Why is there no ring film of Harry Greb?

[travestyny]

Cool!

What did you think of my statement that Wills was more popular than Greb ( by a wide margin.)?

Agree or dis? I am curious.

P.S. Theatrical question . . . Which character was I suppose to like? The old guy who looked 33 playing a teenager ? . . . I kinda liked the Hawk guy with the F cked up teeth ! -- Who did you like?

BTW Was this a CIA visual/audio African American cultural Rorschach test disguised as a movie? Whom did you relate to, the butter fly or the dragon? (Card #11)

I don't answer your questions until you go back and answer to your discrepancy regarding Greb/Dempsey and Wills/Dempsey

I'll give you one. "Wolf" (the guy with the teeth) was that dude. They were all old as hell playing high school kids

[Willie Pep 229]

I don't answer your questions until you go back and answer to your discrepancy regarding Greb/Dempsey and Wills/Dempsey

I'll give you one. "Wolf" (the guy with the teeth) was that dude. They were all old as hell playing high school kids

Explain discrepancy?

I dont think Dempsry ducked either -- Ah! but for different reasons the fights didn't come off.

Is that what you mean ?

[travestyny]

Explain discrepancy?

I dont think Dempsry ducked either -- Ah! but for different reasons the fights didn't come off.

Is that what you mean ?

Right. That's what I mean. In the case of Greb, you point to a lack of lucrative offers and the national poll that he doesn't appear on. But for Wills, there was a lucrative offer that Dempsey stepped out on and a national poll that Wills was at the top of. On top of that, you know that the NY commission was trying to force the fight, which speaks against "the times not allowing the fight" even if it were for sleazy reasons, as you seem to believe. If Farley had a vested interest, that shouldn't matter as, in the end of the day, Farley only wanted what the public wanted. So how, in your mind, is that not a duck on Dempsey's part? All of the usual excuses fail here. The money was present, the promoter was willing, the public wanted it, even state commissions tried to force it. So what is the fallback excuse for this one?

[Willie Pep 229]

Right. That's what I mean. In the case of Greb, you point to a lack of lucrative offers and the national poll that he doesn't appear on. But for Wills, there was a lucrative offer that Dempsey stepped out on and a national poll that Wills was at the top of. On top of that, you know that the NY commission was trying to force the fight, which speaks against "the times not allowing the fight" even if it were for sleazy reasons, as you seem to believe. If Farley had a vested interest, that shouldn't matter as, in the end of the day, Farley only wanted what the public wanted. So how, in your mind, is that not a duck on Dempsey's part? All of the usual excuses fail here. The money was present, the promoter was willing, the public wanted it, even state commissions tried to force it. So what is the fallback excuse for this one?

Ok you have to separate 1922 from 1926; to different circumstances/reasons.

We usually argue about the 1926 situation more often I'll start there.

There several reasons why he should have taken the Tunney fight over Wills in Chicago.

1. Dempaey involved himself with the Chicago people because of Fitzsimmons and then Fitz pulled himself out of the contract and went to work for Dempsey (strange). This means Dempsey goes onto Chicago with no 'friend' to protect him.

In the Philly fight it is Rickard, and Dempsey knew and trusted him; with Fitz selling the Chicago contract Dempsey would have been dealing with strangers who had no long term interest in him the way Rickard did and no reason to protect him the way Rickard would.

2. Rickard was a proven promoter who had by 1926 promted several million dollar gates. The Chicago people were inexperienced this we know because once Fitz bailed on them they had to hire a second tier promoter to take over (he was in the law suit; he was the only expense the court saw fit to reimburse $1500) You have his name in your records and we never heard of him.

Dempsey had to wonder without Fitz to guide them could they pull it off. Remember Dempsey took a financial beating when he let a bunch of amateurs in Shelby try to promote the Gibbons fight; they failed.

3. Your strongest argument is the $800,000 guarantee they were offering. But this argument is weakened because when Dempsey chose Ruckard/Tunney he was given a $680,000 guarantee with a % of the gate and film rights. In the end he made over the promised $800,000 and he KNEW Rixhard could make the fight happen, the Chiago people were a maybe with a second tier promoter.

it is common when accusing a fighter of a duck to point out that the fighter took an easier fight for less money. Neither of those are a truth here. Tunney had just become the first/only man to stop Tommy Gibbons. Tunney was not an easier fight and the same money was there

Also their promise of an $800K check may have been real but the only time Dempsey tried to exchange money with Chicago the check bounced. That puts a chill on wanting to accept a second check for anyone.

