EXCERPTS FROM CHAPTERS 1-5

Introduction

Chapter 1 Angel With A Busted Beak

Chapter 2 What's a Floozy For?

Chapter 3 Cobb Was Good, Too

Chapter 4 Floode (With Love) In Johnstown

Chapter 5 The Bell Saved The Referee

EXCERPTS FROM CHAPTERS 1-5

Ernest Hemingway called Greb "one of our great Americans" page introduction vii

How blind was he? page3

Enlisted in the Navy 1917 and boxed page4

The Mickey Walker "official" boxing match. page35

Tunney visiting Harry before the Walker fight. page39-40

Harry and Mickey Walker's infamous street fight. pages 50-56

Ernest Hemingway called Greb "one of our great Americans"

INTRODUCTION

A SHORT time after pubIication of For Whom the Bell Tolls,

Bill Corum, the New York sports columnist and radio ann-

ouncer, was interiewing Ernest Hemingway at the Stork

Club. It apparently was just a routine interview until, suddenly,

Hemingway opened up on a well-known writer who once had interviewed

him at Bill Browne's health camp.

"Why that fellow," he thundered, "didn't seem to know anything.

There was Browne telling him some of the greatest stories I ever heard

about Harry Greb, and he didn't know who Greb was.....

Imagine a man not knowing one of our great Americans!"

For quotes, I wanted to know why Hemingway considered Greb a

great American, so I wrote him. Getting no reply, I concluded that

either he didn't get my letter, or that, having gone to Europe as a

Collier's correspondent, he decided the war was more important than

Harry Greb.

There was only one thing to do and that was to consult Whitey

Bimstein, who is not only the world's most famous handler of prize-

fighter's, as well as a double-talk and hot-foot-giving artist, but also

a figure in the international social set. Didn't he sit in the royal box

with King Alfonso at the San Sebastian bull fights ten years ago

when, at the king's request, he went to Spain to handle Paolino

Uzcudun, the Basque Woodchopper, against Primo Carnera, the

Varicose Venetian? While the effervescent, gold-toothed, battle-scarred

heavyweight champicn of all the Spaniards was elbowing Mr Bim-

stein in the ribs and nodding in the direction of a curvacious, slinky,

olive-skinned senorita, Alfonso, with an obvious eye on diplomatic

Wasington, remarked that he was fond of Americans. A tactful man

himself, Mr. Bimstein returned the compliment. Pointing long, hairy

finger at the cutie, he wowed Alfonso when he said, "There's nuttin'

wrong with the Spainards, either, king. Some built!"

Mr. Bimstein was in what he calls his chambers at Stillman's gym-

nasium, naked save for a towel slung around his middle. He was knead-

ing the muscles of Joe Baksi, his current heavyweight sensation, who

was stretched out on the rubbing table. Jammed into his chambers, a

locker room about the size of a Chic Sale two-holer, was an assortment

of Runyon characters. They were firing questions at Mr. Bimstein,

who was answering them with a degree of finality of which only he is

capable. If you think it doesn't take a man of substance to have the

final say with Runyon characters, drop in at Stiliman's before two

o'clock any afternoon and observe the Harry the Horses in session.

Mr. Bimstein's sharp blue eyes picked me up as I gently threaded

my way past these men.

"Hot!" he said half-heartedly as if he wasn't sure it was. It was so-

hot the top of my head felt like a slab of molten lead.

He summoned Coco, who doubles in brass as his assistant and as

court jester to the king, same being Mr. Bimstein. Coco is maybe a

little short of five feet, a frolicsome hunk of rotundity who can shake

a passable shimmy when the king demands it and whose last name no

one seems to know.

"Take over," Mr. Bimstein commanded, slapping Mr. Baksi in the

slats and fading away so Coco could come in and finish the muscle

kneading.

I told him about my one-way correspondence with Hemingway.

"He don't reply?" Mr. Bimstein asked incredulously.

"No, but maybe he didn't get my letter," I said, not wanting to put

the onus on Hemingway. "On the other hand, maybe he figures Greb

is underneath the war." (Underneath is a term Stillmanites use in-

stead of saying their man is working in a prelininary to the main

attraction.)

Mr. Bimstein burped on a hotdog he was washing down with a

growler of beer and rubbed his stubbly white beard.

"Hemingway'll find out different," he snapped.

How blind was he?

If there is one thing that will ruin a fighter it is

clubbiness with a lady before a bout. He knows that if he indulges him-

self-and it is a temptation that nearly drives him crazy because he

can't get from his block-of-granite sparring partners or his rough-

neck manager the kind of affection rugged youth is fondest of-he will

vomit the first time he catches a solid punch around the heart and he

will have to swallow it to keep his opponent from getting wise. Greb

used to sneak girls into his dressing room, lock the door and give them

the works while his opponent waited for him in the ring. Then he would

lope out of there, warm and enthusiastic after such pleasurable en-

deavors, and turn in the most brilliant performance of his career.

As a result of these hi-jinks, all sorts of fables grew up about him

after his death. It has been written not once but hundreds of times

that he boxed with a glass eye most of his life. Nothing could be more

ridiculous. A jarring jolt to the face or a sideswipe across the eye with

an open glove would have knocked it out of its socket, to say nothing

of what would have happened if a direct hit were scored. Besides, an

opponent who wouldn't take note of a glass eye and concentrate his

fire on it before the end of the first round would be dopier than Don

Quixote jousting at windmills with his lance. Greb was twice a cham-

pion. He didn't fight dopes, but this is not to say some of his opponents

didn't come under this classification after he had batted them around

for eight or ten rounds.

