How good was Dempsey's title reign?

post up your links.. as i have posted links which claim the Pittsburg promoters of Greb only wanted an 8 round no-decision bout... Dempsey obviously wanted nothing to do with such bouts so omitted Greb from the equations

are you saying Dempsey wore 15oz gloves against Willard?

 

Greb was never a contender so why should Dempsey take his offer seriously.. Greb's people offered $100,000 for Dempsey to fight Greb yet Kearns had other offers for Dempsey to fight other fighters on the table. and those offers was far greater than Greb's offer plus public demand outside Pittsburg was simply not there.

 

This is one of the most ignorant claims Ive ever seen. If Greb wasnt a contender then neither was Brennan, Carpentier, Gibbons, Miske, or Tunney.

Greb's "people" (and by that I assume you mean Pittsburgh promoters) werent the only ones offering big money (bigger than anyone else for any other fight by the way) for a Greb-Dempsey match. Frank Mulkern and Tom Andrews in Milwaukee were battling it out with dueling offers for a Greb Dempsey bout. Dempsey's friend Jimmy Dougherty was working the behalf of several Philly promoters to get Dempsey to sign for a Greb-Dempsey bout in Philly. Floyd Fitzsimmons was trying to get the bout staged in either Benton Harbor, or Michigan City. Coffey was trying to get the bout signed for East Chicago. Montreal promoters had floated offers. Domonic Tortorich was offering big money for long fight in New Orleans between Greb and Dempsey. Charles Murray of Buffalo had offered big money for a Greb Dempsey bout. etc etc. The list goes on and on. The idea that nobody outside of Pittsburgh wanted this fight or was willing to promote is simply not supported by the facts.

Furthermore. The bout which was being offered Dempsey in July 1922 for a match with Greb in Pittsburgh was a ten round bout. Dempsey was offered $100,000 for that bout and fifty percent of the gate. When you do the math Dempsey stood to make easily more than he made for Carpentier. Promoters wired the offer to Doc Kearns and waited and waited and waited. No reply. Finally as time began to get down to the wire where they would need to make arrangements to build the arena, print promotional items etc, or postpone/cancel they wired kearns again and again. No answer. Kearns even acknowledged in the press that he got the offer. He simply didnt take it. Now, its your contention that Dempsey wasnt interested in this meaningless match and by insinuation that he was only interested in more competetive difficult matches so what does he do? He takes another year off and when he returns he faces Tommy Gibbons, who had lost Tex Rickards title elimination to: Greb. And, AND he got paid potentially less money (between $230,000 and $280,000) than the $100,000 plus 50% of the gate he was guaranteed in Pittsburgh. And keep in mind this was a full year after the Pittsburgh offer.

So how can you say the public demand wasnt there? When a New York poll (where Greb wasnt exactly popular) places him as the third best challenger for Dempsey behind another guy Dempsey refused to fight and a guy Dempsey and Greb had already beaten. Kearns himself issued his list of Dempsey's top challengers in 1922: 1. Willard, 2. Brennan, 3. Greb, 4. Carpentier, 5. Wills. Now you tell me that nobody, including Kearns, thought Greb was a contender and then tell me how serious those two were about fighting the best competition when Kearns lists three men Dempsey had already beaten above Wills and two above Greb (one of whom Greb had beaten FOUR times)?

 

No getting around it, Greb deserved a shot at Dempsey as much as Langford did at Johnson after Johnson won the title, in fact, Greb deserved it more because Dempsey and Kearns couldn't use the excuse that they'd already defeated Greb before Dempsey won the title.

 

Dempsey purse for Wills was to be $750,000 ... Greb was never ever a HEAVYWEIGHT CONTENDER... all these offers on the table for Dempsey to fight different fighters was money making ventures for Kearns.. Dempsey was not and never was obligated to fight Harry Greb nor did he avoid duck or hide from Harry Greb and no link on this internet claims he did any of those... what the links say is that some guys from Pittsburg made an offer to Kearns of $100,000 for Dempsey to fight Greb in Pittsburg and the offer was declined (rightly so IMO) Dempsey also never ducked Wills.. Wills failed to hold his side of the deal so was dropped... no-one can dictate terms to the Heavyweight Champion of the World, we have seen this throughout history when Riddick Bowe was the man and a Canadian contender Lewis tried to dictate terms so was dropped out of the equation.. James Toney trying to dictate what the Klitschko brothers can do etc etc.

