighter could dream for, and he decided to be a pig instead.

I think it's just that simple.

 

Along with Michael Dokes,Pinklon Thomas,Tim Witherspoon,and Tony Tubbs,Greg had the ability to go far. Unfortunately not the discipline and motivation. Sad !

 

Very good fighter

 

I think it might have been Page that introduced Toney to the delights of Burger King. That was his problem, juuuuuuuuuuunk fooooooooood, and lots of it.

 

One of the Louisville sportswriters who was there all the way, said his father forced him into boxing. His first love was hoops.

 

And he'd be alive today if his old man just let him be. He had the size, speed and reflexes to get an athletic scholarship, maybe even at Louisville, his weight would have taken care of itself, and he at least could have gotten a degree out of the process. Fathers like he, Gregorio Benitez and Tony Ayala, Sr. belong in Hell, and deserve to be remembered that way.:fire

 

Ken Overlin said it best. "It's a stinking racket but I like it"

 

Greg Page was about as good as you could get but he was matched incredibly hard.

If you lined up all the fighters he fought in the order he fought them a lot of higher regarded heavyweights might not have done so well. I don't think Riddick Bowe was that much better.

Some of his wins don't look like anything on paper until you realise how competative some of the names were at the time Page fought them. Quick Tillis, Snipes, George Chaplin, Marty Monroe Stan Ward, Berbick, Tim Witherspoon, David Bey, Gerrie Coetzee, Tony Tubbs, buster douglas were live, prime contenders and belt holders good enough to beat anything but champions when Page fought them.

Page fought and beat more names than any of the other 1980s beltholders. There are a few fights he should have won but it was a busy schedule and he went on the road for a lot of them. Up untill 1986 He was about as good as any heavyweight in the world on a good night.

Page went 2-1 in title fights but he later beat witherspoon and as an Amateur beat Tony Tubbs 6 out of 7 times.

 

Good fighter, maybe if he would have trained harder and ate less he would have been better but he ate too much, kinda reminds me of Tony Tubbs...

I guess he is best know for dropping Tyson in a sparring session many many years ago...

 

I was very impressed when seeing Greg Page in some amateur bouts and shortly after he be a professional. But when seeing him fight early during his career at the Los Angeles Sports Arena in person, his announced weight was very high. I said to myself, "Oh-Oh!" Page won easily against very token opposition, but I came away feeling that he wasn't being serious about his career. While Page had quite a bit of success during his peak years, I don't think he can close to fulfilling his potential because of his lack of dedication.

- Chuck Johnston

 

Page padded his record by fighting against a number of tomato cans with losing records. He looked good as NABF Champ but his world title was short lived as far as I recall. No question that he was a skilled boxer but appeared to lack motivation and that killer instinct that is vital to a true champ. All too often he came into the ring with that big corporation* up front which bespeaks of a few too many meals rather than hours at the gym. I believe he had conflicts with trainers and with Don King and these disputes contributed to his problems.







* big corporation = old timers will know that used to mean having a big stomach - a rather dated term I'll admit

 

Greg was a tremendous talent, and was my favorite fighter for a time.But the reason he fell off was he didn't truly have the motivation and determination to be a great fighter.Like SLAKKA said, his father pushed him into the sport, basketball was his first love( like Tyrell Biggs, Greg played for his high school team), and once his father died, probably subconsciously fell off since the pressure wasn't there for him to max his potential.Remember though, even as an amateur, he had his problems with training, for he mentioned that for some of his battles with Tubbs, he didn't train.Also, consider that, up until early-to-mid 1982, he was a Butch Lewis fighter, not Don King, as was slightly rated higher in the WBA than the WBC at the time (KO magazine had predicted him to be champion of the WBA by the end of 1982). Once he became a Don King product, he became one of the many, instead of one of the few, and suffered because of it.

 

Something which needs to be remembered about Greg is that he listened too damned much to criticism of his weight and how his body looked, when he should have only considered whether or not he was conditioned as needed to win.

His weight was down in the 220-218 range before he reached 30, for Orlin Norris and Mark Wills II, and he lost both badly. He lost Berbick badly at 220, and blamed his low weight rather than his fractured thumb for that outcome. He didn't seem to be any better for Chaplin I at 227 than he was for Chaplin II at 238.

For whatever it's worth, his weight happened to be 224 for Marty Monroe, and 227 for Renaldo Snipes, the two bouts where I thought I saw him at his best. [I only saw a clip of a knockdown of LeDoux, but Scott was no longer a credible scalp as Snipes and Monroe were.]

Greg, like Leroy Jones and Buster Mathis, was a pure endomorph. Even steroids weren't going to give him a six pack. People needed to stop harping about his weight and physical appearance, and concentrate instead on his performances.

After double vision forced Stan Ward to pack it in after seven rounds of a USBA shot at Greg, he emerged as a critic of Page in a ringside post-fight interview. "He's fast, but he's not that quick. He has a fair left hook." Stan came across as somebody thoughtfully sober about it, not an individual expressing sour grapes. This was his 19th professional bout, but it was already a career packed with quality, so he would have enjoyed a valid frame of reference for assessing young Page.

While Ali's defensive elusiveness is commonly considered to be overrated, his head was a far more difficult target than Greg's.

I don't think he underachieved as much as commonly supposed. He didn't shy away from rematches, but neither did he improve in the rematches he did have either. His matchmaking wasn't the greatest, crucial at a time when Cooney and Dokes could have been taken by him. [Gerry didn't have the speed or punch resistance, while Michael both lacked the power to hurt him, and reach to jab with Page at long range.]

Personally, I don't believe he ever could have been the best HW in the world, let alone a dominant champion. He did underachieve, but was also susceptible to a crushing overhand right over his jab by an aggressive straight ahead brawler. Shavers got off the deck to stop Jeff Sims on the same card Greg halted LeDoux. It may be extremely fortunate for Page that he wasn't defending his USBA Title against Earnie that night. Shavers proved over the next year to have a lot more left in the tank than Scott. [Earnie would actually pick up a ten round decision over undefeated Ali Haakim in his next outing after Sims, and unloaded that stunning ninth round face planter on Tillis six months after the Bahamas. 14-0 Tony Perea and 13-1 southpaw Danny Sutton were both taken out by Shavers in seven during 1982, Earnie's only two career stoppage wins between rounds six and ten.] 1982 Shavers was a weirdly unpredictable animal, and while logic says Page would take him easily, logic said the same thing about Berbick-Page, and later Wills-Page I & II.

Tim Witherspoon was the great underachiever of Greg's era, in my opinion. He's the guy who could have been the dominant bridge between Holmes and Tyson.