What none of them suspected when he was ranging the fistic horizon,

and what only two or three people in the world knew, was that he was

blind in his right eye and had less than half sight in his left. He fought

at least a hundred major bouts when he was so blind in his "good" eye-

that, sitting in his corner, he couldn't tell his opponents from their

handlers across the ring in their corner. But he didn't quit the ring

because of this. He had reached the stage where, in the street, he had

difficulty telling a woman from a man ten feet away save for the swish

of her skirt or the smell of her perfume.

"Women," he said, "mean more to me than anything else on earth.

If I can't see `em, I can't love `em, so I'm hanging up my gloves."

Enlisted in the Navy 1917 and boxed

It has been written that he fought six times a week and twice on

holidays. "The only thing wrong with that statement," he once said,

"is that I drop from ten to fifteen pounds in a fight." He thought the

Sports writers ought to give him enough of a breather to put some flesh

on his bones.

The press, not exactly discouraged by the fighters and their man-..

agers, paid plenty of attention to boxers who came out of the first

world war. It referred to Tunney, who usually entered the ring with a

Marine insignia- on his dressing gown, as the Fighting Marine. It-

billed Bob Martin, the A.E.F. heavyweight champion, as Soldier Bob.

It went off the deep end for Georges Carpentier when he came here to

train for the Dempsey fight twenty-five years ago. With no desire to

play down this advantage in one of the most stupendous publicity

build-ups ever given a prize-fight, Carpentier came into the ring that

July afternoon behind a squad of France's famous Fighting Blue

Devils, the tricolor dangling from his silk boxing trunks, the band

playing the Marseillaise.

It was all very colorful. Sports writers loved to dish it out and the

public loved to read it. It paid handsome dividends at the turnstiles It

was smart from every angle, and this is no attempt to criticize it, but-

How many people knew-that Harry Greb, who got enough bad press

notices to break the heart of a less rugged individual, enlisted in the

Navy soon after America entered the war in 1917, that he mopped up

on everybody in the Atlantic fleet and boxed in inter-allied bouts in

Londorn following the armistice? Outside of Pittsburgh, his home town,

you could count them on your fingers.

If newspapers outside of Pittsburgh knew about it they kept it a

secret. There were some mighty odd men on some of the more remote

journals back there when Greb was in his prime in the early 20's. A

handful of them tried to shake him down with promises of writing

beautiful words about him, but when you shook the Greb tree you

could expect the falling fruit to knock your brains out. One of these

journalistic pimples came up with a sore backside and another lost a

mouthful of teeth. Still another waited until Greb died. Then, in his

column, he labeled him as "a tightwad who somehow managed to die

broke." Greb wasn't a tightwad and he didn't die broke. He made a

million dollars in the ring, but spent most of it taking care of broken-

down athletes, buying fancy clothes, and having wild parties.

He was a stranger to the reporters who picked on him. They had

seen him fight, yes. But they didn't know him personally, had never

even interviewed him. If they had they might have handled him the

way Harry Keck, Havey Boyle and Chester Smith handled him in

Pittsburgh. They gave him hell when he needed it, which was often,

but they threw him bouquets too. His explanation for unnecessarily

rough tactics got him out of many a tight squeak: "Prize-fighting ain't

the noblest of the arts, and I ain't its noblest artist."

The Mickey Walker "official" boxing match.

FOR an active pugilist, Greb was an old man now: thirty-one.

He had long since lost the sight of his right eye and his left

was beginning to dim under the same kind of rigorous treat-

ment to which he had subjected opponents. His once marvelous

physique had begun to creak under the strain of twelve years of ring

warfare and more than two hundred and fifty fights up and down

and around the fistic horizon . . Omaha . . . Tulsa . . . New Orleans

. . St. Paul Milwaukee Newark . Los Angeles . . Phila-

delphia... Oakland... Baltimore. . Wheeling... Boston... Bridge-

port . . Cumberland . . . Steubenville . . . Youngstown . . . Chicago

... Kalamazoo... Grand Rapids . . . Punxsutawney. . . Wilkes-Barre

Buffalo... Indianapolis . .. London . .. on the high seas when he

was in the navy, etc. As if this were not handicap enough, he had to get

down from 174 to the middleweight title poundage of 160. It was

excess weight caused by age. It was hard to shed and he had given

himself a bare two weeks to do it. He didn't believe in heavy training,

arguing that boxers who pursued it often left their fights in the gym-

nasium.

"If I'm gonna leave mine any place," he chuckled, "it'll he on a

Beauty Rest with some skirt. I'm open to suggestions if anybody can

name a pleasanter way."

This was the way Greb had always talked and this was the way

he talked on the eve of what he knew would be the hardest fight of

his brilliant, slashing, plunging career.

Mickey Walker was young, a terrific hitter, disrespectful, rough,

wise, and he was welterweight (147 pounds) champion of the world.

But he couldn't make the weight any more and retain his best fighting

edge. He was stepping up into the next division, the middleweight,

and this would be his first start against big-time opposition. Unlike

Greb, he had no weight-making bugaboo to contend with as long

as he didn't get up above 160 and he had no intention of doing this.

He had nothing to worry about. If he lost, his public would say it had

taken a bigger man to beat him. His title wasn't on the line, either;

no matter what happened he would still be the welterweight cham-

pion. If he won he would take the bows for dethroning one of the

greatest champions of all time and on his head would rest the crowns

of two world's titles.

He didn't love Greb and Greb didn't love him. Neither had said

anything about it for publication, realizing if he did it would smack

of insincerity. The fans would say it was the old come-on calculated

to break down the turnstiles in the expectation of witnessing a grudge

fight.

This kind of talk would have been superfluous anyway. The fans

were going to be treated to the unusual spectacle of seeing two world's

champions pitted against each other. These weren't run-of-the-mill

champions, such as the New York State or the National Boxing Asso-

ciation version, but the acknowledged and undisputed kings of their

class.

