Harry Greb Best Man For Carpentier Bout, Says Edgren

Which is not true anyway. Numerous promoters wanted to stage a Dempsey-Greb fight and made him offers, which weren't taken up. In 1922 a group of Pittsburgh men led by John Bell offered Dempsey $100,000 plus a percentage of the gate to fight Greb. That's more money than he made against Miske and as much as he made against Brennan.

 

Im not saying it was ridiculous to ask for a guarantee. All fighters wanted guarantees back then. You could never, not even in the case of Dempsey-Carpentier, be sure that a promotion would be successful. If it wasn't and you were fighting on a percentage you ended up getting hit right in the wallet. Lots of fighters fought on a percentage basis and ended up eating their hats as a result. Most fighters probably fought on a percentage basis in fact.

The demand for guarantees by fighters became so prevalent in the 1920s that the New York State Athletic Commission for a time banned guarantees because a fighter could get a guarantee, put on a tepid performance before a small house and not only bankrupt the promoter who was driving the tax revenue in New York but also disenfranchise the few fans who did show up. It was reasoned that by forcing fighters to fight on a percentage their pay was commensurate with their drawing power which was often a reflection of what the fans saw as a return on their investment in a ticket. The Dempsey-Gibbons bout is a perfect example of this because the failed promotion can be directly attributed to Kearns added to that is the fact that Gibbons stopped trying to win after about the fifth round and Dempsey himself put on a pedestrian show. The fight was almost universally panned and became a poster child for why guarantees were a backwards way of doing business in the sport.

Even Rickard after losing money on several promotions in the mid 1920s lamented guarantees and exorbitant purse demands by fighters which he was largely responsible for. The notion that Rickard was a promoter with the midas touch who couldn't fail is hoopla. He lost money on quite a few promotions throughout his career. That's one of the reasons he wanted to lock Dempsey up and keep him winning, because it didn't take a genius to make money with the biggest crown in sports. Like a lot of promoters he was mostly bluster, that is what promoters do after all. He used to brag that he was worth three million dollars but when his estate was appraised after his death it was worth only 1/6 of that and almost none of his assets were liquid so that when the estate was finally settled after the crash in late 1929 it had devalued to just over $100,000.


What was ridiculous for the Dempsey-Gibbons promotion was demanding the money up front before one second of work had been put forth in the ring and for the promoters to give in to that, not the guarantee specifically, but the guarantee of all of the money up front. For Kearns to torpedo the promotion after having already received a kings ransom did nobody any good. Not the promoters, not the fans, and certainly not Kearns and Dempsey because it actually diminished what Kearns and Dempsey would have received if they had just worked the exact same deal they ended up compromising on with the promoters quietly and behind the scenes instead of going straight to the papers. He had already received literally several lifetimes worth of pay and the fact that he continued to hold up promoters to the point of using a scorched earth policy in regards to the fight was nothing more than pure greed and a bit of short sightedness.

 

You can make excuses all you want. The point you keep trying refute is that Dempsey and Kearns used a multitude of excuses only when it suited them to avoid difficult fights. They were very selective in how they used these excuses. The color line suited them when it did and they pretended it didn't when it suited them to pretend to take the higher road. They could use a different promoter when it suited them and pretended they couldn't or wouldn't when it didn't. They considered offers when it suited them and ignored them when it didn't. They took the high road or the low road depending on which way was the path of least resistance. When they and you slide from excuse to excuse for him it does your cause no justice and only serves to highlight just how indefensible your/their multiple positions are.

 

In regards to the ticket sales for the bout between Jack Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons, there may have been a lot of orders for tickets coming in, but far too many of them were not accompanied by cold, hard cash. When there were doubts that the bout was going to take place, many people cancelled their orders before sending in the money to pay for the tickets. The fact remains that there wasn't nearly enough cash on hand to pay Dempsey's guarantee, to build the arena and the other expenses when it was decided to stage the bout in a forlorn place like Shelby, Montana. Keep in mind that there was quite a bit of trouble for the people staging the bout to get enough money to pay even the second $100,000. installment of Dempsey's $300,000. guarantee on time, let alone the third and final installment.

During the entire history of professional boxing, Murphy's Law has been in effect. What can go wrong, will go wrong at the worst possible moment. This is especially true when it comes to staging boxing shows or bouts. Keeping that in mind, do you think that Tex Rickard or Floyd Fitzsimmons would have staged a major bout in Shelby if they had the option to do it in a highly populated area? Promoting a major bout in a highly populated area gave Rickard and Fitzsimmons far more wiggle room.

- Chuck Johnston

 

I love how all of a sudden $100,000 PLUS a percentage of the gate was not enough money for Dempsey to take a fight that people here say would've been a mismatch anyway. Nice work if you can get it.

Who cares that he was making more in Hollywood? If you want to be an actor, retire and let other fighters contest the title instead of freezing them all out for a total of five years.

 

Incredible... finally a thread on Harry Greb and about time I say.

 

I haven't posted here ,preferring to let more informed guys do so,and some of the input has been very informative so,a very worth while thread imo:good

Sorry no one mentioned Les Darcy.:-(

 

Nah I'm just glad there's finally a Harry Greb thread, there must be so much that's not been said about him.

 

Only having a joke Greg.:good

 

That's why they started calling it price ring instead of prize ring.