Battling Levinsky rates Tommy Gibbons as the best/cleverest boxer he ever faced

Tommy Gibbons was a great fighter.

 

I don't have any trouble believing it.

A few people seem to have thought that Gibbons was a better pure technician than Tunney at the time.

The fact that he was the only person who Billy Miske couldn't seem to get anywhere against, is itself indicative.

 

Gibbons run before Greb beat him twice was a very dominant one, but fighters do say all kind of base comments

 

The press acused many of the top contenders of avoiding Gibbons:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...3320&dq=gene+tunney+harry+wills+gibbons&hl=en

 

Woulda been real interesting to see if this would have still been the case even if Levinsky faced Johnson

 

It would, but I don't think the timelines are quite right for that. Levinsky was discussed as a possible oponent for Willard.

 

There is a very strong argument.

Some people hold the Gibbons fight against Dempsey, but I hold beating a guy like Gibbons on points very heavily in his favour.

 

New book on Miske?! **** yes.

 

I think Tommy Gibbons has always been rated very highly on this board by the postors who know the era.
(Apart from perhaps klompton, who i think claimed Gibbons-Norfolk was fixed, and didn't accept that Gibbons was a great fighter ... though I might be mistaken in remembering.)

Certainly Gibbons has been rated highly within that era. He may have been overlooked by some on the all-time lists, but that's understandable. Light-
heavy is full of great clever boxers, and many who didn't win the championship.
Ability-wise, I'd put him roughly in the same class as Conn or Loughran or Tunney. The top class.

Levinsky was no slouch himself, but I'm not sure the 175 divisional championship was taken very seriously back then. He hung on to the title while losing newspaper decisions to other light-heavys, he was far from a dominant champion.

 

It's more impressive to me because Dempsey was coming off a two year layoff. He demonstrated great stamina going the full 15 rounds too, at a fast pace until the end. Dempsey rarely gets credited with having such stamina.

 

I think Tommy is frequently overlooked because he was not as flashy as Tunney or as aggressive as Dempsey, Greb and Dillon. Then there's also his big bro, you know. You can't help but compare brothers and Mike was a genius (flashier than Tommy too, judging by the O'Dowd footage). All that said, I don't think there's any doubt that Tommy is among the top LHWs ever. It's not surprising nobody wanted to fight him. Even if you could beat him he would make you look awful, specially if you liked to work inside. It would take a 6-years-younger-top-conditioned-peak Tunney to stop a fading Tommy or a peak Harry Greb to beat him badly.