Greb trained harder for this than for any fight in his career. To

assist him he had, among others, Mr. Cuddy De Marco and Mr. Patsy

Scanlon, two very capable little men. Mr. Scanlon is now an almost

forgotten gladiator except in his home town of Pittsburgh, but he

deserves a nod and he's going to get one if this ancient L. C. Smith

can stand up under the additional verbiage.

He was one of the best left hookers around. He was cunning. When

he was in there with a toughie he sometimes resorted to the time-

worn ring psychology of nettling him with uncomplimentary fast

talk. To wit, only. this one-well, you'll see.

Mr. Scanlon was boxing Dick Loadman one lovely evening `neath

a beautiful Pittsburgh moon. Loadman was a sharp, dangerous

puncher. It was shortly after the first world war. Married, he hadn't

gone into the service.

"You hid behind your wife's skirts," said Mr. Scanlon scornfully

as the referee broke up a clinch.

Loadman didn't say anything, but a couple of rounds later he

measured Mr. Scanlon, nailed him with a deft, vicious right on the

chin and glued him to the canvas for the nine-count. When Mr.

Scanlon staggered up there were still cobwebs in his brain.

"Are you still interested in why I didn't go into the army ?" Loadman

asked sharply.

Mr. Scanlon said no, he had no further interest.

"In case you develop one," Loadman said, slamming both hands

to the mouth and bringing forth a flow of blood, "I was sleeping with

your sister."

The re-telling of this charming episode in the hectic life of Mr.

Scanlon pleased Greb no end. For that reason, plus the added one

that Mr. Scanlon gave him good workouts in the training ring, he fre-

quently included him in his entourage.

Originally Greb had planned to train at Malame Sitky Bey's at

Summit, New Jersey. Then he remembered that the sweet old madame

had all but raised Walker, and besides Summit was too far from

Broadway. So, stocking his larder with an ample supply of girls

he had picked up in Pittsburgh and way stations en route to New

York, he pitched camp at Manhasset, Long Island, and settled down

to the simple life of (1) being the sultan in his harem and (2) trying

to shed weight. At nights he breezed into New York, coralled other

girls, moved them around rapidly on the dance floors at the Silver

Slipper, Jimmy Kelly's, etc., and usually got back to camp in time

for breakfast in the morning. This had always been his routine.

It didn't meet with the unqualified approval of his manager, but this

disturbed Greb about as much, say, as socking an opponent or getting

socked after the bell had ended the round. His optimistic faith in the

integrity of managers-and he had three different ones at odd times-

seldom got beyond the stage of permitting them to carry his luggage.

Yet for all his nocturnal activites he found time to run a few

miles on the road and work eight or ten rounds daily, always using

good, fast fresh sparring partners. In contrast to most "name"

fighters, he permitted them to extend him if they could. If they ex-

tended him on a day when he had got up on the wrong side of bed he

extended them back. Mostly, he trained with smaller men. They were

faster than bigger men. Greb was a speed merchant and he trained

for speed. More than once these little men ganged up on him after

he had ruffled their tender feathers unnecessarily and there was a riot

in the flug. But he forgave them as soon as the storm was over. Not

only that, but when a stablemate got beaten in actual combat Greb

would sometimes go gunning for his opponent and if he caught him

he would slap his ears off.

Previous to the Walker match Greb's training usually consisted of

punching the small bag a couple of minutes for rhythm, skipping

rope, playing a sizzling game of handball and maybe boxing two

or three rounds. This occupied twenty minutes of his time, which he

considered a sheer waste. (Tunney and Dempsey spent more time

than this exercising their neck muscles.) Then he would yank out his

huge address book and thumb through it for the hottest telephone

number in whatever city he was going to box in. By the time re

porters had begun to foregather to put critical eyes on him he was the

middleweight champion who wasn't there and he was taking the kind

of (horizontal) exercise that was no trial to any man. All that ninety-

eight per cent of the Fourth Estaters knew about him were the unlovely

things they saw him doing to his opponent a few nights later in Chi-

cago, Boston, Memphis or Montreal.

This was particularly true of New York. He didn't pitch camp in the

country as other champions do while surrounding themselves with press

agents, photographers, and movie starlets anxious to get their pic-

tures in the papers. Greb worked out at Philadelphia Jack O'Brien's

gymnasium deep in the heart of the Great Whiteway where there were

girlie shows whose performers would listen to reason.

Tunney visiting Harry before the Walker fight.

But now, in 1925, he was exposed to the pure Long Island air and

it was suffocating him. In other days he had fought two-three times

a week he was always in shape, alwavs ready to enter the ring against

anyone at a moment's notice without as much as limbering up in the

gymnasium. Now, up to June 5, he had worked in exactly fourteen

fights and the Walker fight, on July 2, would be his next. There aren't

fighters around today (and he was the only one then) who could stand

up under a schedule half as strenuous. The inactivity (for Greb) had

a bad effect. He was flabby and, for him, slow. He had to do something

about it so Manhasset was the answer.

Having lost practically none of his excess weight at the end of

a week of what for him was loathsome labor, he decided on a different

course. He quit eating and he drank only enough water to keep from

famishing of thirst. He got rid of the weight.

He knew Walker was going to give him a hell of a fight, but he had

no doubt who would win. Just before he climbed into the ring Mr.

Tom Bodkin, a Pittsburgh boxing promoter and referee when Greb

was coming up and now a Broadway theatrical man, asked him how he

thought he would do against Walker.

"Are you getting balmy?" Greb shot. "What the hell do you mean

how will I do against Walker?"

This wasn't the way he talked to men he loved as much as he loved

Mr. Bodkin. But he was amazed that anyone, and particularly Mr.

Bodkin, could entertain the shghtest doubt as to his chances of victory.

