Greb and the Heavyweights- Tommy Gibbons

Well I don't understand why Geale is targeted, he was a pretty good middleweight and won world titles and lost to a superior fighter who many regard as the best in the world atm so no disgrace there, sure we would have loved it if he could have become an all time great but I didn't mind Geale he put on some great fights.

You would not be aware of what Mundine was like when he began boxing but his big mouth had always got him offside with the public. For a start Anthony was a very talented five eighth in rugby league for the St. George Dragons, problem was he would spit the dummy often and always claimed he was the best 5/8th in Australia and he clearly wasn't even close to Brad Fittler an all time great of the game. Anyway after he was overlooked for the Australian team for Fittler, Mundine attacked Fittler and called the great player a bum... so he was pilloried in the press and by the public on talkback radio. Mundine responded by QUITTING the sport then announces he will take up pro boxing instead, at this time we copped Mundine rant after rant after rant where he claims he is not only the greatest rugby league player EVER (totally laughable) but he is the greatest boxer to ever live lol and he doesn't stop there, he calls our greatest sportsman of them all Sir Don Bradman the great cricketer nowhere near as great as he was lol:) and then goes on to claim he is the greatest sportsman and athlete in world history.... UNBELIEVABLE... all this at the very start of his boxing career but he does well for a while not losing until his first world title shot where he pleased the entire nation by getting knocked out by Sven Ottke and that photo of him on his back asleep is one of our favourite and famous photos. Fact is mate he trod on everyones toes and criticized countless sporting icons and he even went so far as to say to americans that they DESERVED 9/11 which made him a pariah in the united states as well. it wasn't until the very late stages of his career that he displayed humility. I do hear that in private he is a very nice guy, you just can't see that from his public persona.

 

10 best fighters or 10 best HWs?

 

You keep saying this and pretending that none of us understand the business of boxing but you arent providing any real reason why Dempsey should have avoided lucrative, supposedly easy, defenses against his two best challengers? Thats the problem, you want to ignore the fact that real bonafide offers were on the table and were steared totally clear of. Where does business, besides the fact that losing is bad business, factor into those decisions. Again, you are simply trying to move the goal post and that argument just doesnt hold anymore water for apologists than any of the other arguments youve presented.

There are no degrees. Either you deserve a shot or you dont. What a bull**** retort. If you are going to pretend there are levels to how much a person deserves a shot ranging from "not at all" to "he kinda deserved one" to "he absolutely deserved one" then why do you keep asking that ONLY of Greb? Why defend the guys Dempsey fought because surely none of them place higher on the imaginary "who deserved it more" test.

This is where the real agenda comes out. As I pointed out before, you cant let it go. You cant stand it that Greb made Dempsey look bad in sparring. Its a sensitive issue with you. It belies your need to elevate Dempsey to a higher plateau and minimize anything that points out his vulnerabilities. Nobody is saying Greb deserved a title shot off of his sparring sessions with Dempsey. That would be ludicrous. But lets also not pretend that it meant nothing. Dempsey was well known for going all out in sparring regardless of his opponents size. I myself have a photo of him knocking out a bantamweight in sparring in 1920. He knocked out newspaper writer Paul Gallico in sparring. He routinely knocked out young men that came to his training camps wanting nothing more than go a round with the champion. He knocked out Jamaica Kid, and many many many others in sparring. Big gloves or not. The fact that Greb did so well with Dempsey does tell us something. Pretend it doesnt but it does.

What difference does it make? What difference? The exact same thing can be said of Dempsey. What fighter that was even close to Greb did Dempsey fight? The answer, much more than your question, is none.

Then why did Dempsey struggle with some of those so-called slow mediocre guys? Who were these badass speed demons that Dempsey beat? Even more important who were the badass speed demons that Dempsey's challengers beat? Id love to see that list. Ive asked you half a dozen times to tell me exactly who had a better HW record than Greb and Wills during Dempsey's reign. If you cant name anyone then why protest so much? Tell me exactly who Brennan, Miske, Gibbons, Firpo, and Carpentier beat to get their title shots then compare that to Greb's record and tell me they deserved it more or that their records told a story that would illustrate they would fare better than Greb against Dempsey. You cant or you would. Your silence is deafening.

You dont see me complaining that Tunney got a title shot before Greb in 1926 do you? Wills, yes, but not Greb. But thats pretty telling isnt it? Tunney beats a MW and two shot LHWs and gets his title shot while Wills waits in the wings. Im sure youve somehow convinced yourself that Tunney beating Gibbons and Carpentier were much better than anything Wills had done to date.

