EXCERPTS FROM CHAPTERS 6-10

 

Chapter 6 Tom Bodkin, Entrepreneur

Chapter 7 Thunder Over Pittsburgh

Chapter 8 Sheik of Charleroi

Chapter 9 Capture of Baltimore

Chapter 10 Sign-Language Linguist

 

 

EXCERPTS FROM CHAPTERS 6-10

The fight Joe Chip knocked out Greb. page63

Jack Dempsy(sparring with Harry and avoiding a fight) pages 64

1922 fight against Tommy Gibbons. page71-76

The first Tunney fight. page76-80

Greb's womanizing...before a fight-82-83

The second Tunney fight. pages 85-86

Tunney's versions of the 5 fights. pages 94-96

Harry's concern for his looks and his nose. page 95

The fighting Zivics on Greb-pages 107-113

Greb's womanizing...before a fight-113

Didn't like to be known as "the guy who beat Tunney"page 115

Greb's womanizing...in an elevator-page 126

Jack Dempsy(sparring with Harry and avoiding a fight) 127-128

 

 

 

The fight Joe Chip knocked out Greb.

Greb was knocked out by Joe Chip in an early professional start in

Pittsburgh. He was still on his feet, but he was desperately hurt and

Tom Bodkin, who promoted and refereed the fight, stopped it. In-

stead of offering (as most fighters would) the lame excuse that he

would have turned the tables if he had been permitted to continue,

Greb was grateful. When his head had cleared he told Bodkin, "One

more hard punch might'a ruined me. I won't forget. Tanx, pal."

 

 

Jack Dempsy(sparring with Harry and avoiding a fight)

Next, he'll run roughshod over Dempsey for

the heavyweight crown. (They never fought officialy, but unofflciallv

they did-in the training ring and Dempsey did so badly that when

Promoter Charley Murray tried to match them, Jack Kearns, Demp-

sey's manager, said, "No, thanks. We want no traffic with that Seven-

Year Itch.")

 

1922 fight against Tommy Gibbons.

Two or three years later, or in 1922 Tex Rickard was casting

around for an opponent to throw at Gene Tunney, then American

light-heaveyweight champion. There were two outstanding men-one a

knockout artist, the other a consistent winner with more color than a

rainbow. Tunney preferred the latter, feeling the former was too dan-

gerous for him at that stage of his career. Rickard, who had learned

about color as proprietor of a saloon in the Klondike, decided to let the

two prospects fight it out, the winner to meet Tunney for the title.

So he matched them for old Madison Square Garden.

Presenting, in this corner, Tommy Gibbons of St. Paul. And in this

corner, Harry Greb of-well, call it Paradise Beneath the Smoke-

stack.

Before turning them loose, there are a few sidelights that need to

be touched upon, not the least of which is the matter of the Greb

Specials. A slew of them, origin Pittsburgh, chugged into Penn Station

the morning before the fight. Some of the passengers aboard one of

them were not fight fans and they made no bones about it. Conceive

of anything as unforgivable as non-fight fans riding on a Greb Spe-

cial! A number of the fans couldn't. They looked Upon it as sacrilege.

And someplace along the rout this was during prohibition, but there

was more whisky then than now-a number of these high-feathered

fans took steps to inconvenience the by-then sleeping non-fight fans.

A report on their activities was turned in by the Pullman conductor at

Newark and when their train reached New York twenty minutes later,

railroad detectives nabbed numerous of the Specialites.

A spokesman was permitted to phone Greb, who piled out of bed and

raced to the aid of his townsmen. What had his people done to bring

down upon their noble domes the heavy and righteous hand of the law?

"Just having some innocent fun," one of them said.

"Innocent fun, my ass!" growled a railroad bull. "You guys throwed

the shoes of them passengers (non-fight fans) out of the sleeping car

Another bull cut in.

"And they switched the shoes of other passengers (non-fight fans),

giving some of them two left shoes and others two right shoes."

Greb admitted that his was slightly on the prankish side, March in

New York hardly being barefoot weather, but he said he would

straighten things out if the detectives would take him to the cars where

the non-fight fans were marooned, waiting to be shod. They took him.

He pleaded forgiveness of his pals on the ground that they had par

taken of too much prohibition giggle water.

"If you'll drop all charges," he said, looking his sweetest, "I'll have

a shoe store deliver new shoes and I'll pay for them."

The non-fight fans agreed that this was equable and they dropped

charges. After arranging for the shoes to be delivered, Greb and his

prankish pals went their separate, mirthful ways. In route to his suite

at the Pennsylvania Hotel, he said he hoped they would keep out of

further mischief until after the fight.

"Me and Eddie Deasy was up late last night and I can handle some

rest," he said. (Eddie Deasy had bet on Greb almost from his first

professional fight. Greb always bet on himself, too, and fleasy took

those bets for him and put them down with the gamblers.)

