Harry Greb Best Man For Carpentier Bout, Says Edgren

They were capable of selling Dempsey's other fights (using tricks, paying to journalists, etc), if they had the wish to match him with Greb, they surely would know how to persuade the public that the fight was worth it.

 

That's not at all what my response was dealing with. Perry claimed that the fight was unsellable because a huge weight difference, that it was a fantastical match-up. That is all my post was regarding.

As you point out above, a promoter's job, in part, is to get the highest return on a bout. What you do not mention is the caveat here.... to get the highest return WHILE retaining the golden goose, the title. High reward/Low risk. You can argue that Greb was not the former, but he was certainly not the latter either.

 

Greb was the American Lightheavy Champ.

Otherwise, not disagreeing with any of the above

:good

 

Where did ducking even get mentioned? I was responding to the idea that Harry Greb "was not on the publics radar" an opponent for Dempsey before he beat Gibbons. You are arguing the difference between apples and oranges.

Your other point, which seems solely dependent on weight, makes no sense to me. If Im not mistaken you are arguing that Harry Greb couldn't have been taken seriously as a Dempsey opponent because of his size and yet men that were bigger than him, that he beat on multiple occasions were perfectly acceptable, not because they were qualified, or posed a real threat, but simply because they were taller or weighed more. Doesn't matter that they were beaten with room to spare by Harry Greb. I haven't seen an argument yet, including these strange search engine results, that really demonstrates that Billy Miske, Bill Brennan, and Tommy Gibbons were easier to sell, bigger names, more qualified, or more threatening than Greb. You could fashion an argument around Carpentier because he was kind of a movie star type, or Luis Firpo, but even in those cases it took quite a lot of time, effort, and money spent by Rickard to promote those guys to the point where the public swallowed them. I think you can argue equally as well that had Rickard put that same effort into building Greb up he could have had an equal attraction. That's no knock on Rickard. He can do what he wants and if that means feeding Dempsey fodder to make millions and keep him in the drivers seat that means building up guys that were less threatening than Greb.

Ive only seen one person on this thread drawing false conclusions based on horribly skewed data.

 

But it's easy to sell fights against men who repeatedly lost to that 5'8 165lber, against a man who was terminally ill, against a fragile and heavily protected 170lber with no major wins against heavyweights?

A number of promoters were willing to put up big money to stage a Dempsey-Greb fight, so the argument that there was no money in the fight doesn't hold up.

 

Silly comments. One man on here wrote a book where he ignored opposing viewpoints! He also states Dempsey a hwt champion ducked and was afraid to fight middleweight Greb! ABSURD! The leading sports/boxing journalist of that time 5 months after Greb beat Gibbons gives him little chance and he is mentioned almost as an afterthought! This was the period where zGrebs stock should be flying higher than anyone maybe aside from Wills yet he is mentioned as an afterthought behind Willard, Wills, Brennan and Carpentier. Why? Too small to give Dempsey much of a challenge.

 

What book and what author? Who are you arguing with? The original point from the original poster was that because he took a database which has about 1% of the total newspapers published in the United States during Harry Greb and Jack Dempsey's career and which only goes up to 1922 and searched it for various fighters names stating the results point to why a fight wasn't made between Harry Greb and Dempsey. I cast a much wider net to illustrate just how poor the OPs reasoning was. Then you showed up saying that Greb was never on the publics radar as an opponent for Dempsey until after he beat Gibbons. There are numerous viewpoints published on here refuting that.

I don't see anyone ignoring the idea that some writers didn't favor Greb. The point is some writers did, some very respected writers at that. Pretending that you have the holy grail of boxing writers doesn't change the fact that your comment about Greb never being on the publics radar is incorrect. Now you want to change the argument into something it never was: did Dempsey duck Greb? Going back through the past three pages I see nobody but you trying to make or defend that claim.

How many times in a few short threads can you change your position? First it was that Greb was not a contender before 1922. This has been shown to not be the case.

Next it was that after 1922 Greb fought mainly middleweights. He may have, I think we would have to run some numbers on that, but it doesn't change the fact that according to numerous sources he continued to be considered a contender for Dempsey up until mid/late 1925 by numerous respected sources.

Then you decided that since these points don't really hold water you would fall back on the argument that Greb wasn't really a heavyweight so it was justified to not take him seriously. When it was pointed out that said "middleweight" defeated many of the same fighters Dempsey and challengers fought, defeated, and/or lost to you the argument moves yet again to it being a hard sell. When its pointed out that Greb was more famous and more popular and thus more bankable than guys like Bill Brennan, Billy Miske, and Tommy Gibbons, and that even in the cases of Firpo and Carpentier Rickard had to work desperately hard to build those fights into major attractions you invent an argument that nobody is making about Dempsey ducking Greb. Where are we going with this?

 

Never wrote he was not a contender. He was not a contender in the publics eye.

After 1922 Greb fought mainly and predominantly in lower weight divisions.

I have stated from the beginning Greb was a middleweight at 5'8 165 pounds and as such not a match for Dempsey the hwt champion of the world.

Get your facts straight.

 

Get the facts straight? Like the fact that Greb beat Brennan FOUR TIMES and Brennan got the shot, that Greb beat Miske and even beat Gibbons in an eliminator and BOTH got shots. That Greb gave Tunney a horrible beating and Tunney eventually got the shot. That even poor Jimmy Darcy got a 4 rounder with Jack, even tho again, he was beaten by Greb.

How straight are those facts?

Drop me some more dopey platitudes. Put on a fedora and jam a stogie in your mouth and make a career of it.

 

I repeated exactly what you wrote and answered in kind. You said before 1922 he was not on the publics radar as a contender. That is simply not true.

You seem to think there is this disconnect between promoters and the public when in fact promoters try to stage bouts the public wants. If promoters are trying to stage a match between Dempsey and Greb and then they obviously thought the public wanted it. How else do you explain all of those offers posted on the other thread I mentioned and all of those opinions posted by respected writers?

Even those articles arguing that Greb wasn't a good challenger point to the fact that he was in fact considered a challenger because why else would those articles be written. Who do you suppose those writers were answering or arguing with? Do you think they dreamed up a Greb-Dempsey fight and then wrote a counterpoint when they woke up? Why not write about Johnny Wilson and Dempsy, or Mike O'Dowd and Dempsey? Its very obvious that Greb was on the publics radar.

From what I can tell Greb fought almost exclusively well over 160 pounds after 1922 unless he was defending his title. It would be much easier if we had some comparison and could say that Greb didn't fight anyone of note from 1923 on in the HW division and Dempsey's opponents did but the fact is that for three years from September 1923 to September 1926 Dempsey didn't fight anyone. I think we can say Greb was more of a contender than nobody. Even in 1923 itself Dempsey defended against Tommy Gibbons who had lost to Greb in their last two fights and Luis Firpo whose record and ability was nothing special, although I will grant you he was a heavyweight which seems to be the only thing you want to consider when it suits you.

I know you think Harry's size disqualified him as a contender but I just find this logic flawed and weak considering you seem more than willing to accept four men as challengers that Harry Greb beat easily and one man who wasn't a whole lot bigger and didn't have the accomplishments at heavyweight that Greb did.