The 1922 situation was all Kearns and complicated. Kearns wanted away from Rickard and that meant getting out of New York. Kearns knew Rickard wanted to steal Dempsey and Kearns after seeing Carpentier and the million dollar gate didn'twant to share the proceeds with Rickard. He wanted to do it all and take all the avaiable revenue.

The best proof I have for this conclusion is to just look where Kearns ended up, Montana ( and no Rickard)

Had Kearns taken the Wills fight it was going to be in New York (we know this because when Kearns offered Wllis Dempsey in Montreal, Wills' people said no.)

You know my whole Tammany Hall argument so I won't repeat it.

Kearns used Wills or the constant promise of a Wills fight to keep Ruckard off balance. So long as Kearns pretended he just might take a Wills fight Rickard was stymied because we know Rickard wasn't sure he wanted Wills fighting for the championship; didn't want a repeat of the Johnson mess.

I believe Kearns would have taken the Wills fight if it had been in Montreal but they weren't going to let Wills leave New York.

P.S. You may run across an article of Dempsey saying he wasn't going to take the Montreal fight because there wasn't enough time to train. This is true but Dempaey said this to the press a few days after Wills' people had already said no to Montreal.

Dempsey-wills should have taken place at the Polo Grounds July 8th 1922.

It would have been a fight of the century.

[travestyny]

Ok you have to separate 1922 from 1926; to different circumstances/reasons.

We usually argue about the 1926 situation more often I'll start there.

There several reasons why he should have taken the Tunney fight over Wills in Chicago.

1. Dempaey involved himself with the Chicago people because of Fitzsimmons and then Fitz pulled himself out of the contract and went to work for Dempsey (strange). This means Dempsey goes onto Chicago with no 'friend' to protect him.

In the Philly fight it is Rickard, and Dempsey knew and trusted him; with Fitz selling the Chicago contract Dempsey would have been dealing with strangers who had no long term interest in him the way Rickard did and no reason to protect him the way Rickard would.

2. Rickard was a proven promoter who had by 1926 promted several million dollar gates. The Chicago people were inexperienced this we know because once Fitz bailed on them they had to hire a second tier promoter to take over (he was in the law suit; he was the only expense the court saw fit to reimburse $1500) You have his name in your records and we never heard of him.

Dempsey had to wonder without Fitz to guide them could they pull it off. Remember Dempsey took a financial beating when he let a bunch of amateurs in Shelby try to promote the Gibbons fight; they failed.

3. Your strongest argument is the $800,000 guarantee they were offering. But this argument is weakened because when Dempsey chose Ruckard/Tunney he was given a $680,000 guarantee with a % of the gate and film rights. In the end he made over the promised $800,000 and he KNEW Rixhard could make the fight happen, the Chiago people were a maybe with a second tier promoter.

it is common when accusing a fighter of a duck to point out that the fighter took an easier fight for less money. Neither of those are a truth here. Tunney had just become the first/only man to stop Tommy Gibbons. Tunney was not an easier fight and the same money was there

Also their promise of an $800K check may have been real but the only time Dempsey tried to exchange money with Chicago the check bounced. That puts a chill on wanting to accept a second check for anyone.

Bro. He wasn't only promised $800,000 for the Wills fight. He was also promised incentives beyond that. 50 per cent of the net profits over and above the sum of $2,000,000 in the event the gate receipts should exceed that amount. In addition, 50 per cent of the net revenue derived from moving picture concessions or royalties received by the promoters.

So it seems that your argument here is that the fight wouldn't have sold. Are you kidding me?????? After the public waited at least since '22, you're telling me this fight wasn't going to sell with the public????? The Public had been saying who they wanted since '22. That was the point of the poll.

I'm not even going to worry about the '22 situation because '26 does the job just fine.