Interjected a friend, "Harry, you're the only famous fighter in the

business who doesn't surround himself with a large, forbidding body-

guard before a fight, cutting off all outside communication. Dempsey

does it. So does Tunney. Look at you You're bleary-eyed from loss of

sleep. In a few hours you'll be in there with a guy who hates your guts,

a guy who is bigger than you and who, if he wins tonight, will get a

crack at Tunney's title. Why don't you shut off all telephone calls and

post cops outside your door?"

Greb glanced around slyly.

"And have some skirt try to get me and can't "

"It would be one hell of a sacrifice," the friend said, "but it might be

worth making for a few hours."

"Maybe so, but if you think I'm gonna make it, you're crazy."

There was every reason why he should have made it. Gibbons was a

vastly improved fighter over the one he had whipped in the rain in

Pittsburgh. Rugged, fast, confident, smart, he was a masterful boxer.

He and Greb started boxing the same year-1913-but he hadn't

subjected his body to anything approximating the punishment Greb

had. He had two good eyes, too. Greb had only one and its sight had

begun to dim. More, Greb was outweighed seven and one-half pounds

(Greb 163 1/2, Gibbons 171), and he was on the short end of two-to-one

betting.

Back at the hotel there was not the quiet he had hoped for. His

suite was crowded with hero-worshippers, bootleggers and pugs past

their prime and the atmosphere was chunky with small talk. One old

war-horse said, "You're gonna flatten him tonight, ain'tcha kid?"

"How many times did Dempsey flatten you?" Greb mumbled, in

ferring that the war-horse had flopped to the Manassa Mauler. Greb

handed him a ten-dollar bill and tied him, not too abruptly, to blow.

Downstairs in the lobby Pittsburgh gamblers, who had come over to

back him, were heaving chairs at the New York coterie who had re

fused to cover on the betting odds. Someone phoned Greb, who rushed

down in his dressing gown. By then the lobby was a shambles, Pitts-

burgh vs. New York, with some of the boys slinging furniture from

the mezzanine, Greb jumped up On a reading table and with a rapid-

fire assortment of epithets brought about peace and contentment. A

few hours later he was In the ring with the man who only recently had

knocked out twenty-one of twenty-three opponents and two years

later went fifteen rounds with Dempsey beneath a broiling sun in

Montana's biggest fistic financial fiasco.

Tommy Gibbons

 

First of the Milk Fund fights sponsored by Mrs. william Randolph

Hearst, the Garden resembled opening night at the Met. Mr. and Mrs.

Vincent Astor came in with Mr. and Mrs: Kermit Roosevelt and occu-

pied Box 42. The William K. Vanderbilts II took another box. W

Rhinelander Stewart and some of the Dukes were there. Even Joe

Humphreys, the announcer, was in tails. Some of the reporters yelled

"Hello, Josephus"; plain Joe was out of keeping with his finery.

It was the first time in my day that society had turned out for a

prizefight. It was a novelty. There was a lot of twittering in the press

section as flossier of the old frumps, sitting in far-away boxes and

looking very humphish, turned their opera glasses on the preliminary

fighters and then coyly looked around to see if they were being noticed.

For the most part the remarks that followed the twitters were too

ribald for inclusion even in the life story of Harry Greb.

When the Messrs. Greb and Gibbons pranced into their corners and

the fight fans set up the usual pandemonium that precedes the main

attraction, the press section glanced around the arena to see what the

blue bloods were doing. The blue bloods weren't doing anything but

looking down their lorgnettes, unaccustomed as they were to shouts of

"Give it to him in the breadbasket !", "Sock him on the potato!", etc.

Humphreys introduced fighters who would appear in the same

at future dates and then be introduced Tunney, calling him the Pride

of Greenwich Village. He said Tunney would box the winner of the

stellar attraction at a date to be announced later.

 

The bell rang and out of their corners wheeled Greb and Gibbons,

disrespect in their eyes, fury in their hearts, murder in their fists. It

was New York's first view of them and it watched amazed while at

intervals first one and then the other stepped back and spat out blood

and/or teeth. The fight was featured by rough tactics, at which Greb

was the aggressor and the more adept.

Tunney had said he wanted to box Greb because Gibbons, an almost

technically perfect boxer as well as a knock out artist, was too experi-

enced for him. He sat in a ringside seat, not missing a thing up there

under those strong lights, and his face was somber as Greb larruped

Gibbons with Jarring blows from every angle and bullied him around

the ring. They were talking in the clinches. I couldn't hear what they

were saying, but of one thing I was sure; they weren't chanting a

lullaby or repeating the Sermon on the Mount. I couldn't help notice

the disapproving nods that passed between some of the stiffer old dolls

of the Social Register.

It was a hard, mean fight. It was one-sided, with Greb winning

twelve of the fifteen rounds, but it was vicious and frightening. Gib-

bons had entered the ring such a heavy favorite that not even the

Pittsburgh millions could knock down the odds,which in some quarters

were as high as four to one. He fought hard to justify those odds. But

Greb fought harder to ridicule them. He had bet his share of the

purse, $l7,5OO, on himself to win. That was the way he had always

bet and that was why those Pittsburgh millions rode on his nose. When

that impish gentleman poked his head through the ropes, he was mind-

ful of his backers and his heart said no to anything short of victory.

