Greb Knocked Out By Body Shot

I am saying this:

Greb and Rogers met under the following rules:
1. Fighters shall fight 6 rounds under queensbury rules.
2. No fighter shall be hit below the belt.
3. The Referee shall be the sole arbitrator of these rules and decide on whether or not a fighter is cheating or has been fouled.
4. If a fighter is knocked down after 10 seconds or cannot answer the bell, he will lose the fight.
5. if neither fighter is knocked out or retired or disqualified under the rules then there is NO Decision. ie the match is a draw.

It is not disputed that Harry Greb was knocked down AND that the refereee did not see a foul. Incidentally, given that the referee also asked the press whether or not they saw a foul, we can also presume that they did not, because otherwise the ref would have disqualified or taken other action (otherwise why would he have asked them). Under the rules that were agreed, the fight was finished and over right then with Greb losing by KO.

Sportingly, Rogers agreed to allow Greb to take his time and start again. As i indicated earlier, if Spinks said he was fouled against Tyson and went on to last another 5 rounds after a rest and maybe even win that fight, would you discredit Tyson for the first KO? I

Who really knows what happened. Rogers restarted to give the crowd their moneys worth. Maybe he had to carry Harry for that next round or maybe he eased up a bit having proved his points.

I dont really argue that we should be scoring rounds, that is why my argument is not circular. You are the one relying on news reports to pick the winner. And it seems to me (i could be wrong here) you are just adding up the rounds where each paper indicated that a fighter had the better of the round. I simply asked the question how do you credit a fighter with winning a round when you think it was a closely fought found and where that fighter was at the very least knocked down but possibly even knocked out! The only way you could do that is if you overrule the referee and say that you think it was a foul blow. In fact now i think about, who is to say that the whole reason those papers gave the first round to Greb was because they considered that it was a foul blow (probably because the bout restarted and was not stopped!). In reality, we dont really know who those papers actually thought won, do we?

How can we possibly assign a win based on this evidence? Surely we should stick to the official verdict and known facts which is Harry Greb was KOd by what he says was a low blow but was ruled a fair blow. He was given extended time and no Decision was rendered in what was known to be a very close fight.

Your argument is circular because you are saying we dont use the offical decision we have to look at what the papers said happen to decide who we think won, but we dont look at what actually happened, we just use their opinions and their biases and their scoring methods even though they were not using the scoring methods accepted by the fighters at the time.

I think i agree with you, but you (and other really good historians), i think , do sometimes put a little bit too much faith in news reports on some issues. I say this in the sense that you quite often seem to forget just how easy it is to manipulate reporters and how everybody (even reporters) manipulate and get manipulated. Sometimes it is in both fighters interests to call a close fight or a fight one way or the other. Presumably there isnt much interest in the Rogers rematch if it is reported that Rogers Kod Greb with a body shot in a round and then handled him easily or beat him in the remaining rounds. That being said, obviously no matter what happened it was a close fight between two good fighters one of whom was controverially knocked down or even out early in the fight but came back to put in a very good showing and set up a rematch which he also performed very well in. Obviously the fighter (Greb) also went on to improve far more than Rogers and become one of the greatest fighters ever amassing a record that arguably no other figher in history could have possibly done. But to give Greb a win, 100 years later seems a little artificial to me.

 

I dont understand why you get so riled up about these things.

All of those articles that i posted were exactly that, simply articles, that were found using of all things a basic google search. Most of them are just showing a little bit of who Rogers was. If most people are like me, they probably had no idea of who Rogers was before this thread was posted. If they read boxrec, it seems they may have had even less idea, based on those couple of articles. He seems a lot better than his boxrec results indicated at the time. Is this fair comment? i dont know but it seems to be.

