Rank Greb's 5 Greatest Victories

Gibbons
Gibbons
Tunney
Walker

Theoretical Dempsey wins

 

I don't know enough about the circumstances of the fights,
but off the cuff.
Gibbons 1922 Gibbons 171 Greb 163.25lbs
Tunney 1922 Tunney 174.5lbs Greb 162.25lbs
Gibbons Mike 1919
Tunney 1924 Tunney 175lbs Greb 166lbs
Norfolk 1921 Norfolk 178.25lbs Greb161.25lbs


Others for consideration ;
Jimmy Slattery1924
Bill Brennan 1919

I've been swayed by Harry giving lumps of weight to top class men in a few of these fights.

 

Im surprised nobody is mentioning his first fight with Battling Levinsky. He took on a reigning LHW champion while still developing, was considerably outweighed, and won, knocked the champion down, and came within a whisker of winning the title before Levinsky was saved by the final bell.

 

Yeah, been waiting on Klompton's response for this one.

 

He inflicted some real pain on Maxie...I think even had him down, from what I've read.

 

It was so one-sided some ringsiders thought Greb was carrying Maxie towards the end.

The first Tunney fight is probably a more impressive win in hindsight, given what Tunney went on to achieve. But at the point they fought Tunney hadn't pulled up many trees in his career and wasn't that highly thought of.

As for Greb's best win, I'll say Mickey Walker. Blind in one eye and with a good 200 fights on the clock, Greb took on a younger, fresher champ who is also a legend in his own right and pretty well thrashed him.

 

Greb's five greatest victorys in my opinion in no particular order were:

Levinsky 1
M. Gibbons 2 (you could argue against this one because Mike wasnt as good after the war but he was still one of the best fighters in the world at this time)
T. Gibbons 4
Walker

The fifth spot is kind of hard you could really interchange one of the later Tommy Loughran wins (when Tommy was beginning to develop) or one of the Tunney wins (although people might question why I dont outright state Tunney, its because prior to their first fight Greb was expected to beat Tunney. Tunney was pretty unproven at that point. Its a better win in hindsight than it was at the time, as Berlenbach correctly noted above) I'll go with

Tiger Flowers 1 I choose this one because Flowers was in his prime while Greb was getting pretty long in the tooth. Flowers had never lost a decision, official or otherwise until he met Greb. If you couldnt punch you couldnt beat Flowers but Greb did. That says a lot. Right up until his death Flowers lost only four more decisions in something like 80 more fights over a span of 3 years and two of those were highly controversial. Thats an incredibly consistent points fighter and its very impressive that a faded half blind Greb was able to win so many of the newspaper decisions against him in their first fight.

 

Like i said, in hindsight its a bigger win than it was at the time. I think all of those guys above, at the time Greb fought them, were bigger mountains to climb. Remember, when Greb beat Gibbons two months before Tunney, THAT was the big win for Greb, not Tunney, even Tunney admitted he wanted nothing to do with Gibbons at that point. Beating Tunney for the totally synthetic "lhw championship of America" was a bit of an anti-climax. I would even argue that Greb beating Tunney by nd in 1924 was a better win as Tunney was a more formidible fighter at that point and Greb did it with the same broken rib that Tunney reinjured in their 1925 bout which hampered Greb so badly.

 

that was beautiful :good

 

Nice call on the Tiger ... I don't know if he's 'underrated' but he deserves far more attention than he gets on this forum.

In fact, I think I'll start a thread on him.