 

what a load of crap.... what you are describing there is like Sergio Martinez sending an offer to Vitali Klitschko and putting a time limit on that offer and claiming Vitali has ducked him and his promoters never had time to print programmes etc coz Vitali did not answer there e.mails .... $100,000 was a pitance compared to what Dempsey recieved for fighting Carpentier

 

show me proof

 

once again not a single shred of proof to back-up the garbage you spew-out about Greb... show me a link with Greb rated as a top HEAVYWEIGHT CONTENDER for Dempsey's title..

your whole argument is based on quotes and extracts from the book Fearless Harry Greb which is just the word of some unknown writer who never was born when Greb was alive... get a grip because your argument has no basis to it it has no evidence to it and it has no common sense to it... put up links instead of just spewing out shyte

 

The $100,000 offer to fight an 8 or 10 round No-Decision fight say's it all... Dempsey would have knocked him into the ground like a tent peg... you also forgot to say about the headbutt which cut Dempsey's tongue when they was sparring... yet you claimed Greb cut him and left him bleeding .... same when Tunney fought Greb the first time, it was a headbutt which broke Tunney's nose in the opening round which resulted in his loss, yet he avenged it 3 times to become dominant over Greb... your whole argument is based on today's rules yet it was 90yrs ago under completely different rules and regulations in that Dempsey was THE CHAMP and could do as he pleased, there was no WBC, WBA or IBF

 

Wills didnt hold up his end of the agreement? Which was what? All Wills had to do was sign the contract and show up to fight. The problem was that those contracts were being written by Dempsey's friends and one had no date, no purse, no venue, nothing. It basically stipulated that Dempsey "intended" to fight Wills at some point. Dempsey's own words in his biography state: "The phrasing, which was Docs doing, enabled him to get me out of the contract." Need I say more... The proof is in the pudding and he didnt fight Wills, ever.

The second contract was written up by Dempsey's friend Floyd Fitzsimmons. This amounted to little more than a payoff of step aside money to Wills because Dempsey was in trouble with the New York Athletic Commission. This fanciful contract had Dempsey gauranteed 1 mil (a figure no fighter would make until Floyd Patterson 30 years later) to Wills' $50,000. The contract was written so that if Dempsey wasnt paid $300,000 (more than he had ever made for a single fight) upon signing the contract would be void and Wills would still get his $50,000. In essence the contract was not binding because nobody, including Rickard, could afford to pay a fighter an up front fee of $300,000 MONTHS before a single ticket could be sold. It was worthless for everyone except Wills. The only thing this contract did was to keep the commission off Dempsey's back for a year until he started actively seeking a match again. When he chose Tunney over Wills (who was now 37 and had been a top contender since before Dempsey won the title) he was banned in New York and the fight was forced over to Philadelphia.

It has been shown several times here that Greb was indeed a HW contender. He was considered so as early as 1918 (BEFORE DEMPSEY WON THE TITLE). If you are so blind that you choose to believe Dempsey didnt avoid Greb, and didnt avoid Wills, and that all offers for those fights were fairy tales, and that he instead chose to actively campaign for the best matches (Willard 2, Carpentier 2, Gunboat Smith, Charley Weinert, Bartley Madden, Brennan 3, yes those are the matches that Dempsey and Kearns were actively lobbying to be made above all others... Im just glad that the people you think werent actually trying to match Dempsey with Greb and Wills had better sense than to match him with those guys) then we can end the discussion because its obvious you are nuts. I would suggest you get off your ass stop searching for evidence that supports YOUR argument on "this internet" and go do some actual leg work and read what the concensus of opinion was at the time, not what one writer that it takes you two days of internet searches to dig up, thought.


If the best you can do is internet searches on Google and Newspaperarchive then you are going to be in way WAY over your head.

 

If Dempsey could have knocked Greb out so easily why didnt he collect a potential $300,000+ payday and do it?

And for the record the vast majority of ringside writers stated that Greb broke Tunneys nose with the FIRST PUNCH OF THE FIGHT. Why dont you go read a few ****ing accounts of their fights and then tell me Tunney avenged that loss three times... over a MW... who was past his prime... and blind in one eye... who couldnt punch... and according to you was never a contender anyway (LOL)...