A description of the Greb-Dempsey spar

It's not unheard for me to incorrectly predict the outcome of a fight between two boxers ive seen fight dozens of times in HD, including against common opposition. So, I can't be confident of the outcome of a Greb vs Dempsey fight based on reports of their sparring, though all in all, your prediction of Dempsey being the favourite, whilst Greb being a live underdog, seems reasonable to me.

 

Harry G was not the only man in history to give a excellent account of himself vs Dempsey in a spar.

 

Don't waste too much time on him. He's in damage control. Not the right damage control that's going to be relevant moving forward tho.

 

To

Tommy Loughran?
I very much doubt Dempsey took it easy on Greb.
I also very much doubt Greb would beat Dempsey over 15rds.
Is anyone picking Harry to win over that distance?

 

I will take that buddy, but the few that were there have put into print what they saw, which is more than any of us have witnessed, so on balance I would go with contemporary reports, just !
appreciate your polite put down Swag, enjoy your contribution.

 

Klompton is a Greb scholar and I believe his points regarding the topic are to be seriously considered. It is possibly from reading his book that I mentioned the fact that days two and three , especially three , of Greb and Dempsey sparring in 1920 became more balanced than the first day ... I also remember reading in possibly Live Fast, Die Young or Adam's In the Ring w Dempsey that Dempsey and Greb had sparred a year or two earlier in another location but don't remember much about how that went ..

Here's my take away ... it's tough to say because of unknowns ... Zero Greb film despite an incredible resume of opponents, many whose talents are memorialized on film for scale but more importantly because the question is how to really read Dempsey. I have also studied Dempsey for thirty years reading everything possible and even that has it's limits because of the highly opinionated , often manipulated newsmen of the day .. none of this navigates through a few undeniable facts and they are Dempsey's not fighting Wills , possibly not fighting Greb but fighting Carpentier and Gibbons and his post Willard inactivity. Dempsey was the best promoted fighter of his age. I've written this time and again here and I stick by it when I say I have no clue if he was an insanely great talent that never had the opportunity to fully develop and prove it in the ring against the best opposition of the time or if truly the best smoke and mirrors commodity. What if he fought a thirty year old Wills who was not "another big, slow guy he excelled against" and was stopped in 1919 ? Certainly possible. Wouldn't that change his story ? We'll never know .. I've also said Dempsey proved more of what might have been in his Sharkey fight and his second Tunney fight less by the results ( Sharkey ) but by hanging tough, showing a terrific ability to take it against two exceptional cruiserweight's in their primes.

Dempsey is a legend for a myriad of reasons. To this day after thirty years of studying him I still have no clue how good or great he may have been ... maybe if he stayed w DeForrest and fought three times a year from 1919 to 1923 we see him as a heavyweight Duran or Paq or maybe he's exposed as a heavyweight Mancini ... no clue ... we do know that Greb fought everyone that would step into the ring with him and was without question an all time great P4P fighter.

 

He's been around this forum bashing Dempsey for years, including on this thread and using this sparring session as one of his arguments. It gets old.

Their is nothing wrong with that. What I have a problem is, his (lack of) objectivity. Cleveland Williams flat out KTFO Bob Baker in a sparring session according to witnesses. Do you think he'd apply this logic and extrapolate from this particular sparring session and rate Williams chances based on that sparring session? Of course not. He picks and chooses who gets credit for what, like his little lapdog who's been following him this entire thread.

All due respect to the man and may he RIP, I simply have nothing to go on when it comes to Greb in terms of footage so I'm generally a bit cautious when it comes to ranking his chances as this P4P monster everyone has him at.

Nothing is wrong with that at all. My problem is I believe he rates Tunney's chances on account of an unseen sparring session (which as SolomonDeedes noted, their were other reports of a seperate sparring session that Dempsey got the better of which he more or or less ignored), and his notorious Anti-Dempsey agenda as others have noted.

 

Dempsey ducked Greb, and others, if anyone has any doubts.

 

My two penneth for what it’s worth I think this would be the key on the outcome of any fight between the two.
Greb could obviously give Dempsey fits with his speed and in sane elusiveness but the body is an easier target and from what we have on film Dempsey seems quite a devastating body puncher.
I might be wrong but if memory serves me right from reading Klompton’s book although only knocked out once in over 300 fights I believe Greb was decked several times from body shots.
I think over the longer duration Dempsey would catch up with him this way.

 

Ive told the story a million times but it might need repeating here. The funny thing about calling me biased against Dempsey in a post discussing Greb and Dempsey is that despite the fact that I spent about 12 years researching Greb and writing a book on his life my entire introduction to Greb was because, as a huge Dempsey fan, I picked up a magazine in a mall book store one day and read an article about this middleweight I had never heard of who supposedly Dempsey had ducked. I fount it a tough pill to swallow that my hero, a heavyweight, had ducked a middleweight. That led me to want to find out as much about this middleweight (Greb) as I could and I realized that the more I read the less I knew because so much of what had been written about Greb since his death was too fantastic to be true. There was no definitive biography out there that really let you know the guys story and what he was like. So I had to research newspapers and the more I researched the more I thought "If nobody is going to publish a book on Greb why dont I?" That was the genesis of my book. So I never started from a point of disliking Dempsey, quite the opposite. But again, you cant possibly immerse yourself in those times and come away with an enhanced opinion of Dempsey and certainly not with the hero worship that some here have. So you tell me, am I biased? Or has my opinion been arrived at through hard study and a willingness to have my opinions shaped by the research?

 

LOL, here we go. How did I know you were going to work Cleveland Williams into the discussion. Shouldnt you be slobbering all over him in another post somewhere else?

 

I have ex girlfriends who started off as a big fan of me, but whose disdain for me now makes yours for Dempsey pale by comparison.

As I've said, something that you and I have in common is that we both rank Wills over Dempsey. I rate him lower than most and so most certainly do not hero worship him. I just don't have an agenda against him that is so palpable, it permeates a significant proportion of my posts.

That said, I have the upmost respect for the extent of your painstaking research and the considerable knowledge you've accumulated. My knowledge on Greb isn't as extensive as yours, but I dare say I rank him broadly as highly as you do. He has no competition for the deepest and best win resume in boxing history, imo.

 

Yes reading about that event Loughran seemed very proud of his performance.

I read that Harry Grebs pal Panama Joe Gans did so good vs Dempsey he kind of put off other people fighting him? Im hoping Mr Pollack's 2nd book on Dempsey will have some information on the Gans spars.

Just the one thread about him on here with no replies

https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/panama-joe-gans.35888/

 

You do realize in our last two discussions YOU were the one bringing up Williams unprompted right?

Yet I'm the one with the obsession.

You're a joke. Go back to writing presidential letters on how much you hate Dempsey (you weren't quite loud enough the first thousand times) and threatening to fight teenagers on the internet like the adolescent you are.