Eddie Deasy looked up as Greb stood in his corner waiting for

Humphreys to collect the verdicts of the judges and referee.

"Tommy couldn't even hit you here," said Mr. Deasy, slapping his

behind with a heavy, resounding hand.

"I didn't turn it around for him," Greb said.

The New York Times covered the fight more from the social than

boxing angle. The lead said Greb had won in something of an upset.

 

The first Tunney fight.

Greb played a return engagement at the old Garden a few months

later and this time he was shooting at Tunney's American 175-pound

title. The betting was fairly even, but before ring-time Greb was the

two-to-one favorite. Plenty of those Greb Specials had rattled in from

Pittsburgh and their financial weight had asserted itself.

Greb was not much for making pre-fight statements. He would make

them to his friends and he wouldn't hedge if he had been wrong, but he

didn't believe in expressing himself publically. He made an exception

this time, however, allowing that he would lift Tunney's title and

punch him full of holes in the process. New York gamblers suddenly

remembered what he had done to the highly touted Gibbons and they

took him at his word.

For this fight he came in at 162 1/4 against 174 1/2 for Tunney. His

frame was beginning to creak under the strain of nine years of savage

ring warfare mostly against opponents who outweighed him from

twenty to fifty pounds, and the sight in his good eye was getting

dimmer. An even worse handicap was the whispered threat that he

would he thrown out of the ring if he roughed Tunney as he had

Gibbons.

Tunney, on the other hand, was young and strong and coming

along. He had seen Greb fight and he thought he had what if took to

bring him down-patience, and a right jolt to the heart, which he

practiced assiduousIy in the training ring. It was sound logic, but he

never got a chance to use it against the wily Greb, who, before the

clang of the gong had died in the opening round, rushed him to close

quarters and upset his plans.

It was one of the bloodiest and most one-sided championship fights

ever seen in the professional ring. Save for the third, fourth and

seventh rounds, in which Tunney held his own, Greb couldn't have

won more decisively if he had knocked him out a dozen times. With the

first flurry of punches, delivered before the bout was twenty seconds

old, he broke Tunney's nose in two places. A moment later Tunney's

face was drenched in blood and, fed by a long, ugly gash which Greb

opened above his left eye, it remained that way throughout the fight.

Greb's gloves were soggy from slushing in the blood. The blood and

sweat, like grease, were deflecting his punches, He would step back

and hold out his gloves and blood-bespattered Kid McPartland, the

referee, would wipe them off with a towel.

Tunney fought back gamely, doggedly moving forward. He

wouldn't quit. He was a champion and the kind of champion he was

doesn't know how to quit. Greb would rain a fusillade of blows against

his face, down which blood cascaded, then push him away and ask

McPartland, "Wanna stop it?" McPartland would ask Tunney how

about it and Tunney would say, "Don't you stop it" sometimes, when

his throat was clogged with blood and he couldn't talk, he would shake

his head no. Greb would leap in and resume the carnage. He would

slam Tunney into the ropes and smash him with knife-sharp blows to

body and head, and it was awful to watch. In almost every one of

those frightful rounds he would either push Tunney away or move

away himself and hold his blood-soaked gloves out. McPartland would

wipe them off -the must have used half a dozen towels-and Greb

would say, "Wanna stop it?" McPartland would look at Tunney and

Tunney would say, "Don't you stop it." McPartland would shake his

head futilely, as much as to say, "If this man doesn't know when he's

whipped, it's not for me to interfere." Then he would move from

between the fighters and Greb would leap to the attack. His fists,

like leather-encased bludgeons, would thud against Tunney's face,

down which streamed blood not only from his left but from another

gash above his right eye, and McPartland, whose clothes were blood-

caked, would duck to avoid further splashing.

Weak from the killing, relentless pace, Tunney would wipe with

his forearms the blood that was blinding his eyes as it flowed into them

from those open wounds, stumble Into the ropes, and paw weakly at his

tormenter with arms that were heavy, aching, leaden things. He smiled,

too. It was a tired, half smile-the smile his fellow Marines flashed as

their Jap captors kicked them and clubbed them on that bestial Death

March of Bataan but it was disdainful and it said, "I'm the cham-

pion and if you want my title you'll have to fight me until I'm incapa-

ble of defending it."

No one knew better than Greb what Tunney was thinking. He knew

he would not surrender until he could no longer stand, and as long as

he could do this he could hold his hands up, if only in semblance of

protection. If a title had not rested on this decision McPartiand would

surely have stopped the uneven contest. But a referee with a heart will

think hard when a champion is unflinchingly taking a beating and

pleading with him not to interfere.

There was no other course for Greb than to try to pummel Tunney

into submission, or, failing this, to beat him so thoroughly as to leave

no doubt in the minds of boxing officials who had won. So when Tun-

ney staggered into the ropes Greb went close and pounded him until

he had to retreat or be obliterated. Following one of these maneuvers

Whitey Bimstein, who later was to second Greb against Tunney and

then Tunney against Greb, slipped into the press section. He had

seconded a boy in an easy preliminary and now he was a a spectator.