So Red Mason says something different to Rogers manager. You asked why i didnt post this well the reason is simple.
1. his articles dont come up when i do a simple google search on Greb Rogers. (i think this was done under the newspaper archive search which havent really used often for the last few years)
2. The articles i did post are pretty much the only articles that came up without being overly repetitive. Why is this. is that what the major papers thought or does it just happen to be the ones that google got around to archiving. The latter i am guessing.
3. I have no idea how in the hell Red Mason's thoughts are relevant any more or less than what was posted but i am happy to read all these letters you have. I am sure Grebs managment has a different version of events (remember i am the one who usually goes on about biases and media manipulation more than most so i certainly understand your point). Why havent you posted them if you know about them?
4. What would be even better would be to post any other opinions or discussions in relation to the fights, particularly from people who were there or knew people who were there. I am guessing that you dont have any but who knows.

I do not know whether you are biased or not. I do know that you are more biased on the internet than when you write your books because you yourself have said this in the past, or atleast inferred it.

You are certainly fighting hard for Harry Greb in this case and do seem to be taking things a little personal and trying to impose a conclusion without dealing with the known facts.

No one here is saying that Rogers was a better fighter than Greb or even in his league. We are just trying to get to the bottom of what happened.

Based on what YOU have told me, i have formed the conclusion that Greb was KOd by a punch which he claimed was low but which the referee didnt. He was given a second chance to rest and restart and did well enough to make a close fight of it and have some people even think he was the better fighter, although i am not sure if it was necessarilly a majority of News reporters.

I am open minded to changing that view if you address the points i raised (as opposed to raising other irrelevant but interesting points). Based on what you say, i also accept that Greb won his other fights with Rogers and was the better fighter in the series, regardless of whether Greb was ko d or not.

I havent given enough thought as to who would win a finish fight between the two to make a prediction and are not really in a position to do so, but would certainly expect it to be Greb. By the way, do you have any film of Rogers, that would be interesting.

Here is a little hypothetical for you to ponder. We go back in time and declare this bout is for the worlds championship and both fighters go in a life and death struggle to win this bout with untold riches awaiting for the winner and nothing for the loser. The fight goes down exactly the same way as it did up until the end of the first round. What happens does Rogers win the world title?

And another. If Rogers were the world champion entering that bout, would he have retained his title or not? i think he would have under the rules of the time, wouldnt he?

 

:good

 

Nonsense. You say that by the rules the referee is the sole official but then say Greb lost based on nothing more than the superintendant of police, who had no official representation, offered to allow Al Rogers "not to continue" (which he declined)So which is it? Is the referee, the guy who didnt see whether the punch was a foul or legit the sole arbitor or was the superintendant also the sole arbitor, or as you seem to allude was the press also an official arbitor due to the fact that referee went to them for their opinion? You seem very eager to make a ruling that simply does not jive with any facts. Go back and read every official record book, or record published in Pittsburgh including by those papers that THOUGHT the punch was legit and read their summation of the fight. Since you seem only able to read what is spoon fed to you I will summarize: Greb - Al Rogers ND 6. Not KO 1, Not DQ 1, just ND 6. Beyond that the majority of first hand sources we have said Greb won the newspaper decision. Forgive me if I dont put ANY faith in the ramblings of a troll descended from Britains undesireables or some guy who thinks hes rediscovered some lost gem in the archives because of a faulty understanding of the events and strong willingness to selectively read into the limited sources he has on the subject.

I dont deal in "ifs" Why some people feel the need to entertain flights of fancy I will never understand. I dont need to. I have excellent sources that discuss the events as they happened.

The actual people who saw it and its their words and nobody elses that Im interested in. Not your conjecture, supposition and what ifs and not Greg/Dempsey1234's sad attempts at entertaining himself.

There was no "restart." The fight was scheduled for six round and it went six rounds. It didnt go one round and then restart and another six rounds were fought. There wasnt a second fight scheduled for 5 rounds. It was one fight that went six rounds and the majority of newspapers not only credited Greb with a win but also said that he was legitimately fouled in the first and that he was continually fouled throughout. Im not interested in your "maybe, maybe, maybe" written 100 years later after youve read a couple of articles on google and think youre an armchair expert. Go get some perspective and then come back here and we can discuss. Until then all of your what ifs and maybes are nothing but grasping at straws.