Dempsey obviously signed the contract, so he must have believed that the fight could be pulled off at that time, right? Also, what you seem to always forget, is that there was a clause in the contract that said if for any reason the fight failed to come off, Dempsey would be allowed to keep the initial $300,000 and move on. That would mean if the fight didn't come off, he is $300,000 richer going into the Tunney fight. So that should settle the worries about the fight not coming off.


So that leaves only one excuse for you. He just wanted Rickard to promote it (which is odd since he already signed for another promoter). Very well....why didn't he get Rickard to promote it then?



With all due respect, that was a very weak argument for why this wasn't a duck. Your two arguments don't hold water.

Argument one - fear of the fight not coming off, was already handled in the contract.

Argument two - he only wanted Rickard to promote his fights. Then why did he bother signing the contract, and why didn't he ask Rickard to promote the fight for Wills? Don't tell me Rickard was afraid of a race war, because I think you are on record now saying that wasn't true. So any more excuses?


And I have no idea what you are talking about with a secondary promoter. What???

---Edit---

Oh, I see. You are talking about Weisberg. Dude, Weisberg was signed to help out on March 8th. The contract for the fight was signed March 13th. He was obviously part of the team put together to ensure that the fight would come off. If anything, that speaks against this fight not coming off. Come on now. These excuses don't hold water at all.


And by the way, that is exactly what I mean by you being "passive aggressive." The way you stated it above as, "You have his name in your records, and yet we never heard of him," as if I would need to hide that this dude was on their team. It doesn't make sense.

[Willie Pep 229]

Bro. He wasn't only promised $800,000 for the Wills fight. He was also promised incentives beyond that. 50 per cent of the net profits over and above the sum of $2,000,000 in the event the gate receipts should exceed that amount. In addition, 50 per cent of the net revenue derived from moving picture concessions or royalties received by the promoters.

So it seems that your argument here is that the fight wouldn't have sold. Are you kidding me?????? After the public waited at least since '22, you're telling me this fight wasn't going to sell with the public????? The Public had been saying who they wanted since '22. That was the point of the poll.

I'm not even going to worry about the '22 situation because '26 does the job just fine.

Dempsey obviously signed the contract, so he must have believed that the fight could be pulled off at that time, right? Also, what you seem to always forget, is that there was a clause in the contract that said if for any reason the fight failed to come off, Dempsey would be allowed to keep the initial $300,000 and move on. That would mean if the fight didn't come off, he is $300,000 richer going into the Tunney fight. So that should settle the worries about the fight not coming off.


So that leaves only one excuse for you. He just wanted Rickard to promote it (which is odd since he already signed for another promoter). Very well....why didn't he get Rickard to promote it then?



With all due respect, that was a very weak argument for why this wasn't a duck. Your two arguments don't hold water.

Argument one - fear of the fight not coming off, was already handled in the contract.I am sorry we have to disgree I belieev your argument is very weak.

Argument two - he only wanted Rickard to promote his fights. Then why did he bother signing the contract, and why didn't he ask Rickard to promote the fight for Wills? Don't tell me Rickard was afraid of a race war, because I think you are on record now saying that wasn't true. So any more excuses?


And I have no idea what you are talking about with a secondary promoter. What???

---Edit---

Oh, I see. You are talking about Weisberg. Dude, Weisberg was signed to help out on March 8th. The contract for the fight was signed March 13th. He was obviously part of the team put together to ensure that the fight would come off. If anything, that speaks against this fight not coming off. Come on now. These excuses don't hold water at all.


And by the way, that is exactly what I mean by you being "passive aggressive." The way you stated it above as, "You have his name in your records, and yet we never heard of him," as if I would need to hide that this dude was on their team. It doesn't make sense.

I am sorry but me must agree to disagree. I believe your argument is very weak.

You have amateurs making promises, with a second self promoter. They could show no experience with a fight this big. Few could. It is not about the fans not wanting the fight, of course they did, that's a given, it's about whether these newbies could pull of a fight that big.

Fitz seems to think they couldn't and then Dempsey thought so too.

You keep bringing up the contract, what difference does it matter when Dempsey signed it, he lost his trust in them and ran home to Rickard. It is really that simple unless you don't want to see.

