Jack Dempsey vs. Harry Greb (1919)

What 185lb fighter ever troubled 6 foot 6 250lb heavyweight champion who possess lethal power in both hands, a great left jab, great boxing skills, first class defensive abilities, high ring IQ, great sense of range, excellent footwork, a lot of heart?

Please find me that 185 fighter which accomplished this feat


Also whether or not you believe Dempsey knocks out Wlad, Wlad should be given a lot more respect for never drawing the colorline like Dempsey, and for facing the best contenders of his era unlike Dempsey. Dempsey ducked the two best fighters of his era and never fought a black fighter again after Jon Lester Johnson smashed his rib cage in

 

Wlad with his straight up very European amateur style does not have great defensive skills. Nor a good defense. Nor great footwork. Nor a good chin or will to win. Being impressed by Frankenstein but unable to see all time boxing skills of Dempsey is troubling.

 

One of the reasons this fight never came off is quite simply Dempsey would have koed Greb. The press would then have a field day with headlines that Dempsey was fighting middleweights. No scenario does Dempsey come out of this fight with a positive outcome.....even if he kos Greb in round one which could easily have occurred. Doing well in sparring with big gloves means nothing. Greb would have been pulverized by Dempseys fight solid blow with 5 oz championship gloves.

 

This is not true. If you read the majors news of the period...there was HEAVY demand for a Dempsey-Greb fight.

Secondly, if you say Greb isn't a worthy opponent for Dempsey, than neither were Miske Gibbons Levinsky Brennen Carpentirer...all who suffered one sided losses to Greb. This takes away most of Dempseys resume.

 

EM, The poll that had Dempsey as the "Greatest fighter of the first half of the 20th century " of course meant that Dempsey would have beaten any other heavyweight of course would have included all fighters of the lighter divisions...In Dempsey's era
the 1920s I would BET that on a choice of who was the fighter who dominated his division the most it would most certainly have been Benny Leonard who for SEVEN years dominated the lightweight division of truly great lightweights such as Johnny Kilbane, Freddie welsh, Johnny Dundee, Lew Tendler, Charley White, Rocky Kansas, Ever Hammer, Richie Mitchell etc.
Leonard by all who saw him was as a LW champion every bit as good as Ray Robinson was a welterweight. But of course a heavyweight champion rules boxing as the best fighter but not
necessarily the best P4P, as a Leonard or Greb were...

 

Compare the records of Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis. Does anybody think that Dempsey came close to what Louis accomplished as a top heavyweight? That is one reason why I think naming Dempsey as the fighter of the first half of the Twentieth Century was an odd choice.

- Chuck Johnston

 

Burt.

Checking the best I can do, you are correct.

Dempsey was voted the best fighter of the first half century,

even if Al Buck seems to have been confused.

 

I think fighters tend to be underrated in their own era, so I can understand Louis being undervalued.

Depending on how you look at "greatest fighter"--clearly this group favored heavyweights and didn't value the smaller men on a p4p basis highly.

Looking at it today, I would rate Dempsey third behind Louis and Johnson at heavy,

There are several smaller men one could make a case for like Greb, Walker, Armstrong, etc. Robinson was mid-career so I can understand not picking him.

 

Chuck, the 200 or so Boxing writers in the poll who chose Dempsey by a large majority in 1950, of course saw Dempsey and Louis at their bests and picked Dempsey. Mainly because Dempsey was a faster starter, much more lightning fast on his feet and had a great chin, with as Tunney opined the fastest recovery after being hurt. Louis is my very favorite puncher but
I cannot envision an Abe Simon lasting 13 rounds absorbing tremendous punches from Joe Louis before the referee stopped the bout with Simon on his feet, against the savage punching Dempsey of Toledo {Willard] or the flattening of Luis Angel Firpo
in 1923. Dempsey would have utterly destroyed the lumbering Abe Simon in 2 or 3 rounds I am certain... Of course we will never know for sure who was the greater heavyweight..But one thing I know, is that Dempsey H2H and political correctness aside, was a helluva fighter before he went Hollywood...

 

I agree that Dempsey would have eventually stopped Greb, but I think you're selling Harry very short here. If Billy Conn at 174 (more likely 168-169 lbs, really) could battle it out with Joe Louis, who is larger than Dempsey and, in my opinion, a harder, more accurate and deadlier puncher, then why couldn't Greb, who would come in at about 165 to Dempsey's 188, be even more successful than Conn? I saw Billy take many solid wallops from Louis throughout their fight and continue to battle back with great success.

