Why is there no fight footage of Harry Greb?

[Rusty Tromboni]

I wish therewas footage i would colorize it like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mNI404npRE
or like this


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDbKRXHDZgc

Beautiful.


Just sparring for the camera, but clearly they were true fighters. More like MMA than modern pillow fighting... i mean boxing.

It's like comparing battlefield veterans of centuries past to Olympic fencers of today. Can you imagine todays Olmpians on the battlefield?

[ShoulderRoll]

Klompton started out as a big Dempsey fan but through years of research for his book he started to separate reality from myth.

He's read countless primary sources from that period so his opinion holds quite lot of weight fight.

Seems to me like most everybody else here is just arguing out of emotion with nowhere near the same amount of evidence to support their points as Klompton has.

[Rusty Tromboni]

Great points. Somewhere around the time the Babe, a nice chubby boy from Baltimore became more of the focus than the team, a new type of athlete with much more money on the line was born. Speaking of the Babe? many think he was an even better pitcher, but hitting home runs generated more cabbage. I don't know if this is true it is an uninformed opinion!

Dempsey created a new financial bracket. and his management had a lot in common with Don King, etc. Yes these situations created a "lack of control" over one's career.

Wills did well for himself in real estate and Dempsey opened a great restaurant...Today? with the likes of King they may have shared the same bench in Central Park.

Nice point.

Babe Ruth being a pitcher - I am sure, even then, the hardest position in team sports, pre-modern Quarterbacks - speaks a lot to his athletic ability. The hardest thing PERIOD in team sports is hitting a baseball. That too was harder then. They have made it easier to score homeruns because that's what makes money: most people use baseball games as a chance to catch a snooze. I know that, and I played for years. The counterpoint, of course, is that pitchers win games, seasons and championships. So teams try to get the best.

Ruth wasn't a mistake. He wasn't a fabrication of commerical industry. He was a genuine superstar. He also had a heroic backstory. I really don't doubt that Dempsey was any different.

Ray Leonard had a lot of fanfare. The Hagler fight was designed for him to win. But was he not a true all time great?

Modern NBA (a game, not a sport) basically plays without rules, and is just a commercial enterprise. But is Lebron a hack? Would he not have been a star in other eras? Other than Jordan who has been as good?

I really think Dempsey was more interested in being a celebrity than a full-time Boxer. He didn't go off the rails like Duran. But his inability to make it into the ring for every eligible challenger (and put on top-tier performances when he did show up) is more likely owed to Dempsey's professionalism than to his being a fabrication of the media. They definitely hyped him up, and maybe protected him. But he clearly could fight. And no one from his era is clearly on his level.

[Rusty Tromboni]

Klompton started out as a big Dempsey fan. But through years of research for his book he started to separate reality from myth.

He's read countless primary sources from that period so his opinion holds quite lot of weight fight.

Most everybody else here is just arguing out of emotion with nowhere near enough evidence as him.

Oh, safe Spaces, I was wondering when you'd pop out from your hole.

Everyone here holds Klompton in high esteem. The thing about adults, though, is that we can both respect someone (even acknowledging what they are correct about), while disagreeing.

My wife likes Indian food. I hate it. She's still about the best cook I know. I don't doubt that it's probably something wrong with me. But I just can't agree that Indian fare is enjoyable. It grosses me out.

You really can't be expected to consider opinions anything more than emotional because that is all you know. But I would love for you to try to prove anyone's opinion is emotional when they tend to be the most conservative and Occamian.

Klompton might be the most correct. But his position cannot be proven. Common sense suggests that if it were so readily apparent, it would already be accepted dogma. There's still enough evidence to the contrary, or at least missing material, that those of us, who might be less informed, could still be correct.

Probably this all went over your heard, and you're in your mother's arms sobbing. But whatever. I want to believe you can become a real man.

[Rusty Tromboni]

LMAO. Stop being dramatic. I banned you from my thread (after being advised to do so by the forum moderator. I guess you forgot that part) because you did the same thing you're doing here. Begging for reparations and hurling insults because the truth hurt your soul instead of discussing the topic with facts. But we both know that this is what you do when you realize that the truth is not on your side.

