Cool Harry Greb Facts for Those Who Don't Know

why??have you seen greb fight?

 

I'm not an expert but doesn't he have one of the best records in boxing history, I mean to have his record and be blind in one eye as well as be the only fighter to beat Gene Tunney while being a MW you just know he must have been a great fighter, although imo it is pretty silly when people do H2H matchups with Greb.

 

What i am saying is that you realistically can't put a fighter in the top 10 if you've never seen them fight.

 

With respect, sir, that is no longer likely. Greb's last fight was in the mid 1920's and in those days films were made on a silver nitrate media. Silver nitrate has a shelf life under optimum conditions of something around 30-40 years then the acid inherent in that type of film dissolves. The films of Harry Greb taken at ringside have long ago turned to ash in the cans they were stored in...

 

Why not?

 

Nonsense. What you mean to say, is most people are too lazy to read the MANY round by round newspaper accounts of his great fights or what the great fighters he fought and boxing historians had to say about him.

The fastest fighter I ever saw. Hell, Greb is faster than Benny Leonard.
– Jack Dempsey

He was never in one spot for more than half a second, all my punches were aimed and timed properly but they always wound up hitting empty air. He'd jump in and out, slamming me with a left and whirling me around with his right or the other way around. My arms were plastered with leather and although I jabbed, hooked and crossed, it was like fighting an octopus.
– Gene Tunney

Greb gave me a terrible whipping. My jaw was swollen from the right temple down the cheek, along the chin and part way up the other side. The referee, the ring itself, was full of my blood. If boxing was afflicted with the commission doctors that we have now, the first fight probably would have been stopped and no one would have heard of me today.
– Gene Tunney

"He could hit from impossible angles. Once, after Harry missed a right to my face, he spun all the way around so that his back faced me. I relaxed my guard and waited for him to turn around. But before I knew what was happening, his left was stuck in my mouth. I still don't know how he did it, but he hit me while his hands faced in the opposite direction."
– Mickey Walker

Greb may have been the greatest fighter, pound-for-pound, who ever lived. Certainly, he was among the top 2 or 3. He combined the speed of Ray Robinson, the durability of Jim Jeffries, the stamina of Henry Armstrong, and the unbridled ferocity of Stanley Ketchel with a will to win unsurpassed in the annals of sport. At his peak, he was unbeatable, defeating virtually every middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight of his generation. A great, great fighter.
– Historian Eric Jorgensen

Or how about the footage that exists of the greats he defeated and in some cases, quite easily? Like Gene Tunney, Tommy Loughran, Tommy Gibbons, Kid Norfolk, Mickey Walker and many others. He ducked NO ONE! He has the greatest resume in the history of boxing and that is not up for debate. He beat more hall of famers than anyone in history. He went 45-0 in the year 1919 alone. Many of his greatest fights happened while he was completely blind in one eye. Those who try to say that you can't measure his greatness because there is no known fight footage available are simply being too lazy to research the man.

The Pittsburgh Windmill
Harry Greb

261-20-17
( 48 )

 

I'd like to add a little background info and one more quote to this interesting discussion, if I may.
The quote is from Jimmy McLarnin and here is what you may not know about Jimmy. Jimmy McLarnin (19 December 1907; County Down, Ireland – 28 October 2004; Richland, Washington, USA), was an Irish Canadian professional boxer who became two-time welterweight world champion and an International Boxing Hall of Fame inductee. During his career, he beat 13 world champions in an era with only 8 weight classes and only ONE world champion per division - no alphabet soup and 17 weight classes to cherry pcik from!

In 1996 Ring Magazine voted Jimmy McLarnin the fifth-greatest welterweight of all time.

Jimmy McLarnin, one of boxing's best, once told an admirer,"If you thought I was great, you should have seen Harry Greb."

 

I was really curious why his nose is being operated on the day he died.

 

Yes, sir. I have read that one and failed to mention it. I am glad I am not the only one on here defending the great Harry Greb. Any man that the newspaper guys referred to as "The Perpetual Motion Machine" had to be great.

 

Because you're taking other peoples word for it then. You are not creating"your" p4p list you are just creating one based on someone else's opinion, not yours.

 

This one is up for debate. Greb's story was that he had a car accident and couldn't breath properly. Some say that Greb was just too vain and wanted his nose fixed and used the car accident as an excuse. Men getting cosmetic surgery in the 20's was a bit unusual. Greb was indeed a vain man.

"Greb was a sensitive fellow about his appearance. He was always carefully groomed and usually slicked down his hair with vaselline before he entired the ring. And if his opponent ever mussed up Harry's hair, he was like a wildman. He didn't care about punches or butts or thumbs, but that mussed up hair drove him nuts." - a friend of Greb by the name of DeMarco. Greb would say, "Bring 'em on! All I need is a haircut and a shave." Harry was also known to powder his face before his fights.

 

I'm pretty sure Jimmy Jacobs was said to possess film of Greb, which means that it would likely have been transferred in the same way other fights from that era were. Whether that's true or not, I'm not sure but if they did fall into the hands of Jacobs, I'd imagine they still exist.

 

Greb is one of greatest, his record shows it, but too many stories of him are suspect. I can't see Dempsey playing coward to him. Greb is like Langford, people have little on them, so they mythologize them. Dempsey was said to afriad of langford too, which makes me think if there was no film of Benny Leonard, it would come up that Dempsey feared him too.

 

No, that is not true. Jacobs once said that he would trade anything in his collection for any Harry Greb footage. In fact, the ONLY known footage of Greb was found in 1991, 3 years after the death of Jacobs.

 

No, Dempsey was not afraid of Greb. No way! They were friendly with one another. Greb did want to fight Dempsey and was never allowed to. Dempsey, like many of today's fighters let his management handle his situations. Dempsey once signed to fight Harry Wills who many say that Dempsey ducked. I have a picture of them signing for the fight. That fight didn't happen. What did happen between Greb and Dempsey is Greb handed Dempsey his ass to him in sparring, so it is obvious why Dempsey's management didn't allow that fight. As far as Langford goes, Demspey admitted in later life that he feared Langford. He was probably just being kind, but who knows? Dempsey said and I quote,

This content is protected

This content is protected