Greb and the Heavyweights- Tommy Gibbons

Yes, I think it's mostly true too.

The thing is that people want to argue about it like it's the crucial matter; it's not.

I'll say it again: the question, for me, or at least a different question to the one that is usually asked, isn't whether or not Dempsey could have done more, or whether or not Dempsey did enough. It's what does the fact that he didn't meet his #1 contender and what does the fact that he never met Greb mean for his sporting legacy. It's not about assigning blame or unpicking the era (though that's very interesting). It's about what he did versus what was possible.

In sporting terms, failing to beat the best HW of your era is always significant for the champion. Or for a fighter of any weight. That's the meaningful part.

 

But what you're saying is your feelings about how that fight would go. That's fine. It's partly what the thread is about.

But it has nothing - nothing - to do with Dempsey's sporting legacy.

Nor does what people would have said a hundred years later if Dempsey and Greb HAD fought.

Nor does speculation about private conversations.

Nor does an impression of Harry Wills by a modern poster.

All that matters is what he did versus what was available. From this perspective.

 

I disagree with you that fighters don't think about legacy. Some of them, it's all they talk about. Mayweather has been on and on about his legacy for years, Lennox Lewis was bad for it too, but most of them talk about legacy when active.

But presuming for a moment you are right - it hardly matters. Nobody on here talks about how much money a fighter earns or sees it as important (maybe one or two).

For the purposes of this discussion the appraisal is certainly sporting, not business, just like 99.99% of appraisals on the forum. And it's the sporting appraisal that interests me. So I don't care that Dempsey was a puppet for managers; I care about who he beat, when, what it meant, and what it means for his place in history. And I think he's severely dented by the Wills issue and I think Greb was probably his best available white challenger for a spell.

Furthermore, I can't think of one fight that didn't come off that can't reasonably be explained by "oh it's business, that' guy's just the fighter." Palomino-Cuevas didn't come off, but hey, it didn't make business sense for those guys. They could make good money without fighting. Mayweather-Pacquiao, how did that make sense? It's the business, see - they could both make many millions without risking that loss, until it was time to cash out there was not point! Lewis-Bowe, in the end, if Bowe's manager doesn't make that fight, what can Bowe do about it? Of course putting the belt in the trash was the right thing to do. From a business perspective.

No. Adult males are responsible for their own destiny. If they place their business dealings in the hands of another man and that man fails them in some way, they failed.

 

This is just not true. Your obsession with what was said that week is bizarre. If we compare something like Dempsey-Wills with something like the role of women in the re-emergence of Berlin post WW2, it's very clear that the latter is by far the more important of the two, the far the more studied of the two, but understanding of it has changed, dramatically, through the course of the century.

You seem to think that learning about history years after the event is paralysing. That is absolute nonsense. You bleat on and on and on about the "racism of the times." But you are completely blinded to how the racism of the times might affect the reportage of the era.

Our understanding of history evolves, sometimes very dramatically, in areas far, far more important and studied than boxing and in relation to topics much, much more recent than the Dempsey era. To use one of your stances, this has been proven beyond all hope of contradiction.

But again and again, you use the line "this is the history as it was understood for 80 years" like that's the end of the affair. It's blinding to you.

I quite agree that this is possible, and I have said so. It's also unimportant in a sporting sense. This is what you seem unwilling to grasp. It doesn't matter if it's Dempsey's fault. What matters is that Dempsey never met his best contender, thus failing to test himself at the very very highest level as champion until, past-prime, he met Tunney and was thrashed.

He also, prior to Tunney, arguably missed out on his most qualified white challenger, regardless of his size. This also matters, regardless of "how this history has been understood for 80 years."

 

Premier among them that no black heavyweight was the #1 contender to a title between Wills and Louis.

But that doesn't fit your programme. So you'll ignore it.

 

There was ONE black #1 contender between Willard and Louis.

Harry Wills. Dempsey's #1 contender.