And not even sure why you would be so desperate as to bring that up when you know the exact same damn thing that happened here happened there. You were outgunned with facts and began crying. Rinse and repeat with you.

Let me give you a hint. Posts that consist of only insults and nothing about the topic just exposes how hurt you are because the truth has been exposed.

Now if you'd like to prove me wrong by discussing this further about Dempsey blatantly and obviously ducking Wills, be my guest. We both know it's not going to go well for you. And that's precisely why you're mad.

They don't serve midol in the institution you're house in?

If you weren't such a cafone people would take you more seriously. It's not that you don't (almost) make good points and arguments, it's that you think you should get more out of them.

It's like you have this curse where you CAN think, but you can't do it very well.

It's a shame you're into Boxing and not art. You could have made a lot of money as a critic.

[travestyny]

They don't serve midol in the institution you're house in?

If you weren't such a cafone people would take you more seriously. It's not that you don't (almost) make good points and arguments, it's that you think you should get more out of them.

It's like you have this curse where you CAN think, but you can't do it very well.

It's a shame you're into Boxing and not art. You could have made a lot of money as a critic.

What does your opinion of me have to do with the topic?


Answer the question. Did Jack Dempsey sign a contract to fight Harry Wills and then break the contract, even having a court issue an injunction to stop him from fighting ANYONE except Wills (which he got around by running to Philly because, as Klompton already stated, he couldn't run to NY because they would have forced him to fight Wills as well).


Yes or no? It's a very simple question that I've asked over and over here, but you guys stu stu stutter every time I bring it up.

So let's see you stutter now. Yes or no? I'll wait.

[ShoulderRoll]

Oh, safe Spaces, I was wondering when you'd pop out from your hole.

Everyone here holds Klompton in high esteem. The thing about adults, though, is that we can both respect someone (even acknowledging what they are correct about), while disagreeing.

My wife likes Indian food. I hate it. She's still about the best cook I know. I don't doubt that it's probably something wrong with me. But I just can't agree that Indian fare is enjoyable. It grosses me out.

You really can't be expected to consider opinions anything more than emotional because that is all you know. But I would love for you to try to prove anyone's opinion is emotional when they tend to be the most conservative and Occamian.

Klompton might be the most correct. But his position cannot be proven. Common sense suggests that if it were so readily apparent, it would already be accepted dogma. There's still enough evidence to the contrary, or at least missing material, that those of us, who might be less informed, could still be correct.

Probably this all went over your heard, and you're in your mother's arms sobbing. But whatever. I want to believe you can become a real man.

What's with this "Safe Spaces" bullshit and the personal attacks? If you have to resort to insults when arguing your points you've already lost.

Klompton can cite chapter and verse when he makes a declaration about some of these old time fighters. That's why he runs circles around someone like you who behaves like a child and insists that things must be a certain way just because he says so.

[GhostofDempsey]

This is a very sobering post. It provides the healthiest perspective we can have.

As you and Klompton have mentioned, fighting Greb was a lose-lose for Dempsey. Beyond that, it's really hard to say how much Dempsey feared losing to Greb, even if strong arguments can be made for Greb.* I just don't put too much into reports from sparring.**

* It's really hard to know how much Dempsey could have feared Greb: Greb was clearly better than Brennan and Gibbons: even if only slightly; even if styles make fights. Dempsey liked guys he could hit. He lacked the skills to cut off the ring and force a slicker, quicker fighter into a corner. But he always won.
Again, there's parallel in nature: Badgers and their kin often chase larger predators off their prey. That doesn't stop them from becoming prey, too. My buddy once sent me a video of a house cat chasing a Fisher off its property. Probably the same Fisher that had killed his neighbor's German Shepherd a year or two before.

** Too many times training wrestling or Boxing with someone much better than myself I have come out on top. But I still knew my limit, and so did everyone else. There's so many reasons why a sparring session might go a certain way. And it doesn't have to be that one guy took it easy, while the other guy went all out. A lot of times you bring in a guy to work your weakness. Training can be very demanding: a guy might be exhausted, broken down mentally, unfocused, or just caught off guard.

