Dempsey v Langford

Methinks on June, 24, 1895....
P.S. Hitler. Stalin, Attila the Hun, get better press than Jack on ESB...

 

Im not sure where you are going with this. I mentioned Willard before you ever mentioned Johnson Jeffries in order to show that Langford's opinion on who might win a fight shouldnt be taken as gospel.

Your post by Steve Compton illustrates my point, not yours. Im not sure how that helps your case. Steve is where I got my information on Dempsey-Greb in relations to our talks on the Dempsey-Wills controversy which I have an interest in.

Some of what Steve wrote there is known to me, some of it is entirely new and very interesting. He misses some other viable offers. Promoters in Philadelphia twice offered Dempsey to fight Greb in 8 rounders for big money. A Newark promoter also offered to stage a match between Greb and Dempsey for a big purse. No decision's were the rule in NJ at the time so Dempsey didnt need to fear the loss of his title but he still refused.

I emailed Steve a little while ago today in regards to the quote posted here by Greb.

His reply: "If Dempsey ever asked Greb to spar with him for Tunney Ive never seen it written about anywhere in any contemporary source." Greb was at Dempsey's training camp when he was training for the first Tunney fight and even gave him some pointers on how to deal with Tunney's style but all in all he was unimpressed with Dempsey's form and ended up settling on the fact that Tunney would beat him. He was greatly unimpressed with Dempsey's sparring partners as well. The idea that Greb would not have sparred with Dempsey because he wanted a fight with him is another fabrication. Greb had already settled on having his eye removed and retiring at that point. His career was over. Those stories are as goofy as the ones which have Greb saying that Dempsey would murder him in a championship fight. Greb believed with every fiber of his body that he could outpoint Dempsey and did everything he could to get a match with him. That says a lot because Greb was a pretty sharp predictor of fights. Besides, what evidence would there be that Dempsey was THAT much better than Greb? Jess Willard said Greb was the best man to defeat Dempsey. Greb had won 8 of 10 rounds against Miske. He won four of four fights against Bill Brennan, barely losing a round. He had Carpentier so scared of him that Carp wouldnt even spar with him. He dominated Gibbons over fifteen rounds. Firpo wouldnt fight him, which is understandable since he was trained by Jimmy DeForrest who was a great admirer of Greb. He gave Tunney his only loss and really won 3 out of 5 against him. He dominated Rojas who knocked out Sharkey. He had also dominated Dempsey opponents Terry Keller, Homer Smith, and Willie Meehan. Knocked out Gunboat Smith. Won every fight he had with Battling Levinsky handily. He easily beat common Dempsey sparring partners such as Jimmy Darcy, Jack Renault, Martin Burke, Ralph Brooks, Tommy Loughran (who made Dempsey look amateurish in sparring), Clay Turner, Larry Williams, and Leo Houck. He also won billed elimination bouts against guys that Kearns was shopping as Dempsey opponents such as Weinert and Madden. So Id be interested in hearing some argument other than "he was bigger" as to why Dempsey would have been so much better than Greb as to make it a non-fight and if that was the case why promoters were throwing money at Dempsey to stage the fight AND FINALLY if Greb was such an unchallenging opponent why Dempsey wouldnt just take the $100,000+ he was offered more than once, knock Greb out, and go home? Its not like he cared about fighting mismatches."

I hope his book has paragraphs.

 

I've never said Dempsey asked Greb to spar with him for the Tunney fight I said he asked him to train him.

Why would Dempsey have Greb as a sparring partner for Tunney? He did use Loughran a choice that makes sound sense stylistically, Greb does not.

Oh well if Compton hasn't seen it, it never existed. I remember him stating categorically that Marciano had his front teeth taken out by Joe Louis ,this was on the basis of a picture after the fight in which Marciano is not wearing his bridge. I pointed this but but received no reply . I also rememeber him pouring scorn on my statement that Tommy Burns' jaw was swollen to nearly twice its size in his fight with Johnson.
I produced contemporary fight reports mentioning it but he did not respond to them.

Mr Compton seems to feel he is the Alpha /Omega of classic boxing ,and that everyone else was at the back of the queue when God handed out the brain cells.

It must have been something of a shock when he was unceremoniously given his marching orders on here.

It appears he may have some budding replacements.

 

You did not make a point ,you tried to take the **** but it didn't work.