"Cute," he said of Greb's work in close, "awful cute." (Cute is ring

parlance for a very wise owl, one who knows everything and never

fails to press an advantage.)

At the end of fifteen brutal, terrifying rounds Greb gave Tunney

over to his handlers, a bleeding, helpless hulk, and loped off with his

title. Staggering uncertainly, Tunney mumbled through swollen lips,

"Well, Harry, you were the better man tonight."

"Won the championship," Greb said crisply as one of his men lissed

him on his unmarked countenance and dragged him away.

Half blind, sick, his body bruised from ceaseless battering, his face

a pulpy mask, Tunney stumbled toward his dressing room, blood drip-

ping off his face onto his chest. He colIapsed before he got there and

his handlers carried him the rest of the way. The moment supporting

hands left him, he fell back with a thud, the back of his head striking

the rubbing table.

"Nature surrendered," he said.

Greb, fresh as a frisky colt, hustled uptown, rented a night-club

orchestra and danced until the musicians fell asleep.

Though nature surrendered, Tunney's heart didn't. He had taken

the worst, the most sustained, beating I ever saw in any ring, yet as he

lay on the rubbing table, in complete control of his mental faculties

but too weak to sit up, he was recalling the fight from first to final

gong He wasn't discouraged.

"I discovered through the early part of the fight that I could whip

Greb," he said. "As each round went by, battered and pummeled

from post to post as I was, this discovery gradually became a positive

certainty."

It was Tunney's first and only defeat-Tunney who four years

1ater was to startle the world by dethroning the mighty and supposedly

invincible Dempsey and to prove, a year later, that it was no accident

by picking himself up off the floor in their return match that night in

Chicago's controversial and forever-to-be-discussed Battle of the Long

Count.

Greb's womanizing...before a fight

Ringtime was approaching. It was time to bandage his

hands. Greb sent one of his handlers into his opponent's adjoining

dressing room and his opponent returned the compliment. It is a

routine function. Each fighter's observer watches the hand taping to

make sure no more tape is used than had been agreed upon and that

beneath it is no plaster of Paris or other foreign substance calculated,

upon contact with head or face, to do the features no particular good.

These men hang around until the fighters go into the ring and it is

common practice for them to put the eye on you -sometimes a hexing

eye. Very often they take advantage of their mission to call you low

names, the idea being to irritate you to a point that when you pile into

the ring you are easy prey for their employer. These tactics were used

on Greb just once. I saw the tactician not long ago and he ran scream-

ing up Broadway at mention of Greb's name.

Greb was sitting on a stool, holding one end of the tape between his

teeth. With the roll in his right hand, he was bandaging the spread out

fingers of his left. There was a knock on the door leading to the arena.

He dropped the tape and it unwound across the floor as he ran over

and opened the door. In strode two ladies. Before anyone realized what

was happening, he had herded his handlers and his opponent's observer

into the opposition's dressing room and locked the door. While Mr.

Albacker pounded frantically and emitted hysterical pleas for him to

desist, he was enjoying life for which nature had so lavishly endowed

him. When it was all over, he complimented the ladies on their finesse,

paid them, told them that Hollywood scouts would sure as hell nab

them, and sent them on their way. Then he unlocked the door to the

adjoining dressing room and bandaged his hands for all to see.

His opponent had lost no time during these shenanigans. He bet all

the money he had with him and all he could borrow on himself to win.

"Not even Greb can get away with that stuff and beat me," he said,

aware of the deleterious effect of this sort of extracurricular activity.

It was a ten-round fight. Greb was never more glorious.

 

The second Tunney fight

The second Greb-Tunney fight was one of the most bitterly fought

contests since the then-recent legalization of boxing in New York

state. Greb was doing everything to Tunney, who was handling the

situation commendably. Among other fouls-and he was steeped in

every one in the book-he was using his thumbs which, on their way to

Tunney's eyes, resembled a leader duck in flight. From the sixth

through the eleventh round he gave him fits, worrying him with a

relentless, baffling attack, plunging at him, harrying him with an

unorthodoxy such as the brilliant, analytical Tunney was at a loss to

solve. So flagrantly did he violate the rules that Patsy Haley, the

referee, stepped between them in the eighth and told Greb to behave or

else. Greb told him to kiss his ass They stood there fuming at each

other while Tunney moved back and caught his breath. At the end of

the twelfth Haley followed Greb to his corner and threatened him with

disqualificahon.

Turning his back to Haley, Greb said to Red Mason, "Did'ja hear

what this two-bit pimp said about heavin' me out'a the ring? I'll turn

him inside out if he tries it."

Meanwhile, the boos by the New Yorkers and the answering boos by

the Pittsburghers were deafening. One reporter said, "If I get out of

here without falling apart I'll never cover another Greb fight. I can't

stand the excitement." A colleague had his head under the ring and

was peering at the glut of wires. When I asked him what he was look-

ing for he said, "A safer place to squat in case the booers get out of

hand."

