He dethroned Harry Greb but Greb was slipping at that point. Should the Greb fights be considered the highlight of his career? Where does he rank among the middleweight champs?
He was a great middlweight. I'm not sure why he gets overlooked in discussions of the greats. Mickey Walker didn't exactly have an easy time in taking his title either.
It's Larry Holmes/Ezzard Charles syndrome... Sometimes when you take a title from a truly culturally relevant AtG people hate you a little, even among the boxing fanbase. I think someone like Corbett had to deal with a little of this too.
How great was tiger Flowers ? He was a tough guy to fight ..A volume punching southpaw, and very slick..He was good enought to give a fading Harry Greb, 2 tough controversial bouts in 1926, just before Greb died.. Greb at that time was ring-worn with 298 fights under his belt, but still gave Flowers two tough fights. But Flowers had a weak chin and was Kod by heavy punchers such as Panama Joe Gans 2, Kid Norfolk, Sam Langford, Jamaica Kid,Fireman Jim Flynn, and was flattened THREE times in two bouts with the very underated Jack Delaney...Yes, 3 kos in two bouts..True..
One thing that stands out about Flowers, is that his losses were all either knockout losses, or controvertial. He seems to have been almost impossible to outpoint cleanly.
He was KO'd/stopped a lot early in his career when he was being thrown to the wolves and also fighting a lot of naturally bigger men. He apparently had a rather unique style that probably made fights tough to score, which probably accounted for so many notoriously controversial decisions in his career (vs. McTigue, Greb, Walker, etc.).