You want too bad to believe Dempsey ran from Wills, I say he ran from the unknown. He had already got screwed by amateurs in Shelby, god only knows what could have been coming out of Chicago in 1926.

P.S. Passive aggressive, Na just plain aggressive I hope. -- when I said 'we never heard of him' I meant that he was a second rater, not that we never heard of him. He was not a familiar name to us. (Still isn't.) It makes no difference that he was "on the team" So what? The team was made of of second raters and newbies; no one could come close to matching Rickard's resume. I have no clue what you say I was hiding, I wasn't holding back anything I knew. Your "on the team" argument is odd. I don't get it's relevance to anything I said.

P.S.S. And why are you bringing up the race riots again, I didn't say anything about Rickard being afraid of violence; I say Rickard was afraid another Black champion would leave him in the weeds again unable to make any money, just like what happened with Johnson. See part of the problem hear is you are in denial to just how much damage Jack Johnson did to later Black fighters, you want all the fault to be on one side. Johnson as champion cost many people much money and a generation of Black fighter a chance to fight for a title. There was always white supremacy getting in the way, but the good people could work around that, but not once Johnson got done pissing off not only the scum bag supremists but damn near everyone else.

[travestyny]

I am sorry but me must agree to disagree. I believe your argument is very weak.

You have amateurs making promises, with a second self promoter. They could show no experience with a fight this big. Few could. It is not about the fans not wanting the fight, of course they did, that's a given, it's about whether these newbies could pull of a fight that big.

Fitz seems to think they couldn't and then Dempsey thought so too.

You keep bringing up the contract, what difference does it matter when Dempsey signed it, he lost his trust in them and ran home to Rickard. It is really that simple unless you don't want to see.

You want too bad to believe Dempsey ran from Wills, I say he ran from the unknown. He had already got screwed by amateurs in Shelby, god only knows what could have been coming out of Chicago in 1926.

P.S. Passive aggressive, Na just plain aggressive I hope. -- when I said 'we never heard of him' I meant that he was a second rater, not that we never heard of him. He was not a familiar name to us. (Still isn't.) It makes no difference that he was "on the team" So what? The team was made of of second raters and newbies; no one could come close to matching Rickard's resume. I have no clue what you say I was hiding, I wasn't holding back anything I knew. Your "on the team" argument is odd. I don't get it's relevance to anything I said.

P.S.S. And why are you bringing up the race riots again, I didn't say anything about Rickard being afraid of violence; I say Rickard was afraid another Black champion would leave him in the weeds again unable to make any money, just like what happened with Johnson. See part of the problem hear is you are in denial to just how much damage Jack Johnson did to later Black fighters, you want all the fault to be on one side. Johnson as champion cost many people much money and a generation of Black fighter a chance to fight for a title. There was always white supremacy getting in the way, but the good people could work around that, but not once Johnson got done pissing off not only the scum bag supremists but damn near everyone else.

Amateurs? LMAO. Give me a break.


He signed the contract and then lost confidence in them due to what exactly? What happened between signing the contract and him breaking the contract. Absolutely nothing. Absolute hogwash. No comeback for the free $300,000 that Dempsey could have had, huh? Just avoid it, hmmm?


Your entire argument is that Dempsey is justified in ducking if the bout isn't promoted by Rickard. That's the biggest cop out ever and you know it. Why even discuss Greb vs. Dempsey if your argument was only going to be that Dempsey is allowed to duck Greb if Rickard doesn't promote it??? Especially knowing, as Jab explained, that Rickard didn't want to promote it. In that case, it wouldn't matter what the offers were....but you were willing to look into the offers then. Now that you have offers for Wills, it doesn't matter because you want to hide behind Rickard again.


Would you like some names that should have been heard of? I can certainly give you some names that you should have heard of. How about Tom O'Rourke who wanted to promote the fight and made a huge $1,000,000 offer? In fact, he made a number of offers. How about William A. Brady that made a huge offer? Would that not do? But he fights for Fitz, right?


These guys were small potatoes, hmmm? Both in the boxing hall of fame:


xaEYPZ.png

40ND8c.png


Let's see what Mr. Brady had to say about it, shall we?