Mason's performance as a second was almost as revealing as was

Greb's while fighting. As a round was about to end he took an enor

mous swig from the water bottle and held it in ballooned cheeks that

made him look like an ogre. When the round ended he jumped into the

ring and went pfuff, squirting Greb in the face and half strangling

him. Sometimes Greb tried to duck, but it was no use. Mason was a

Dead-Eye Dick, Human water hose with a Norden bomb sight.

Tunney got the decision of the referee and one of the two judges at

the end of fifteen vicious, bruising rounds, regaining the American

light-heavyweight title. Hell broke loose between New York's anti-

Greb and Pittsburgh's pro-Greb element. There were no deaths, but

the way noggins were being concked there should have been.

Leaving the ring, unmarked but tired, Greb wasn't even accorded by

the New Yorkers the reception with which they usually greet fallen

champions. I thought he had won, and Tunney said "No one was as

surprised as I was when Joe Humphreys lifted my hand in token of

victory." William Muldoon, then chairman of the New York State

Athletic Commission, was even more surprised. "The decision in Tun-

ney's favor," he said, "was unjustifiable." There was talk of a reversal,

but Muldoon stood by the decision of his subordinates.

Greb was mad as a hornet but, after castigating Haley and the

judges, he took it philosophically, lauded Tunney on his courage and

improvement and went out and had a good time. His wife, Mildred,

semi-invalided from tuberculosis, died a short time later and friends

said worry over the loss of his title had hastened the end.

Greb felt so good wearing a pugilistic crown, and it fitted his regal

head so perfectly, that he stepped out and plucked himself off another

one, the middleweight. To withhold the circumstances under which he

got the fight that made him twice a champion would be an unpardon-

able omission.

 

Tunney's versions of the 5 fights.

Here, then, is Gene Tunney writing about his five bitter Greb fights

in his book Arms For Living, published a few years ago.

"Few human beings have fought each other more savagely or more

often than Harry Greb and I. We punched and cut and bruised each

other in a series of bouts, five of them. The first of the five is for me

an enduiing memory, a memory still terrifying.

"I was in bad shape for the bout. This was in the time when my

bands were chronically ailing with imperfectly mended fractures, sore

and swollen. In my dressing room before going into the ring novo-

caine was shot into them to deaden the pain that would ensue upon

striking blows. Moreover, I had above my left eye a half-healed cut

sustained in training. Adrenalin chloride was injected into the eye-

brow to prevent the cut from bleeding too much if reopened by Greb's

punches. Then the bout started and the nightmare began....

"In the first exchange of the fight, I sustained a double fracture

of the nose which bled continually.... Toward the end of the first

round, my left eyebrow was laid open four inches. In the third another

cut over the right eye left me looking through a red film. For the better

part of twelve rounds I saw a red phantomlike form dancing before

me.

"It is impossible to describe the bloodiness of this fight. How I ever

survived the thirteenth, foureenth and fifteenth rounds is still a mys

tery to me.

"All five of our fights were of that order of savagery. My showing

became better from one to another and in the last bout I beat Harry

about as badly as he had beaten me in the first. The ferocity of the

hammering Greb took is indicated by a remark he made toward the

end. In a clinch he said, `Gene, don't knock me out"

"That from Harry Greb was monumental. No one was gamer. Pain

and punches meant nothing. to him-the cruel mauling; the bruising

punishment. But Harry, hopelessly beaten, didn't want the folks back

home to read that he had been knocked out. I was never paid a higher

tribute. Here was one of the gamest and greatest fighters of all time

laying down his shield, admitting defeat and knowing that I would

not expose him.

"Harry was bitter about one fight, our fourth. I won the decision,

and this enraged him. He was sure he had beaten me, felt to the depth

of his soul that he had been the victor. It was a newspaper decision

affair of the period, sports writers giving the verdict in their stories.

Regis Welsh of the Pittsburgh Post was one of Greb's best friends. In

his account of the battle, he gave the decision to me. He put my photo

on the front page with the caption `Too much for our boy.'

"All the bitterness the battle had stirred in Greb was directed not

against me, not against the antagonist who had been in there hitting

him, but against his newspaper friends who had merely typed a few

keys on a typewriter. He didn't resent the physical pain of being mur

dered; he resented losing unjustIy, as he thought. His sense of right

was touched, and his vanity. He and I remained the best of friends,

with never the slightest bit of anger or ill will.

"I like to recall the attitude of Harry Greb. Harry was refreshing.

In the savage battles we had fought I had gained his respect. When

told that I read books, Greb replied, "You're crazy." He simply

wouldn't believe it, and that's all there was to it-'You're crazy!"

 

Harry's concern for his looks and his nose.

"Greb was curiously secretive in pride, oddly vain. He was con

cerned about his looks. Strange that anyone so careful of his face

should have selected prizefighting for a profession. When tough Harry

Greb went to one of the roughhouse, slugging brawls for which he was

famous, he took with him not merely his pugilistic equipment, trunks,

bathrobe, ring shoes Invariably he carried along a comb and brush,

mirror, and-marvel at it-a powder puff! Going into the ferocious

fracas, he always had his hair plastered down with stickum. This was

one of the strangest eccentncities I ever observed in the realm where

fists thud into the human visage.