Gene Tunney dropped around to see Greb the morning before the

fight. He was appalled at what he saw. Greb was gaunt-eyed and so

weak from starving off weight, plus the deleterious effect of keeping

happiness in his harem, that he was trembling. He had a slight tem-

perature.

These men had fought five times and they were hard fights; Tunney

lost his 175-pound title in the first one and, though the decision was

unpopular, regained it in the next one. They were sixty-five of the

most miserable rounds of Tunney's pugilistic life and he would be the

first to admit it. But they weren't going to fight each other anymore,

and now they were friends.

No matter how Tunney felt about Mickey Walker, he couldn't help

wishing luck to his old antagonist. Men who have battered each other

as these two had don't often become the fastest of friends, They don't

lie awake nights praying for disaster to overtake the other, but there

is almost always something that rankles But it was different in their

case; they had made a lot of money together.

Tunney was too smart to tell Greb how sick he looked. Instead he

whipped out a bottle of champagne, a rare jewel in those awful prohi-

bition days.

"Drink this, Harry," he said. "It will relax you."

Greb drank it.

Then he went up to Central Park and ran twice around the reservo1r

to make sure that when he stepped on the scales an hour later at the

New York State Athletic Commission offices he would be within or

under the middleweight title poundage..

After weighing in he went to Billy Lahiff's, now Duffy's Tavern,

Inc.,and ate his first decent meal in ten days. It gave him a lift, but

he was awfully tired and he still had a temperature.

He went to his hotel and tried to sleep, but couldn't. Mr. Happy

Albacker, a quart of hootch under each arm, came in.

"Put that giggle water down," Greb said, "and gimme a rubdown."

Mr. Albacker put his hands on Greb.

"You're hot," he said.

"Sure," Greb said, "sure I'm hot. If you light a stove, it gets hot,

don't it ?"

"You got a fever?"

"Sure, and I feel lousy, but I'll be allright. Rub me down, Hap."

Mr. Albacker was something of a cross for Greb to bear, but they

were inseparable. He went to work on Greb's arms, legs and shoulders

and it worked. Greb fell asleep. When he waked half an hour later

he was somewhat rested.

At seventhirty he left for the Polo Grounds and was in his dressing

room before the opening prelminary was called into the ring.

The Mickey Walker "official" boxing match (continued)

The main bout was coming up.

Walker was the first to enter the ring. He was smiling confidently

and be got a tremendous ovation. The Toy Bulldog, they called him,

and he looked it.

Greb came in two or three minutes later. He was pale, his face

drawn, and he still carried a temperature. His handlers crowded about

him, talking fast and frantically. Everybody connected with him was

worried sick. He drew some boos, but not many. That was the way it

was with Dempsey; in the twilight of his greatness the fans forgave

him for his foul tactics and they didn't boo him so lustily.

Tunney had told Greb that morning, "It's your title that will be on

the line tonight, Harry, so make Walker enter the ring ahead of you."

If Tunney was at ringside, as he undoubtedly was, he must have been

pleased that his advice hadn't fallen on deaf ears. And he must have

been pleased that he wasn't in there against Greb, even a tired, sick

and old Greb.

The silvery-voiced Joe Humphreys, premier fight announcer of the

day, waved for silence and it took him several minutes to get it. Then

he gave the principals the benefit of his booming, flowery tongue:

"Ladies and gentlemen, for the world's middleweight champion-

ship, fifteen rounds to a decision. In this corner, the challenger, the

welterweight champion of the world, the Toy Bulldog, a Champion of

Champions, the sensational pugilist from across the river in Elizabeth,

New Jersey-Mickey Walker. The weight: One hundred and flfty-

tuh."

The cheering was deafening and it lasted so long that Humphreys

had to plead with the fans to desist until he could introduce Greb.

After several false starts, semi-quiet was restored.

"Ladies and gentlemen

The Pittsburgh contingent, which had come in on Greb Specials,

showed the New Yorkers that their boy wasn't alone in the big city.

It cut loose with enough volume to burst your eardrums.

"Puh-leese!" Humphrey begged. "Puhleese! Puh-leese ."

There were scattered fist fights among the spectators and the cops

were busy breaking them up. Those Pittsburghers were backing their

boy not only with money, but also with punches. Maybe the more con-

servative element called him a trifler back home, but he was their babY

when he crawled through the ropes and they had what was needed to

prove he was. They were bank presidents, coal-mine and steel-mill

executives, shoeshine boys, bellhops, society matrons and debutantes,

waiters, valets, whores and madames, racketeers and flotsam. Maybe

they hadn't even a nodding acquaintance in the street at home, but they

were pals when they swung onto those Greb Specials and followed Greb

to the scene of battle.

Having showed up Walker's admirers, Greb's people quieted down.

Humphreys took a deep breath. Calling Greb the world's middleweight

champion, the Invincible, the Iron City Express, the Pittsburgh Wind

mill and the Inexhaustible, he announced his weight as one hundred

and fifty-eight.

Eddie Purdy, the referee, motioned the men to the center of the

ring, instructed them, and told them to come out fighting at the bell

If ever there were two men who didn't need this admonition it was the

two up there under those strong lights with him. Both were cham-

pions, both the final word in skill and courage.

The ten-second warning bell sounded and out of the ring tumbled

the handlers. There is no place so lonely as when your seconds. leave

you during that ten-second wait between the warning and opening bell.

You're up there with a man who is hostile and who aims to hammer you

into submission. The referee is nobodv's friend. There are thousands

of people all around you, and many of them are your people, but you

are lonely as you wait for the bell that will send you into battle. You

may be killed. You hope your sins have been forgiven. You think of

everything. Then the bell rings, and you move out there, and you're

still lonely as you feel out your foe. You settle down a little. Then

you start to sweat and you are all right. The warmth returns to

your feet, you are punching smoothly and now you are as com-

fortable as when you were a little boy sitting on your mother's lap. All

you want to do is murder that bum in front of you. It is a lot of fun,

and it is remunerative fun.

