Which Gibbons was better?

Good to know, and nice to think the respect was there between these familiar rivals. (As it happened, O'Dowd outlived Gibbons, eight years his senior, by just under a year.) We then owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to O'Dowd for keeping the history alive.

 

Oh yes, o'dowd, like most st. Paul fighters, revered mike gibbons.

 

Mike, Mike, and Mike.

Mike was actually considered one of the best fighters in the world at one time. From around 1913 until his initial retirement in 1917, Mike took on all comers in and around MW (that is, those who were actually daring enough to get in the ring with him), beat virtually all of them, and usually very impressively. Even after returning to the ring, he still continued to fight successfully at the world class level, albeit without the same dominance. While Tommy reached great heights at times in his career (ie: his "upset" of Greb in 1920, his #2 HW ranking in 1924), he doesn't appear to have ever been held in quite the same reverence as his brother, and he was also known for fleshing out his record with stretches of fights against 2nd raters.