"Harry Greb's vanity about his looks cost him his life. Retiring

from the ring with a substantial and hard-earned fortune, his first

concern was his nose, flat and shapeless from countless punches and

repeated fractures. Like an aging society beauty, he resorted to plastic

surgery. He died on the operating table while his nose was being made

shapely.

 

The fighting Zivics on Greb

"Greb was that kind of fighter," he said. "The cards were stacked

against him the night he fought Al McCoy here at the old Exposition

Bu~ding at the Point. McCoy brought his own referee. Greb's ~an

ager tried to nix this deal, but Greb wouldn't let him. Long before the

fight was over Greb was fighting both McCoy and his private referee

and he sent them to the cleaners. He was a fury fighter who never let

you down and that's why we'll never forget him."

Solidly slung together was a squat man who said he wag a truck

driver.

"I never see nothin' like Greb. He wag a tom-cat. Before a fight,

when other fighters was takin' it easy, he was bustin' `round with the

petticoats, and. after a fight it was the same thing. Christ, that guy

had mo~e ~uice in one ~night than I got in a month 0' Sundays, and

me I'm healthy like a bull." He pounded his chest rapturously, and his

woman companion said there was no doubt about it, he was healthy.

A bus driver had gone to school with Greb and grown up with him.

"His only weakne~s," he said, "was girls, and I'm weak. that. way but

not as capable. I saw him in all his fights here. When I see a ring I

can't help but think he will climi~ up there and lambast the daylights

out of somebody, but I know he's not going to, so I haven't gone to

no more than two fights since Harr~ died."

A precise, smallish old man well versed in fistic term~ had known

Greb all his life. He saw him fight Ted (Kid) Graves, clever welter-

weight champion, in the Power House, Pittsburgh, early in his career.

"Harry broke his left forearm in the first round, but won the second

before he had to quit in his corner. When he took his arm out of the

splint it was ~ust enough crooked to turn an ordinary jab into a half-

hook. Harry said `It was one of the best breaks of my career."'

Everywhere We went there was comp]ete agreement an these points;

Greb would rather do either of two things than eat and one of them

was fight.

 

Little more than a stone's throw from Garfield is Lawrenceville,

home of the five fighting Zivics. Two of them, Pete and Jack, were

contemporaneous with Greb. There has been a Zivic in the ring for the

last twenty-five years. Fritzie was the most successful. In 1940 he de-

throned Henry Armstrong for the world's welterweight crown, last of

the three titles simultaneously held by that slam-bang Negro from

California, Henry thought it was an accident, or that the boxing

officials were blind, or that he had had an off night. Would Fritzie

give him a return bout?

"Any time, Henry," Fritzie said as he hopped a train for Wash-

ington, where, in his first public statement since zooming into inter-

national prominence, he practically assured Wendell Wulkie's e]ection

by+putting his 14~ pounds of ruggedness squarely behind him. Re-

turning to Pittsburgh, he was presented with a tuxedo, made a mem-

ber of the Dapper Dans, and feted as only Pittsburgh knows how to

fete its heroes. Three days later he went to the gymnasium for his

first workout since winning the title and one newspaper noted that he

arrived in the tuxedo, reluctant to exchange it for boxing trunks.

Presently he was back in the Garden with Armstrong.

Without equivocation, he promised "I'll knock him out in the

twelth." And he knocked him out in the twelfth. Ove'r the radio, his

words choppy and fast, he said "Hello, my friends in Pittsburgh."

Then he singled out his brother. Pete, proprietor of a saloon in Law-

renceville. "Hey, Pete, give everybody in the house a drink on me."

Pete phoned local newspapers the next day.

"Fritzie," he said with brothefly annoyance, "ain't paid for all the~n

drinks he told me to give the customers the night he won Armstrong's

title. Put that in the paper and oblige."

With the Zivics, Cuddy DeMarco is on friendly terms, but of the

five he know's Jack best. Twice they fought and twice he whipped Jack.

"So-o-o," Cuddy said as we pulled out of Garfield, "let's trundle

over to Saint Peter's saloon in Lawrenceville. The Zivics knew Greb,

and so did most of their customers."

(left to right)- Joe, Fritzie, Eddie, Jack, and Pete

 

For years, through Harry Keck's breezy Sun-Telegraph column, I

kept abreast of doings at Pete's saloon. And via other sources I had

got drink-by-drink-sometimes blow-by-blow-descriptions of other

doings which, probably because of the paper shortage, escaped the

prints.

A sign on the side of the building in Butler Street reads:

 

Lousy Liquor

Bum Beer

Worse Wine

Fithy Food

 

Inside, hanging from the top of the bar mirror, another sign reads:

 

Pete, Oldest and Smallest

But Smartest Zivic

Sports Arguments

Settled

 

Someone yelled, "There's little Cuddy DeMarco, Greb's old stable-

mate. Gees, was he hot! Him and Greb was the hottest Pittsburgh ever

turn out."