Greb and Walker stood in their corners sweating out those long,

awful seconds. To those who had seen him in his earlier fights, Greb

looked like a hollow shell; for those who hadn't, he looked okay. To

everybody, Walker looked wonderful.

Greb had expected to take a dreadful beating in the early rounds.

He knew he hadn't the stamina to fight off Walker's rushes, but he

hoped to come from behind after Walker had spent himself trying to

knock him out. He knew better than anyone what woeful condition

he was in, but he had a heart that was disputive of his tired, aging and

overworked body. That heart had always said no when his legs

had said this is the end, pal.

Clang went the bell and out of their corners tore two of the greatest

chanipions who ever shuffled shoes in resin dust. For five rounds that

July night in 1925 Greb, old, slow and sick, took one of the most

frightful beatings any man has ever had to take. He was fighting

back, but his attempts were feeble, and Walker was strong and con

temptuous. As he went to his corner at the end of the fifth, his body

a mass of red welts and bruises, there were shouts of "Stop it!"

His handlers worked over him, sneaking him a slug of brandy, rub-

bing his aching legs, massaging his limp arms. He didn't look like

a champion now, but you knew about his heart and knowing about it

you didn't count him out. You winced as you contemplated what

Walker would do to him in the next round, the sixth. How in the hell

could he stand up under another round of the pounding he had just

taken? You knew he wouldn't quit, not this pug. He didn't know how

to quit. You had seen him when he was in trouble before, grave

trouble. You had seen him pile up off the floor that time in Pitts-.

burgh when Kid Norfolk had dropped him after blinding him in his

right eye. You had seen him in all those hard Tunney fights, a good

man against a good bigger man And before that you bad seen

him against the clever, hard-hitting Tommy Gibbons, and Greek

Knockout Brown, who could tear your head off with a punch. But that

was a young Greb. That Greb was no more. In his place was an old

Greb who had gone to the well once too often.

The bell rang for the sixth and what you saw you couldn't b~ieve.

Comparatively fresh, Greb jumped out of his corner, moved into

Walker and tied him up. Walker stepped back, then came in with a

two handed barrage aimed at Greb's middle. It didn't land. He tried

again and missed. He missed again and again. Then Greb ran in on

him, spun him and stepped back and hit him while he spun. He didn't

hit him once but twice, three times, four times. Jesus, did he clout him!

You settled back in your press seat. You were seeing a miracle. The

Pittsburgh Windmill was sweeping now, sweeping everything before it.

Greb had come back from the depths of despair. In a clinch he glanced

down into the press section and that glance said, "Hah! I'm gonna

knock this egg down there into your typewriter and he'll be scrambled

when he lands. How'm I doin', kid?"

As if he had been in low gear to negotiate a rough stretch in

the road, he switched suddenly to high and he dared anything to pass

him on that roped-in highway pitched beneath kueg lights. He out-

thought and out-fought Walker, as he had said he would. He dazzled

him with his speed. The works were what be was giving him and they

were the vinegar works. Walker was bleeding, an ear was torn, an eye

puffed. With Walker floundering awkwardly, Greb was putting a sour

eye on Referee Purdy, the kind of eye you wouldn't want to meet even

in broad daylight at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. He

thought Purdy was favoring Walker in the clinches. He didn't like

referees anyhow, and here was a meddlesome one, an officious man

who had better watch his step. He said something to Purdy, but you

couldn't hear what it was. You could guess, though, and your guess

was, way off, bub. Lay off me in the clinches."

The seventh round was a repetition of the sixth. As it started, one

of Greb's seconds sneaked around to the ringside seat where Mr. Happy

Albacker was sitting. He whispered something to Mr. Albacker and

Mr. Albacker looked hard to get Greb's eye. He got it. Greb smiled,

pushed Walker away and made an odd gesture with his hands. Then

with renewed vigor he belabored Mickey. He kept giving that un-

pretty eye to Purdy, who was as busy as ever in the clinches.

There was another clinch. With six legs locked in combat, you couldn't

see who was doing what to whom. Then you saw Purdy, blocked by

Greb's right leg, go down. Walker jumped over him and Greb skirted

him, chasing Walker. The bell ended the seventh as Purdy got up and

limped over and held onto the ropes.

"The bell saved the referee.", yelled Mr. Albacker, a very factual

man.

For an instant it looked as if the fight would have to be held up

until another referee could be sent in. But Purdy stuck it out. He

was limping noticeably as the eighth opened. Greb took advantage of

this. He bulled Walker all over the ring, stabbing him with punish-

ing uppercuts and cracking him in the mouth with two tireless, heavy

hands. When Purdy came close, Greb pulled Walker away. And when

Walker clinched Greb gave him plenty of stuff that is not in the

lexicon of any of the fighters around today. When Purdy, limping,

tried to reach the fighters Greb waltzed Walker away. Greb was having

a wonderful time, Walker wasn't.

Purdy, his knee improved, became active in the ninth and tenth

rounds and Greb was giving him the eye. At the end of the tenth

Humbert Fugazy hustled over to Greb's corner and cautioned him

against any untoward action.

"Lay off Purdy," said Mr. Fugazy, "or he'll throw you out of

the ring.

"If he don't lay off me," Greb snorted, "1'll stuff him down

Walker's throat."

Furdy didn't lay off in the eleventh. There was a clinch and when

all those legs separated he was in the position to which, in this fight,

he had become accustomed. Specifically, he was down again. The

score up to now was: Knockdowns-two, with Purdy the knockdownee.

"The Iron City Express is steaming tonight," said a reporter

sitting next to me. "They say he doesn't like referees."