Tunney weighed in the 180s for their fourth fight as well and Greb won that one so nice try but no dice. If we are looking for excuses then dont forget to add that Greb fought Tunney the fifth time with a broken rib and was leading handily after three rounds when Tunney finally hit the spot and Greb stopped fight. But Im not making excuses because like I said, fairs fair and by that point based on beating Greb Tunney deserved it more. Ive never said anything to the contrary. Its you putting words in my mouth. Youll jump to Tunney because he finally convincingly beat Greb after four fights but you dont want to talk about Miske who got a title shot with 1 fight under his belt in nearly 2 years fresh out of a sick bed (which Dempsey knew) and who had lost to Greb. You dont want to discuss Bill Brennan who had been beaten easily by Greb four times in the year preceding his title shot. You dont want to mention Carpentier who had done nothing to deserve a shot short of being the Justin Beiber of his day. You dont want to discuss Gibbons who lost his eliminator to Greb. You dont want to mention Firpo who ducked Greb and even readily admitted in the weeks leading up to his fight with Dempsey that he wasnt ready and that Wills deserved the shot more. No, you want to talk about Tunney who got his title shot 7+ years into Dempsey's reign. atsch

It didnt go so good for Dempsey either did it? At least when Greb took his beating he won three rounds. You could easily argue that in 20 rounds with Tunney Dempsey didnt win a single round including the one he dropped Tunney in. Go back and tell me if Dempsey won more than 20 seconds of that round.
If none of the HWs Greb fought could fight what does that say about Dempsey? They share a lot of common opponents:

Terry Keller
Willie Meehan
Gunboat Smith
Homer Smith
Bill Brennan
Billy Miske
Battling Levinsky
Tommy Gibbons
Gene Tunney

We can take it even further and add all of the names of guys Dempsey was trying to make a fight with that Greb either knocked off or had already beaten.

Would you care to compare their relative results? No I didnt think so. If Greb was fighting the same guys as Dempsey and beating them (as a MW no less) and only lost to Tunney because he was the first HW he fought who could fight then that really proves my point better than yours seeing as how you could say the EXACT same thing about Dempsey relative to his opponents and to Tunney with the exception that unlike Greb Dempsey was actually a full fledged HW and not a little MW operating at a massive disadvantage.

Ah your old standard. "Its a business" and I dont understand it. LOL. You might as well stick your fingers in your ears and stick out your tongue because telling someone whose been following the sport since before you were born and has forgotten more about Dempsey and Greb than youll ever know isnt going to be impressed by your non-argument. I will simply repeat, if it was strictly a business decision and had nothing to do with Dempsey fearing his odds against Greb or Wills then he was a ****ty businessman. Because if he had the same high opinion of himself that you do he could have taken the biggest payday of his career to fight Wills, knock him out (if he really could) and he would have been an even bigger sensation than he already was. Then he could have picked up another $150,000 to knock out a puny little MW. But lets be real. He knew the odds were against either happening. He sure as **** wasnt going to take the chance because Wills was a much bigger HW than Tunney and he could fight too and Greb was teak tough slippery speed demon who threw a million punches and never got tired. He knew this and if you dont think that factored into his "business decision" then your kidding yourself, which of course we already know.

There HAD to be some other reason than your hero was a chicken **** who didnt fancy his chances. There just had to be.

 

Ive read them. Half of them were bought and paid for by Tex Rickard and the other half said Dempsey feared Wills. Take your pick.

And there were a bunch of promoters from all over the country and all over the world that made Dempsey offers and he ignored them. Period. You can stick your head in the sand and pretend that no promoter would come forward and stage this fight but thats simply not true and a slack jawed troglodite with a laptop and no opposible thumbs could find a dozen of them in 2 minutes if he was inclined. The fact that you continue to make yourself look like a fool by shouting that there werent any promoters willing to stage the fight and that the money wasnt there is absolutely ridiculous. You had Dempsey's own business manager come forward and admit that Dempsey was ducking Wills and actively engaged in subterfuge to prevent it. But lets believe Damon Runyon who never saw a check from Tex Rickard that he didnt cash...

Just a few, come back when youve read thousands and maybe we can hold an intelligent conversation on it.

This is either pure ignorance spouted from someone who has read "a few articles from the time" or god damn bold faced lie. Either way its not even worth debating. If you are pretending that there was no clamor for a Dempsey-Wills bout then you have to be the dumbest sonofa***** Ive ever stooped so low to debate with. Even in Grebs case, were there was less clamor, there was still a call for it and there were still bonafide offers for it. Pretending the contrary is ridiculous and I would LOVE for you to put your money where your mouth is. Lets make a bet right now. What say you. Im willing to back mine with cold hard cash and a ton of evidence. Care to take me up on that? Again, I didnt think so.