Almost everybody in the saloon had either been in the ring or as-

sociated with it. There was a hush as admirers gathered around the

once Great Little Man, first one and then another firing questions.

Cuddy answered them with grace and finality. Then he inched over to

the bar behind which was Pete Zivic. Wearing a sports jacket more

brilliant than an Arizona sunset and nonchallantly twirling his smoke-

less long-stemmed Dunhill, Cuddy said, "Good evening, Mr. Physic."

"Evenin' Cuddles;" said Pete, who with bis brother Jack was on the

American Olympie boxing team in 1920 and who, with Jack (they

were, respectively, a bantamweight and welterweight), went far after

turning professional.

Petes wife, Katherine, twice his size, said in an off-hand way,

"How'dy Cuddles. I want to see you before you leave. Want to order

some stuff."

Cuddy's right hand swept majestically and instinctively to his

chest as, bowing low, he said, "But defenite1y, old deah."

"Don't forget," Katherine said.

"Righto, my precious dumpling."

An ex-pug sided up.

"Would Billy Conn whip Greb?"

"Charley," Cuddy said, "you know better than ask a question like

that. Billy is one of the greatest boxers I ever saw. I think he'll whip

Louis next summer. But who can say what he would have done against

Greb ?" He fumbled for a match, got it, and puffed hard on his pipe.

"If you're interested in something about which I can be definite, let

me tell you this: Greb was the greatest fighter of his time -greater

than Dempsey, Tunney, Mickey Walker-and they were three of our

greatest champions."

"A toast to Harry Greb," Pete Zivic said, holding up a glass of

beer. "You didn't have to see him fight to know he was a champion.

All you had to do was watch him scurry into the ring."

After several drinks the novelty of Cuddy's presence had worn off.

An obnoxious little man said, you didn't whip Tommy Passifume."

Pete Zivic yelled from the end of the bar "I whipped Passifume."

"So did I." Cuddy said.

"Like hell you did." The obnoxious man moved close, his eyes slits

of meanness. He put his guard half-way up, but wisely reconsidered.

Cuddy just stood there, smiling and puffing on his pipe. He didn't

even bother to remove his tortoise rimmed glasses, much less put his

hands up, but he was in position to duck a blow and to counter with

one of his own.

"Who is the ill-mannered man?" I asked.

"Never got out of the amateurs," Cuddy said.

Cuddy moved over to the bar and motioned for Pete to come closer.

Pete had a tray of beer on his arm. He put it down and leaned over.

"I understand," Cuddy said as confidentially as if imparting the

atomic bomb secret, "that you are a man of little sexual consequence."

"Ditto to you, and also likewise." Pete laughed, pleased with his

snappy rejoiner. He looked down the bar, "Jack's down there, see

him.?"

Jack Zivic was one of the hardest hitters in the ring. He looked no

more than three or four years older than the night he flabbergasted

pugilism by knocking out Lew Tendler twenty years ago.

"I feel swell," he said, "but my voice has gone back on me. It was

all right until a few years ago. Now if I talk more than five minutes

it fades to a whisper." It happens to many boxers, usually some years

after retirement. It takes a long time for those punches to catch up

with you, but when they do they come with startling suddenness.

Jack grew up practically around the corner from Greb's home and

saw him in most of his big fights. "Toughest, smartest and most dur-

able fighter I ever saw," he whispered "You hear people saying Joe

Louis would have whipped him. Well, I'll wager Fritzie's last dollar

he wouldn't even have come close. Nobody ever fought that windmill

without taking a hell of a pasting."

Fritzie, last of the Zivics in the ring, was fighting Cowboy Reuben

Shanks at the Pirates' ball park the next night. Greb had fought there

innumerable times, and so had Cuddy, Jack and Pete. Cuddy took

Katherine's order-a mop, window screens, bathroom accessories, etc.

-and we left.

In the cab en route to the ball park the next evening Chris Dundee,

Shanks' manager, said he hoped Fritzie would keep his thumbs out of

Shanks' eyes. "He's mighty careless with his thumbs," Dundee said.

"I always get a fair shake in Pittsburgh, but Fritzie's a pet here and

the referee's likely to get fits of blindness."

The day before, Fritzie, who talks faster than Tallulah Bankhead,

had disorganized Harry Keck's sports department as he bounced from

desk to desk demonstrating punches on members of the overworked

staff. He talked about his first fight with Shanks. "It was in Minneapolis,"

he said.. "One of Slanks' men came into my dressing room and said,

"Take it easy with the Cowboy tonight, Fritzie. Go ahead and beat him

if you can, but don't dissect him. He's only a baby.'"

Fritzie smacked his lips. "Only a baby! But what a tough baby! I

went into the ring with the wrong attitude and he out-galloped me. I'll

fix him tomorrow night, wait and see."