Walker had a good eleventh, not so good twelfth, just a fair thir-

teenth. Purdy was doing the best he could, but he seemed gunshy

when he went in and tried to break up the clinches. Greb wasn't doing

much, just coasting down the mountain and enjoying the scenery.

Walker had a good fourteenth, twice staggering Greb.

Greb opened the fifteenth with a burst of speed that befuddled

Walker, who was either crying or laughing, you couldn't be sure which.

he was talking to Greb. (After the fight we were told it had been

announced on the radio that he asked Greb not to knock him out. Greb

said, "That's right. He asked me not to knock him out." Later, he said,

"No, he didn't ask me not to knock him out.")

Greb bulled Walker over the ring in that final round, but Wa1ker,

like Greb, was a champion, too. He didn't know how to quit. They were

doing everything to each other, and none of it was nice. As the bell

ended one of the roughest fights in ring history, Walker was a badly

used-up fighter. His mouth was torn and gushing blood. An ear was

ripped, and an eye puffed the size of a goose egg. Greb was tired, but

there wasn't a mark on his impish face.

Joe Humphreys raised Greb's gloved right hand.

"The winner and still champion!" he bawled, and you should have

heard those Pittsburghers break out.

Greb trotted over to Walker's corner where Mickey's seconds were

patching up the damage.

"You're a good boy, Mickey," he said, patting him on the back.

"You gimme one hell of a fight, the hardest I ever had. You don't

lose your title, and you didn't win mine, so everything's jake, eh kid?

But you shouldn'ta been so rough on the referee!"

Like a frog with a hot coal under its tail, Mr. Albacker leaped over

the two rows of seats in front of him and landed in the press section.

He proffered a drink from a flask just two gallons smaller than

Boulder Dam.

"What," I asked, "was the significance behind all those signs passing

between you and Greb in the seventh?"

"Ha, ha, ha!", and also "Ho, ho, ho'.", Mr. Albacker beamed. "You

see Greb's second come over and whisper to me?"

Anyone with half an eye couldn't have missed it.

"Greb sent him over to ask me if that doll with the grapefruit

knockers-notice how Greb, when he got my eye, moved his - hands

down over his stuckout chest to indicate what he meant -would be

waiting for him at the Silver Slipper after the fight."

I said that I figured that whatever intelligence Greb's second was

imparting to Mr. Albacker must have been of world-shaking im-

portance, but with Greb in the toughest fight of his life and only

one round after he had taken the upper hand, I couldn't imagine

what he was up to when he made those gestures.

"You know now," Mr. Albacker said, "and you know it was of

world-shaking importance. If that dame with the large bosom ain't

waiting for him at the Slipper he'll hold me responsible. He'll beat

my brains out."

Harry and Mickey Walker's infamous street fight.

Mr. Albacker took a big swig from his flask.

"Here, kid," he said, handing over the flask. "Have another horn.

Will see you at the Slipper. Will give you a good story about Greb

pulling a drunk act the night before the fight, but it ain't for pub-

lication."

Mr. Albacker hot-footed it back to his pal's dressing room. Fortu-

nately for him, the dame in question was waiting when he and Greb

arrived at the Silver Slipper. When Harry Keck and I looked in on

them a few hours later everybody, including the dame, was having

a dandy time. Mr. A. called me aside and informed me that Greb

hadn't exaggerated in his reference to the girl's large chest.

"And what's more," he said, "my pal's going to chin himself on

them tonight."

No one who saw the Greb-Walker fight twenty years ago will ever

forget it. For savagery it rivaled that knockdown-drag-out encounter

between Dempsey and Luis Angel Firpo, the Argentinian called by

Runyon the Wild Bull of the Pampas.

James Dawson, the New York Times boxing expert, said it was

a sizzler. He said Walker had displayed such courage and stamina as

had seldom been seen in any ring. "But," he added, "Greb was Greb

last night."

Greb wasn't Greb that night, but he was enough of a facsimile

thereof to whip Walker, and that was one hell of a facsimile.

Twenty years later Humbert Fugazy remembered a coincidence

following the weigh-ins at the boxing commIssion offices in the Flatiron

Building the morning before the fight. Walker had gone to a Catholic

church in Greenwich Village. After praying he had dropped in at

Fugazy's near-by offices.

"Put your bankroll on me, Humbert," he said. "I'm going to knock

that Pittsburgh Dutchman's head off tonight."

An hour or so later Greb had gone to the same church, not knowing

Walker had preceded him, and prayed. Then he went to Fugazy's

offices.

"Put your lettuce on me, kid," he said. "When I get through with

Walker tonight he'll be an Irish stew, all cut to pieces and cooked."

A thousand stories have been told about the incidents leading up to,

including, and following that clash of champions. BilIy Duffy, part

owner of what once was Billy Lahiff's but now is Duffy's Tavern, Inc.,

said Greb came into Lahiff's with two girls an hour after the fight and

took his favorite table at the right as you enter. Walker came in a few

minutes later, looking for his manager, Jack Kearns, who had been

barred from the Polo Grounds by the New York State Athletic Com-

mission.

Tavern owner Billy LaHiffe(left)- manager Jack Kearns(middle)- and Mickey with his son.

Pleasantly Walker said, "Hello, Harry. You were lucky

tonight. If it had been a twenty-rounder instead of fifteen I would

have knocked you out."

Greb, according to Duffy, said, "Go on, Mickey. I can whip you

any day of the week. Sit down and have a snort."

Mickey sat down and they sipped an ale. Then they left, arguing

about the fight, with Greb's girls. Drawing up in front of the Silver

Slipper, Greb said, "What I did to you at the Polo Grounds tonight

I can do right here in the street."

He started to take his coat off. He got it halfway off.