Your argument is circular. You are arguing that what is written in the newspapers is meaningless yet you want to use what is written in the newspapers as the basis of your argument. You want to argue that the standard of the day was that no decision was rendered and pretend that it is a modern phenomenon that we use the newspaper decisions to judge the winner. Either you are ignorant of the fact that it was indeed the standard of that era to judge a winner unofficially by the newspaper decisions, or you are simply trying to pick and choose the criteria for your argument. Sorry, Im not playing that game. Im judging the fight based not on the words of some armchair general who has proven himself to not really understand either the context of the day or the specific events but by, and only by, the words of those who were there. If it makes you feel special to create your own record for Greb that his him fighting Al Rogers two times on that day losing once and winning the second, then by all means, do it and please, publish it for the world to see and laugh at. But when you say you are judging the fight based on what actually happened yet youve never seen it, you are basing your idea of what happened on the same newspapers you denigrate, and then further basing your case on a minority of those papers it really stretches credibility and belief. You are essentially, whether you realise it or not, admitting that you are only looking for and considering sources that conform to what you want to be true. If the majority of eye witness accounts tell you Greb was not knocked out, he went down from an illegal blow, there was no official ruling, and that he ultimately won the fight why would you only believe the papers that disagreed?

Just like everyone else in 1915 where the ND law persisted.

The newspapers told exactly who they thought won. I dont need to add rounds. That wouldnt even be accurate by the standard of the day. Fights werent scored on a rounds basis, as a rule, until years later. So once again, you are the victim of your own conjecture.

For starters Im not crediting anyone with anything. The men who saw the fight were. They were a better judge of that than me and certainly a better judge than you, correct? Secondly, if a man is knocked down by a foul is that a scoring blow? No. So if they believed he won that round, as most did, and they also believed he was dropped by a foul, which most did, then why would they credit that against him? You said yourself that the referee was the sole arbitor and the referee didnt see the punch. The superintendant of police had to step because nobody could come to a decision. He himself didnt rule on anything officially. He simply said that Rogers didnt have to continue if he didnt want to but that given the circumstances the fair thing to do would be to continue the fight as scheduled. Rogers did so. Once that decision was made there is no monday morning quarterbacking or second guessing what might have been. There was no knockout, no official ruling on a knockdown, no count, no nothing. The accounts dont even make it clear if Greb was knocked down or took a knee and whether he did so before or after the round ended. So for all intents and purposes the round (and fight) was scored as each individual saw it play out and they scored according with most giving Greb the round and fight. Thats the best you can say about it. Pretending that somehow Greb was knocked out, when he wasnt, is ludicrous. Even his worst enemies, and there were some in the press in Pittsburgh, did not rule that fight a knockout loss against him.

Overrule what? The referee couldnt make a determination on it. In fact he tried to defer to the press. The exact same press that the majority of which called it a foul and said Greb won.

 

Im sorry I have very little patience for fools so I cant tell if you are just stupid, cant read, drunk, or just have general comprehension problem. Several posts ago I posted you the exact breakdown of who each newspaper thought won. I included the headline of each newspaper as well. I know you read that post because you responded to it. So why are you asking whether we know exactly who each newspaper thought won?

Because they did. It depends on how much weight you give newspaper decisions. I give them a lot of weight, certainly more weight than your conjecture.

This wasnt the official decision though. Nowhere in the written record does it say that. At worst the official decision is ND6.

You mean in the second fight they fought that day that you dreamed up in your imagination right? Because how can there be two official decisions for one fight?

Clearly you do not.

Im not willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater. You cant disregard the majority of sources simply because you think that something should have gone this way or that. Especially when you didnt see the events. If you want to throw out all of the sources then do so. I think thats stupid but to each his own. Throw them all out and simply record the result. The actual official result. Thats a ND6 and you dont seem satisfied with that. So what do you do? Go back to picking and choosing the sources that you like. So is that good history or bad history? Notice I didnt pick and choose? I posted all of the sources and let everyone else here decide. Im not some toothless australian (yes, no caps on purpose) troglodite who lacks both the intelligence and the opposible thumbs to open a book or a newspaper and actually do some real hard data collection. I did what good historians do, I posted all the sources, gave some background and context and allowed people with a modicum of common sense to decide. The people with two brain cells to rub together with get it. The other I dont worry about, natural selection will sort them out and its doing it as we speak. All I have to do is sit back and watch. Whats the phrase? "WINNING!"