 

They certainly met their most dangerous challengers!

 

The guy was a ****ing nut.
I mean, we all have our faults I'm sure. I've probably written a ton of **** on here. I'm possibly a complete ****.
But that guy was a ****ing nut.

A lot of people would give him a free pass because he's done a **** load of research on Greb, but I saw enough .... the guy was a ****ing nut. Talk about an agenda ! :rofl

All I can say, you meet some weird ****s on the internet.
... And that guy was a ****ing nut.

 

It was only a matter of time : Dempsey being comapred unfavourably with Hitler.

 

Lt, great post about my idol Harry Greb. i first heard the name Harry Greb
when i was a tot already interested in boxing as my family lived next door to a trainer of the great john Henry Lewis. Every evening I would go next door and "spar" with JH Lewis's stablemates...One day I asked my dad who boxed a little amateur bouts, "who was the best fighter you ever saw".
His immediate response was Harry Greb !. I never heard the name before
and asked " why Harry Greb ?" My dad told me of the night in 1922 when he
went to MSG to see his Greenwich Village neighbor Gene Tunney fight
this smaller man Harry Greb who proceeded to kick the tar out of Tunney
who took the bloodiest beating my dad ever saw by the MW Greb...
I started to read about this truly amazing Greb and I became a fan of his for life, til today...
But I years later read in a few columns that years after Greb died in 1926,
a boxing scribe whose name escapes me today wrote that Greb revealed to this reporter his statement that" after 6 or so rounds Dempsey would kill me "...I don't know if this reporter was fibbing or not, but I can't see a motive for his lying as Greb had been dead since 1926...Did Greb want to fight Jack Dempsey ? Hell YES ! Greb if he won or lost, would have made
more dough in that one bout, than a year of fights traveling to one town
by hot coach to another town almost weekly never having time to nurse his wounds....So of course Greb wanted to fight Dempsey, whether in his
HEART he had doubts about the outcome...And I still think what I read
about Greb's admission of doubt about the outcome of a Dempsey bout
to that boxing scribe was very probably true...One tiger fighting another
bigger tiger doesn't auger well for the smaller man Harry Greb.
But I could be wrong as Harry Greb had no equal as a P4P fighter, as his fantastic record suggests...

 

So what's your candid opinion of him?

 

Why would he have Greb as a sparring partner for Miske? Why would he have Jock Malone and Terry Keller as sparring partners for Willard? Why would he have Bermondsey Billy Wells as a sparring partner for Gibbons?

When it comes to anything related to Greb I'll take his word over anybody elses any day of the week. Ive never met anyone who has done the research on a single fighter that he has done on Greb.

So you are saying that Dempsey asked Greb, who never trained anyone in his life, to train him for a massive fight after a three year layoff?

Was he just going to fire Jerry the Greek Luvadis who was his trainer?

Has anyone else ever heard of Dempsey asking Greb to train him?

Ive heard the old story of Dempsey asking Greb to spar with him and Greb refusing saying he would feel like a thief taking Dempsey's money. Which is what Steve was referring to. I have never heard it said that Dempsey asked Greb to train him but admittedly when Ive read the sources from this time period Ive been looking more into Wills' battle to prevent the fight than Dempsey's actual training.

You are keen about replies. I asked you for a simple source for your story about Dempsey asking Greb to train him and his response. Unless you are as low as you think Steve was then you should have no problem giving me a contemporary source.

Beyond that basic point, which I dont really see as all that important, Steve makes a pretty convincing argument. Thoughts?

 

Geographically speaking Hitler really did not have much choice but to fight on two fronts he should have read War & Peace first though, Marshall Kutuzov's strategy was repeated by Zhukov.

Do you think Stalin would have stayed passive once Hitler was fully committed to Western Europe?
ps
Dempsey stops Greb late, after being behind on the score cards.

He takes out Wills early.

 

Hitler is in no way comparable to Dempsey.

He destroyed Poland, Blitzkrieg'd the **** out of Belgium, Holland and France in one year. He then goes on to Barbarossa the Russians and level large parts of London in the blitz. It's an ATG run.

No cherry picking going on there^^. Dempsey wouldn't even have set foot in Poland, he would have probably tried to make some noise with foray's in to Scandinavia or the channel islands, next up most likely try to find some country without a military defense budget, maybe invade Antarctica.