WaIker hit him on the chin with a short, terrific left hook," Duffy

said. "He went down, his head hitting the running board of a car.

He jumped up and they fought there in the street like two crazy

men. A cop narned Pat separated them. They went into the Silver

Slipper and took separate tables. Then they bought each other

a drink, made up and retired, the best of friends, to a hotel in the

West 70's and continued their spree.

Mr. Happy Albaeker said no, a thousand times no. Greb never went

to Lahiff's after the fight. He went to the Slipper direct from the Polo

Grounds. As he was getting out of a cab in front of the night club,

Walker got out of one right behind him.

Mr. Albacker quotes Walker as having told Greb that Greb was

lucky to win at the Polo Grounds and Greb as having said he could

do in the street what he had done in the ring.

"They squared off," Mr. Albacker said,"but someone stepped be-

tween them. No blows were struck, They went into the Slipper took

separate tables and that was the end of it."

Mr. Albacker reasoned, and plausibly, that Walker wouldn't have

dared start a street fight with Greb, the master roughhouser of them

all. "What's more", he said,"Tom Dolan, who had been in his corner,

was with him. I don't need to tell you Tom is the toughest street fighter

in Pittsburgh Tom loved Greb, adored him. If Walker had come within

his reach. Tom would have wrung his neck and he could wring any-

body's neck in a street fight."

Mr. Apples Myers, Who used to promote fights in North Braddock,

a Pittsburgh suburb said the street fight is "fiction that somebody

made up out of his mind."

Harry Keck, ye olde sports scribe, thinks likewise. "Fighting with-

out pay," he said, "is against union rules and Greb was a union

fighter."

Mr Jack White, who functioned for a time as Greb's secretary and

now promoting fights for Fritzie Zivic during Fritzies incumbency

in the army, said fiddlesticks that there was no street fight.

"After what Greb did to Walker in the ring, what do you think he

would have done to him in the street where there was no referee to

yank Greb off? Knowing how fast Greb was on the draw, can you

imagine him attempting to take his coat off when trouble was brewing.

That puts the squelch on Duffy's story."

Another who denied the street fight was Mr Tom Bodkin, a close

friend of Greb's and, as you will see in a latter passage, a man of con-

sequence.

"Greb left the Polo Grounds with Slattery, who had never stopped

crying, and bounced around to the speakeasies looking for Dave Shade.

If he had found him be would have punched him in the nose for

knocking out Slattery."

Still, the story of the street fight persists. Humbert Fugazy said

that although he didn't see it he knows from authoritative sources

that it is not, as Mr. Apples Myers said, fiction dreamed up by some

fertile mentality. And Quentin Reynolds, a man of integrity, wrote a

Collier's article about it some twelve years after it supposedly had

taken place.

I shall quote from it as soon as I've brought it up to date. Walker

is now an artist. At a fairly recent exhibition of his works, an admirer,

complementing him on a painting of the Shrewsbury river, remarked

that he was impressed with its texture.

"It has depth," he said.

"Sure It has," Mickey agreed."The Shrewsbury is a deep river."

Aside from this omission, Reynolds' article is complete. Titled Be-

tween Bites, it tells how customers at Wa1ker's bar in the shadow

of Madison Square Garden put the bite, or weep, on him not only for

money but for drinks as well. Finally, Reynolds got around to asking

him if his fight with Greb hadn't been his hardest fight.

The mike is yours, Mr. Reynolds.

"Sure" Mickey nodded, "the second fight with Greb. I think I won that

one."

Well, I had never heard of any second fight that Greb and Walker

had engaged in and I remembered too that in the record book under the

heading Mickey (Edward) Wa1ker there is just one mention of Greb.

The line reads "Lost-1925. Greb. 15," and means that Greb beat Walker

a fifteen round bout to a decision in 1925. But then Walker explained.

The first fight........

Greb was middleweight champion then, and Walker held the welter

title. Before the fight Greb was a 7 to 5 favorite but something happened

the night before to scare the gamblers. The something was this: At 2 a.m.

Murray Lewin, the fight writer,was standing in front of Lindy's restau

rant on Broadway with a group of the biggest gamblers in the country,

most of whom were wagering heavily on Greb. There were Arnold Roth-

stein and Sam Boston and his brother Meyer, and there were Mike Best

and Frankie Marlowe.

A cab drew up in front of Lindy's and out stumbled Greb. Greb waved

a drunken greeting to the gamblers and then collpased. there were two

girls with him and they helped him back into the cab . The gamblers looked

at each other, white-faced. "That's what we're betting on. hey?" Roth-

stein said Then they rushed to phones. They phoned all over the country,

betting evrything they had on Walker, whomthey knew to be in perfect

condition. They didn't figure Greb had a chance. You couldn't drink all

night then go into the ring with Walker twenty-four hours later with

out getting murdered.

The next night at the polo grounds Greb,debonair, clear-eyed, climbed

through the ropes. the gamblers were laying three to one odds against him-

and he had bet his end of the purse on himself.

"How do you feel?" a sports writer asked, looking up at him as he

sat in his corner.

"How did those gamblers like that act I put on for them last night?"

Greb laughed.

Oh, but Greb was a cutie. He knew all the angles. The fight was

fairly even until the seventh, when referee Ed Purdy sprained his ankle.

This was great for Greb's style of fighting. He kept bulling Walker away

from Purdy and he did everything to Mike but kick him in the head. The

referee, white with agony, couldn't get close enough to seperate them and

Greb in close was a murderer. But Mickey was all right too at the Pier

Eight style of milling and he was putting up a great fight until the fourteenth.

They'd Rather Fight Than Eat

They'd been slashing and powdering each other plenty, for Greb too

was a fighting man who loved to fight. Halfway through the fourteenth

Greb bulled Walker to the ropes and he threw a hard right hand. The blow

missed Mickey's chin but Greb always was one for waving a careless

thumb. The thumb dropped savagely into Mickey's right eye.