Conn and Greb had their easiest fights against heavyweights. Those who saw both men fight agree that Harry was MUCH faster and more elusive than Conn(and every bit as durable if not more so). So why couldn't he keep Dempsey off balance, confused and unable to get set the same way Conn did to Joe? AND be able to take the occasional clout that Dempsey did manage to land?

 

And some thought Greb would win. Jess Willard picked Greb because of his speed and awkward style. Jess thought he'd tie Dempsey in knots.

 

I don't think it's an odd choice at all! All those seasoned reporters who took part in the 1950 poll would have been young men when Dempsey was in his prime... so naturally they would pick him. I don't see, how it could have been any other way!

Imagine if a similar poll had been cunducted in, say, 1930. If 200 veteran reporters had been asked back then to name the greatest boxer of the last 50 years years. Would Dempsey have been a landslide winner in such a poll? No, of course not, because those reporters would have been around when guys like Fitzsimmons and Jeffries were in their primes - and against such greats, Dempsey wouldn't have stood a chance!

Similarly, if you had asked the "experts" in 1980 to pick a winner between Louis and Ali, most would probably (I would guess!) go for Louis - but when we had a poll here on Classic 18 months ago, approx. 70% voted for Ali. Our opinions are obviously greatly influenced by the era we grew up in, as the boxers/fights we saw at a young age, are more likely to have left an indelible impression on our minds, that what we have been watching recently. Isn't that pretty much how it works?

 

Disagree. This fight was proposed for 1925 the same year Greb lost to Tunney in their fifth bout. After the bout Greb stated that he would never fight Tunney again since Gene was getting too big and strong for him to handle. Tunney scaled 181 pounds for that fight. Dempsey would be that much bigger and stronger than Tunney. Again doing well in sparring with pillow gloves does not mean you do well in a real bout with 5 oz gloves where your opponent is the hardest puncher in boxing history at that time. It's quite possible that Dempseys first solid blow ends the bout. Conn did well against Louis mainly because Louis was dried out and stale. If we are talking a prime in shape Dempsey he would be hammering Greb with those deadly short punches which I could not envision any middleweight absorbing.

 

Actually, Greb lined up to fight Tunney again in Miami. The bout was scr@pped after Tunney got a chance to score a more lucrative bout vs. Young Stribling, which was s****ped when the Dempsey fight became a possibility.

Tunney was at his peak though. Dempsey wasn't.

You can't just dismiss Conn's performance vs Louis as being achieved simply on account of Joe being "dried out and stale". Joe's hammer blows didn't look dried out and stale to me or anyone else who saw them. If Billy can't take Louis' power, he loses early. He TOOK Louis' power, even in the late rounds. He just couldn't take the final fusillade. If Conn could take the blows of a bigger and harder-hitting fighter like Louis I see no reason why a hard-as-nails fighter like Greb couldn't take the occasional blow from Dempsey.

"Dempsey hammering Greb"?? I think you need to go back and reassess Greb's career Nobody, especially the heavyweights, "hammered" him with the ease with which you seem to think Jack would. Greb was as slippery and difficult to fight as they come. A prime Dempsey would be lucky to land anything for the first 6-8 rounds vs a prime Greb. And if he did land I doubt it would be one of his big punches. And if it were I see no reason to believe Harry couldn't have absorbed it (nor could his contemporaries).

The people who were around back then who saw both Greb and Dempsey fight completely disagree with your assessment on the ease of which Dempsey destroys Greb.

I see Dempsey stopping Greb in the late rounds of a championship fight. A 6-8 round fight? I'd take Greb any day. 10? I'm less confident, but I'll still take Greb. Beyond 10 I'm betting Dempsey.

 

Perfect example:

"Certainly Greb would not have beaten the fury of Toledo, Ohio. But he very conceivably would have had a chance with the Dempsey of later years. Harry was very fast on his feet and inhumanly quick with his hands. I don't think anyone could throw as many punches in a given space of time as he could. No one in the world knew more fighting tricks. And he was exactly the type with which Dempsey had the most trouble. A fellow like Greb could keep him off balance, which is fatal for any fighter.

Perhaps the Pittsburgh Windmill could have trimmed the old man mauler. More unlikely things have happened". -- Jack Kofoed (who saw both men on many occasions).