So why do you assume that the reports for Greb were manipulated and the once against him werent? If you have evidence of this please present it. Otherwise you are once again dabbling in conjecture which I am not interested in. I can give a perfect example: two of the three reporters that thought Greb was beaten were very vocal in their condemnation of his fans behavior at the fight, which was totally unrelated to the fight. One called them sacreligious and the other called them blasphemous. Gee, you think they might have been turned off by his fans and by extension Greb? Isnt possible they might have wanted to take some of the wind out of their sales and were wholesale turned off by Greb and the presence of his fans ringside? Enough to maybe to blast him in the papers? See how conjecture works? If you are going to make that case I think the evidence of a reporter being manipulated to write one way or another is far more in favor of those picking against Greb than for him.

So you think, despite the fact that you have no evidence of it. That Greb was knocked out by a bodyshot and that Rogers then continued the fight and carried him to the point of losing the popular decision (which you deny) so he could come back, get a rematch, and get beaten even more convincingly while complaining that reason he couldnt win was because he wasnt allowed to cheat. Interesting theory. Lets see how much mileage you get out of that.

Then blame those four long dead reporters who 100 years ago gave him the win. Not me. Blame them for not agreeing with you. I didnt just arbitrarily award him the win and if you dont accept that it was a win thats fine. But pretending he was knocked out is a lot more ridiculous than saying he won the fight based on what the majority of ringside press said.

 

Im not riled up but lets not pretend you are interested in both sides of the argument while you are busy posting that Greb was knocked out, rejecting the majority of papers because they voted for him and said he was fouled, and then post letters from only Rogers side of the argument when the same paper posted Greb's managers letters in answer to Rogers? If you were busy looking you couldnt have missed those. But Im biased? No. Im interested in the truth. The truth isnt found by taking a few sources that you like, rejecting the rest, and then posted your own idea as fact. Sorry but thats not how a good historian works.

You said it yourself, you posted only what was easily and quickly found by doing a quick internet search. Do you think this gives a complete picture of the story? Hardly. Do you really think you understand this fight, these fighters, or the context in which they were operating? If not why are you wasting your time? If so then dont ask why pushing so hard because Ive illustrated at length just how flawed your position is.

 

many alts you had to drag me in, you have NEVER answered the questions dealing with that Dempsey contract, the Shelby thing or the Pittsburgh fight that Kearns stalling killed the fight.
A great pysstorian as yourself should know better then to cherry pick and then when you are caught with your pants down, you hide. I am still waiting for your insightful answers.

 

The truth as only you see it, many alts what boilermaker said is the truth about you. Maybe he doesnt have access to what you have, since you have buried yourself in articles, not everybody cares enough to do the research. They have questions, you base your "insight", on articles. It has been proven over and over again that articles don't tell the whole story, that writers were bought and sold, had biases, and agenda's. Your tirades like on this thread show how fu cked up you are. Why cant you just post your opposing thoughts, and let people decide for themselves? No wonder you hide under different alts. Oh, I forgot one of your greatest hits, so I'll mention it now, the great Archer conspiracy, and the bald muscular black men lol

 

Looks like Harry Greb was the John Ruiz of his time.

 

It all sounds a bit crooked though, doesn't it?
A KO is supposed to be declared by the referee, at the end of a count of 10. A TKO is supposed to be a clear cut referee's decision too.

Instead, we have the local superintendant of police advising a fighter that he can "claim" a KO win over the hometown fighter, but that it would be advisable to give the fans what they want.

 

I would say that was fighters' own fault (I don't mean Greb or Rogers), for the most part. There were so many "big" fights where one or both boxers weren't trying their best, that sometimes you had to do things that were not in accordance with the rules to change the situation.