Walker snarled, "You Dutch Rat," and then Greb measured him with

a right hook. Because of the blood and the water which filled the right eye

Walker didn't see the punch coming. It landed surely and knocked Walker

out. It knocked him out and his legs were rubbery things that buckled

and acted crazily and in his head there was a roaring that grew louder

and louder, but Mickey stayed on his feet. He finished the round some

how and then Teddy Hayes threw water on him, held aynmonia under his

nose, put ice on his spine and with a few seconds left Mickey came to.

He had to go through three more torturous minutes. He stayed all

right because he had a heart that was strong and that was contemptuous

of the weakness in his legs. But they gave the decision to Greb and then

Walker went to his dressing room, He got under a cold shower and. he

stood there for a while and soon the cobwebs cleared away and he re-

membered something very. important.

Doc Keams, his manager, had been suspended by the N.Y Athletic

Commission and had been barred from entering the Polo Grounds. So

he sat at a table in Billy Lahiff's Tavern waiting anxious for Mickey to

return. Before the fight Mickey had made a date with a girl and he had told

her to meet him in the Tavern. He'd told her to sit with Kearns until

he arrived.

Walker hurried dressing. Sure, Doc Kearns was his best friend but

it would be just like Doc to try to grab his girl. More than once he'd

grabbed girls from Kearns. So Walker hurried and then he went over

to the Tavern and as he went in he saw Greb sitting there near the door.

He had to pass Greb's table to get to kearns, whom he saw far in the

back with the girl Mike had the date with. Billy Lahiff-bless his memory

stood there and he was a bit nervous. He knew Mike and he knew Greb

and he knew that they'd both rather fight than eat.

Walker looked at Greb and Greb looked back at Walker and then Greb

got up and smiled, "Sit down and have a drink, Mike," he said, sticking

out his hand.

Walker grinned through his swollen lips and he said: "Sure, Harry.

"Id love one. I been working all night and need a drink."

"You don't need one more than I do," Greb laughed. "Toughest night

I ever spent in mv life."

So he sat down and had a drink and they talked about everything but

the fight. They talked about this movie or that. And they talked about

the stock market and about how much longer Babe Ruth could last.

Jack Spooner, who has been a waiter at the Tavern for so long that

he belongs there like a table or a checkroom, brought two more and

Greb and Walker, who an hour before had been doing everything to each

other but murder, sipped their ale companionably.

Then Greb said, "Mike, I hear Billy Duffy has quite a place in that

Silver Slipper. What do you say we give it a play .?"

"That's for me," Walker said, and then they left arm in arm. They

got into a cab and went around to the Silver Slipper and then they

got out of the cab.Walker suddenly turned to greb and said, pleasantly

enough,"I just want you to know, you Dutch rat, that you wouldn't

have licked me tonight if you hadn't stuck your thumb in my eye in

the fourteenth."

Greb growled,"Why,you Irish lug,I could lick you the best day you

evr saw. Right now I'll lick you."

He Thinks He Won

Walker said to me at that point in the story, "Harry made one

mistake," Then Walker chuckled, "He started to take off his coat. I

waitted until he had it half way off and then let him have it That punch

wou1d've knocked anyone out except Greb. It was a good punch and

it dropped him and slammed his head up against a cab that was parked

there, but he got up roaring. Then we went."

They went all right. People came out of the Silver Slipper to watch.

Cabs stopped and delighted hack drivers watched the continuation

of a fight which men had paid fifteen dollars to see a short time before. Every

thing went and these two were masters of forbidden punches. Happily

joyously they gouged and backhanded and elbowed and punched and

then a burly cop roared up and laid heavy hands on them It was a cop

named Pat Casey.

"He was a real right guy, that Pat casey," Walker says now."He

knew us both and he grabbed us and threw me in one cab and Harry in

another and told the drivers to take us to our separate hotels"

Walker got back to his hotel still burned up So he ordered some ale

to cool off. He sat there and as he sipped a glass of ale a sudden thought

hit him that almost made him choke. What about Kearns? Where was Doc?

He was out somewhere with his-Mickey's-girl.

Walker grabbed the phone and started calling the night clubs. He called

every place in town. and final1y he called the Silver Slipper. Bill Duffy

then and now Walker's best friend-answered the phone.

"Doc isn'tt here, Mike," .Duffy chuckled "But there's a pal of yours

here who wants to say hello"

Walker listened and then he heard, I can lick any Irishman who

ever lived. You yellew rat, why don't you come up here now and I'll lick

you again."

Walkerr was speechless for a moment. "Greb," he screamed into the

phone, " come up here to the hotel and I'll flatten you in two minutes."

For five minutes they hurled invectives at each other. Then the door of

Mickey's room opened and Doc Kearns walked in. He caught on imme-

diately. Then he grabbed the phone.

"Listen, Greb. We'll fight you anywhere, anytime, but not in a hotel

room or a night club. We'll fight you anywhere, anytime, for fifty grand."

Then Kearns hung up.

"Where's my girl?" Walker stormed.

"She got tired of waiting for you," Doc told him cooly. "Besides she

wouldn't be seen with a common street fighter-a barroom fighter like

you."

"Why, I'll ....."

Kearns looked at him coldly "You'll get to bed before I go to work on

you. I'll give you more than Greb did tonight. Hit that hay, sucker, I got

some ice coming"

Walker beamed, "Fine, we'll have another drink."

"The ice," Kearns said, "is for your eye. I forgot to tell you your

eye is closed."

Well, that's the story of the second Greb Walker fight, the fight that

Walker thinks he won.

True or fa1se, a street fight between those two men is not out of

line with their character.

www.harrygreb.com