As for your bullshlt about Jack Johnson. Jack was still getting lucrative offers while he was champion, so how the hell wasn't there going to be lucrative offers for Wills if he were champion. Absolute bullshlt. So please, get even more aggressive. Because you're going to need it to defend this obvious duck!


And I'm not trying to be offensive, but I don't understand how you misunderstand sentences that seem clear to me. Let me try to clear it up. I never said YOU were hiding anything. I said it seems like you were saying I (as in ME) was hiding something about this other promoter. What I said is that the other promoter was already on the Chicago Coliseum Club's team before Dempsey signed the contract for the fight. So you saying that I have him in my notes yet we haven't heard of him is irrelevant. He obviously had experience promoting fights. It seems that I took it the wrong way, as you seem to be saying you haven't heard of him period, instead of meaning it as if you didn't hear about him from me. So let's say I took it the wrong way. I didn't know it was just part of another excuse. My pet cat could have promoted this fight.

Regardless, you have some names you should have heard about who made lucrative offers for this fight, right? So what say you? Small potatoes too, or is there yet another excuse?

[GhostofDempsey]

Ok I'll start it over . . . Greb just wasn't popular enough for any film he might be in to get much theater action (hampered also by the Sims Act) so there just weren't enough copies or interest around for the film to survive the ravages of time.

Yes I am repeating myself. . . time has inflated his greatness; he was popular but he wasn't a rock star.

Just by the number of newspaper mentions you can see that Harry Wills was considerably more popular with the fans than Greb and at least pieces of his films have survived.

I think there may also have been a strong casual fan bias towards the HWs ( as aways) and those are the fans who make a fight film profitable.

This speaks to some of the quotes I posted--a lot of newspaper accounts and fans at ringside didn't find him particularly entertaining. Yes, the Pittsburgh windmill threw a lot of punches, but they were mostly slappy flurries, wide loopy hooks, and a lot of dirty tactics in between. He smothered his opponents but didn't necessarily hurt them. Fans wanted to see knockouts and dominance being displayed, not someone doing jumping jacks in the ring and trying to win by a decision. Not to take anything away from his effectiveness at winning and his reputation for having incredible stamina and a great chin. He just wasn't a big draw, especially outside of Pittsburgh. His first big fight at MSG was against Gibbons, the fight that the United Press agreed was a disappointment, not at all fan friendly and the consensus after that fight was that Dempsey would beat either of them easily. Greb failed to make a good impression during his first big time outing at MSG.

In his loss to Loughran in Boston:

"Tommy Loughran of Philadelphia defeated Harry Greb, world's middleweight champion in a 10 round bout in Mechanics Hall last night. The fight was rough, Greb being the offender throughout. the titleholders tactics met with disapproval from the start but he disregarded the hoots and booing of the crowd and stopped only when cautioned by referee Johnny Brassil, who was as busy trying to make him fight cleanly as Greb was trying to batter Loughran all over the ring. Loughran's skillful fighting stood out over Greb's milling. Loughran registered the cleaner blows in every round and more than once forced Greb to back away from a heavy bombardment to the body." -Fitchburg Daily Sentinel

Loughran was a Philly fighter, so it wasn't a home crowd cheering him on and booing Greb. It was an impartial crowd wanting to see a good fight and expressing their disapproval of Greb's dirty tactics which were all too common. I imagine this was common throughout Greb's fights outside of Pittsburgh.

A lot of his fights were also "stay busy" fights to earn a paycheck, often against far inferior opposition, ie., mismatches.

[Marchegiano]

What's true for Greb that is not true for Miske?

[travestyny]

P.S. You may run across an article of Dempsey saying he wasn't going to take the Montreal fight because there wasn't enough time to train. This is true but Dempaey said this to the press a few days after Wills' people had already said no to Montreal.
.

Yep. I ran across plenty of articles saying that Dempsey ducked this fight, saying that he couldn't get in shape in time. And this was an offer from Tex Rickard, wasn't it? I've seen Wills people saying that they are willing for any amount of money, anywhere. So can you give me the information about him declining and why.

Seems that even Rickard wasn't happy that Dempsey turned down this offer. I have more than a few articles about it.


Even Tex Rickard saying that Dempsey doesn't want it with Wills in 1922.

QWcWLI.png