Oh please. Carpentier I'll grant you. But dont sit there and pretend that he could or would make more money against Miske, Brennan, and Gibbons than Greb or Wills. Wills would have trumped all of them including Carpentier. That was freely admitted at the time. Greb was a bigger draw than Gibbons was thats not even debateable, Greb made far more money in his career than Gibbons did and had bigger gates as well, barring possibly the fight Gibbons had with Bloomfield in England and had Greb gone through with his trip to England in 1922 rather than stay home to Nurse his wife he would have beaten Gibbons attendance there as well. You can say the same thing about Brennan and Miske as well. Even Firpo was a complete media creation and thats more the point than anything. You could sell anything to the public in that era because there was no television to see that Firpo was an unskilled clod, or that Miske was an overrated dying charity case, or that Carpentier was a frail fop who was totally predictable and in no way qualified to challenge for the title. A Dempsey-Wills bout would have promoted itself. Period. You wouldnt need to be PT Barnum and Tex Rickard rolled into one to sell that fight. It was such big news it sold itself. As for Greb, the best offer, and most viable offer made was done in Pittsburgh where Greb was a hero. Are we going to pretend that the same guy who drew thousands of people simply to watch him ride in an open top car home from his Gibbons fight isnt going to be able to draw with Dempsey? And regardless, Dempsey was offered a GUARANTEE AND A PERCENTAGE. That means Dempsey gets paid no matter who shows up and whatever percentage he got on top of that would have been gravy. Who made him a better offer that he accepted and fought against in 1922? Nobody. Dempsey was inactive that year. So there goes your little theory.

Aaaah and the old standby. "It wasnt Dempsey's fault it was his handlers. Well, heres the problem with that argument. Its two fold: 1. Rickard didnt own Dempsey. He wanted him to fight for him exclusively but Dempsey didnt always follow the script. He fought for Mike Collins against Gibbons when it suited him and he fought for Floyd Fitzsimmons against Miske when it suited him. So Dempsey wasnt owned under some slave contract by Rickard. He used Rickard as an umbrella just as much as Rickard used Dempsey to rain money. 2. Dempsey fired Kearns in early 1925 and continued the exact same pattern of ducking and playing both ends against the middle that he had prior to that. He was a free agent and could have signed to fight whoever he wanted to but didnt. You can pretend the Fitzsimmons contract was signed by Dempsey in good faith but Ive illustrated more than once in other threads on here that wasnt the case. When Kearns found out that Dempsey was going to fire him Kearns signed a contract obligating Dempsey to a Wills fight which Dempsey repudiated. Dempsey wanted no part of Wills and he used so many excuses and told so many stories after the fact as to why it didnt happen that his credibility is seriously in question on the subject.

There as only one reason why it never got done and thats because short of putting a gun to Dempsey's head you werent going to get him to fight those guys.

No mention of those mediocre fluffs Greb beat? Miske, Brennan, and Gibbons? Yeah, lets just pretend those fights didnt happen. That might bring up too many questions. Even Firpo was nothing until four years into Dempsey's reign. You want to pretend all of this happened all at once but it didnt. Greb and Wills were every bit as big as Firpo Rickard sold him to his New York media buddies to get that fight hyped in 1923. Even then Id argue that Wills would have sold every bit as much as Firpo against Dempsey and arguably more.

Again, Rickard didnt own Dempsey. Dempsey fought for who he wanted when he wanted. You act like Rickard owned Dempsey and nothing is further from the truth. This is nothing but a naive apologists argument coming from a guy who thinks he understands the business of boxing because he read a few article from that time. LOL.

Oh yea, except for that little inconvenience of not fighting his two most qualified challengers for the better part of 7 years he was the baddest muther****er on the planet...

Then they would have proven everything they set out to but whether they did or not they should have been given the opportunity. Thats the point. The outcome could be debated from here to eternity. Its not really relevant to why you started the argument which was to present the idea that Greb wasnt a worthy challenger (which you now admit he was).

I guess that depends on whether or not you were/are black and/or are in favor of both fair play in athletic competition at its finest highest level between the best and most worthy/competent competitors. It seems to me some are more interested in the image boxing project not how good boxing actually can be.

 

First Wills years later stated Dempsey had nothing to do with the fight not coming off. That's the man himself exonerating Dempsey. End of argument.

Secondly who did Greb fight after beating Gibbons in early 22 in the hwt division? Four years between Gibbons and Dempsey losing to Tunney and zero fights with any top hwts during that time? I thought he was seriously pursuing a bout with Dempsey? You do that by fighting in the hwt division against ranked top hwts not retreating to the middleweight division.

Third. A poll published the day of Grebs bout with Gibbons in 22 which asked the boxing public who they would like to see fight Dempsey.....Grebs name is not even mentioned. The idea the Greb a middleweight was on everyone's mind as a contender for the hwt championship prior to his win over Gibbons in 22 does not hold water. Now after beating Gibbons this may have changed but then Greb retreated to lower weight divisions and only fought an occasional hwt tomato can. Where was his pursuit for a title shot after March 1922?