I bet those sparring sessions were war and might even yield more insight into what Greb and Dempsey were capable of doing than any fights would - neither man ever fought anyone as good as the other, save Tunney. I just don't expect a real fight between Greb and Dempsey to play out exactly as their sparring sessions went.

Good post. There are a lot of fans who cherry pick their desired outcome while discussing sparring. People who want to point to the Greb/Dempsey sparring sessions as testimony that Greb could beat Demosey, will quickly dismiss the assumption that Jack Blackburn would defeat Jack Johnson since Blackburn whooped Johnson in a sparring session. Fast forward to the 21st century and Errol Spence works over Mayweather in a sparring session, but don’t dare suggest to a Floyd fan that Spence would beat him in a real fight. So as we see, the sparring theory works both ways, yet detractors of one fighter will use it as impirocal evidence that Dempsey would lose, but dismiss sparring as proof of a victory as it pertains to their favorite fighters.

[billeau2]

Nice point.

Babe Ruth being a pitcher - I am sure, even then, the hardest position in team sports, pre-modern Quarterbacks - speaks a lot to his athletic ability. The hardest thing PERIOD in team sports is hitting a baseball. That too was harder then. They have made it easier to score homeruns because that's what makes money: most people use baseball games as a chance to catch a snooze. I know that, and I played for years. The counterpoint, of course, is that pitchers win games, seasons and championships. So teams try to get the best.

Ruth wasn't a mistake. He wasn't a fabrication of commerical industry. He was a genuine superstar. He also had a heroic backstory. I really don't doubt that Dempsey was any different.

Ray Leonard had a lot of fanfare. The Hagler fight was designed for him to win. But was he not a true all time great?

Modern NBA (a game, not a sport) basically plays without rules, and is just a commercial enterprise. But is Lebron a hack? Would he not have been a star in other eras? Other than Jordan who has been as good?

I really think Dempsey was more interested in being a celebrity than a full-time Boxer. He didn't go off the rails like Duran. But his inability to make it into the ring for every eligible challenger (and put on top-tier performances when he did show up) is more likely owed to Dempsey's professionalism than to his being a fabrication of the media. They definitely hyped him up, and maybe protected him. But he clearly could fight. And no one from his era is clearly on his level.

Dempsey and Ruth were indeed superstars...and while I cannot be sure of this, I would not be suprised if that word (Superstar) was first coined to describe such an athlete. Sullivan drew gates that were unheard of, but even with his success the focus was on "the champ" the man who could lick all commers! where as with Ruth and Dempsey they became internationally known figures that transcended the sport they participated in. Famously there is an old saw about Ruth (sometimes it is told using Dimaggio and sometimes even Ali).

Anyway some Americans are in England and the Queen's guard comes, shoves them out of the way, shouting "make way for the Queen!" causing one of the Muricans to say "to hell with the queen!" whereupon one of the guard retorts "oh yeah? to hell with the Babe!"

[billeau2]

Good post. There are a lot of fans who cherry pick their desired outcome while discussing sparring. People who want to point to the Greb/Dempsey sparring sessions as testimony that Greb could beat Demosey, will quickly dismiss the assumption that Jack Blackburn would defeat Jack Johnson since Blackburn whooped Johnson in a sparring session. Fast forward to the 21st century and Errol Spence works over Mayweather in a sparring session, but don’t dare suggest to a Floyd fan that Spence would beat him in a real fight. So as we see, the sparring theory works both ways, yet detractors of one fighter will use it as impirocal evidence that Dempsey would lose, but dismiss sparring as proof of a victory as it pertains to their favorite fighters.

Empirical evidence would suggest that sparring and victories from the distant past have very little impact on determining who would win in a match. Many individuals use amateur thinking when doing the following;

explaining away every victory for a fighter

saying a sparring session is demonstrative of an outcome in a prize fight.

not recognizing that fighters change and develop considerably over time.