Out at Forbes Field the next evening, sitting at ringside with

Cuddy, it seemed almost disrespectful. Greb had turned in some of his

most brilliant fights there in an atmosphere so tense that fans were

brawling all around the arena, with the customarily nonplussed re-

porters, handlers and park flunkies yelling like wild men. Now, nearly

thirty years later, here was Pittsburgh's most exciting fighter since

Greb, but the park was half empty and there were no brawls and

little fuss. When Greb was up there under those lights he was in corn-

plete command of everyone's attention. By contrast, here was the most

colorful fighter in the ring today and the fans, for all the emotion they

showed, might as well have been watching a sparrow fight.

Cuddy and Harry Keck and most of the other ringside experts

thought Fritzie had won, but Shanks got the decision. Back in the

huge dressing room shared by both fighters, Shanks was pacing back

and forth and trying to rub the swelling out of his cheek bone. Monk

Ketchel, Fritzie's pal, was storming about the decision and threaten-

ing to punch anyone who disagreed with him. Looking at Shanks from

across the room, he said, "All you have to do to win in Pittsburgh is

to be from out of town." Shanks glanced over, but said nothing.

Fritzie, who accepts defeat as gracefully as he does victory, wasn't

saying anything. He knew he had won, and he expected a victor's re-

ward, but it hadn't come out that way and he didn't give a damn. Art

Hardy, a local Negro boxer, had been stopped by a low blow- in a pre-

liminary that followed the main bout. Naked on a rubbing table, he

was in terrible pain. Bill Joos, who used to work in Greb's corner and

currentlY is Billy Conn's Pittsburgh trainer, stood around with a for-

lorn look on his face. He must have been thinking my and Cuddy's

thoughts "If Harry had been out there tonight there would be so

God-damned much excitement in here it would take a hundred cops

to keep the boys from getting out of hand."

Cuddy and I walked out with Fritzie.

"Greb boxed Tunney three times, didn't he?" Fritzie said.

"Five," Cuddy said. "Five murderous fights, with neither asking

quarter, no holds barred."

"I was just a little shaver when Greb died," Fritzie said.. "I saw

him once, but I was too young to remember what he looked like. Every

body says he was terrific. They say it in San Francisco, in New Or

leans, in Denver, in Chicago, in Milwaukee, in Boston, in New York,

in Philadelphia everywhere I've fought they say Greb was terrific."

"No matter how much they say it," Cuddy said, It's an understate

ment. He was so terrific that when he lost a fight it was something like

that bromide about a man biting a dog. It was news, usually front-page

news."

 

Greb's womanizing...before a fight

Fritzie drove home in his Cadillac and Cuddy and I stopped in at

the near-by Pittsburgh Athletic Asociation. A party was leaving as

we arrived. One of its members was straggling behind. Introducing us,

Cuddy told him I was writing a book about Greb.

"I could write a better book about him than any of you newspaper-

men," the straggler Said, weaving Uncertainly. "Know somethin'?

Three or four hours before he lost his middleweight title to Tiger

Flowers in 1926, some of his friends went into his hotel room. The bed

was made up, but the mattress was on a slant and jiggling. They

yanked it up and what do you think they discovered between it and

the springs? It was Greb, and he was pouring it to a girl who was

yelling everything but stop, thief."

 

Didn't like to be known as "the guy who beat Tunney"

A conventioneer, or what had every appearance of one, inadvert-

eutly dropped the remark that broke the camel's back. Standing on the

fringe of a crowd in the lobby of the William Penn, he pointed to Greb,

who was strolling by.

"The only man," he said, "Who has ever whipped Tunney."

"By Jesus !" Greb squealed, "that's the hundredth time I've heard

that crack today. People point at me like as if I was a statue. What

if I did whip Tunney? Ain't it enough that I'm Harry Greb, the

middleweight champ, without no more identification?"

 

Greb's womanizing...in an elevator

If he inconvenienced himself by going to Baltimore, he also incon

venienced a lot of hotel guests as he was leaving for the arena. It was

unintentional, of course, but there was this situation:

His retinue got out of the elevator on the ground floor, but he

didn't. With Greb the only passenger, the elevator stopped between

the top floor and roof for several minutes.

What was the idea?

"The girl operator," said one of his party,"had fixed him with an

inescapable eye. So when we got out, she slammed the door before any-

one else could get in and up she went with Greb, staying there until

completion of a satisfactory merging of mutual interests. We was all

happy, if guests waiting for the elevator wasn't, because it was the

kind of roadwork that always sharpened his timing."

Jack Dempsy (sparring with Harry and avoiding a fight)

There was no better judge of another fighter than Greb after he

had fought him. Following the announcement of the first Dempsey-

Tunney match in 1926, when everybody experts included-was say-

ing Tunney wouldn't last two rounds, Greb was saying the reverse with

emphasis.

"I fought `em both," he said (Dempsey only in the gymnasium but

for the kill). "Gene's too smart for him. He'll counter-punch him silly.

He's tough as hell, too, and the best body puncher I ever fought. He

looks like a gentleman in the ring, and he acts like one, but there the

resemblance will end if Dempsey plays rough."

 

 

 

www.harrygreb.com