Again you can find newspaper articles that will paint ANY conclusion you want made. I can look back on the mid 70s articles and easily show Ali ducked a Foreman rematch. There was talk of promoters offering huge sums for this fight etc. Did Ali in reality duck Foreman? Absolutely not as I lived through the era and know the true timeline. Bottom line sorting through newspaper articles to form a conclusion is HIGHLY suspect as you will find articles that will give credibility to any predetermined conclusion.

 

I was thinking of the 10 best head to head fighters at unlimited weight. By necessity, i think that some of these might not actually be heavyweights. Greb being the ideal example.


You made some points about outside of Carpentier, it is hard to suggest Dempsey's other fighter's would be any bigger draws than Greb and certainly Wills. I think you probably need to also add Firpo to the list, who like it or not, was well built up in the press until the Dempsey or even Wills fights. Another who i cant understand being so Frozen out of the picture is Jack Johnson. Surely he would have been a massive drawcard, because of how hated he was (or supposedly was) and his advancing ages suggested a relatively easy fight. I cant understand why Dempsey didnt jump on what could have easily been turned into an absolutely massive fight of the Century (in the general public's eyes).

It is amazing when you think about it. At any given time, it is very rare, if ever, that there are ever more than 4 or 5 fighters in the same class as the best fighter in the world. Dempsey not only missed arguably his three best challengers, but he also failed to defend against the two previous lineal champions and of course he lost twice to Tunney.

 

I think there are generally accepted degrees. Some challengers are completely undeserving and don't belong in the same ring as a champ, some are reasonable opponents but with thin credentials, some are worthy challengers who have done something specific to earn the shot, and others are outstanding and logical challengers with great credentials.
Some challengers are just "names", has-beens. Others are unknowns but might be quite good. There's a whole lot of degrees, or at least people who discuss boxing assume there are.

In reality, probably no one deserves a shot. It's just whether you have the right manager and connections to get one.

 

Then I stand by my point that if we are using degrees of who deserved a shot Greb compares more favorably than Dempsey's defenses and as such trying to question his credentials while defending Dempsey's defenses is weak

 

You keep saying this but it doesn't make it any more true than the last time when I posted the actual clippings from the poll, which took place over about a month and Greb actually did get a lot of votes.

This is a nonsense argument. Newspapers wrote about Greb as a challenger because he was a viable challenger. The idea that you can just go and find articles to support any stance because writers didn't have enough to write about is silly. Where there is smoke there is fire. If you have a ton of articles from the era talking about Greb as a challenger, mentioned Dempsey in relation to Greb, discussing promotional offers, etc then lets face facts, Greb was considered a contender. There wasn't some silly nationwide conspiracy to paint Greb as a contender undeservedly. When you fight the same guys that HWs are fighting to get title shots, or the guys who got title shots, and beat them more convincingly then you are a contender. By your logic Archie Moore was never a contender because he took the exact same path to a title shot.

 

That's fair enough.
Greb was better than Miske, Brennan and Gibbons.
And Carpentier.
Firpo is debatable.
Tunney is Greb's equal though.

 

Here's a question: was Greb at any stage actually called Berg as a surname? I've never heard of Greb as a Germanic surname but Berg certainly.

 

I have read this before. Though Klompton denies this, there is some stuff out there that said Greb was Jewish. It was common for fighters to change their names back then.

Tunney, an erudite boxer if there ever was one said Greb was Jewish, and the Jewish sports hall of fame at one point put Greb in, then took him out due to lack of verification.

 

I can trace Greb's family back several hundred years and they were always Grebs. Greb was not jewish. He was roman catholic. I have his baptismal records, marriage records, death records, parents marriage records, etc. Both parents were German and catholic.

 

LOL, didn't need to go back a hundred years

Thanks for answering.

It just struck me of a sudden that Greb is Berg backwards. It means "mountain". He would not have been the first fighter to use an assumed surname, if it had been the case and for whatever reason.

 

What did Gibbons do after 1922 to earn a title shot in 1923? Well, he split a series with the ailing Billy Miske, who Greb beat in his prime, and beat Chuck Wiggins, a perennial Greb victim. What did Firpo do? KO'd a 40 something Willard, beat Bill Brennan, a four time loser to Greb, and Charlie Weinert, also a former Greb victim. What did Tunney do? Beat Gibbons, who got thrashed the last time he faced Greb, Bartley Madden, a two time loser to Greb, Jack Renault, a two time loser to Greb, and Jeff Smith, who lost to Greb so many times I stopped counting. And of course he beat Greb, but if Greb wasn't deserving anyway then how could Tunney be for beating him?

By tearing down Greb you're actually damning Dempsey as well, because almost everyone Dempsey gave a title shot to had either recently lost to Greb, or earned their shot by beating guys that Greb had already beaten multiple times anyway. If they were deserving then so was Greb, and if they weren't deserving why was Dempsey fighting them?