Why was Greb ranked as no.1 so late?

Very good S ! If Joe Louis was never filmed would he cease to be so great a fighter and puncher ? Not by any thoughtful serious minded historians...,
If Ray Robinson was never filmed [as a WW], would HE cease to be so great a fighter ? Hell know...So why should a Harry Greb who through NO FAULT of his own cannot be seen fighting and beating everyone , everywhere, regardless of size, also not be regarded as a great fighter by
naysayers and contrarians who foolishly judge Greb by a clip training with a 50ish old man Phil Jack O'Brien , preparing for his tremendous victory over the prime, tough as nails Toy bulldog Mickey Walker, one year before Greb's death. ? These people make no sense at all...
P.S. Naysayers, how would you spar with your old man, who owns the gym you are training in on FILM that you don't feel comfortable with ? Oh well...

 

I do not think the arguement is that the 'hardcore' fancy do not disagree Greb was something very special. The problem is the mainstream are 'educated' by a select few 'experts' with their own agendas and bias', which may lead to ignorance of Greb.

 

TB, who are the "select few experts" you imply ? So as to give meaning to your post ?...And who is the "mainstream ", who DON'T have an "Agenda?

 

I posted this earlier; it is my stab at answering the question of the thread, and should help 'give meaning' to my point:


'Pound for pound' is ultimately so subjective. Think what you are trying to do; find the best fighter 'pound for pound' from the 85lbs man in the 1850's to the 400lbs fighter in 2012, with every shape and size in between, over the last 150 or so years.


Because of the lack of generally acknowledged expert essays, that could create credible theories to answer the question; what happens is the so called 'experts' of a particular time give their opinion, which is generally considered 'definitive' by the [sports, but non boxing] mainstream [media].


'Experts' come and go and have their own agendas and opinions, thus the lists change. And in more recent times, the Internet has come along, leading to a lot more people giving their two pence.

 

There is, so your red herring and moving the goalposts mean next to nothing. So tell me, how can you claim someone is better than SRR technically speaking when you've NEVER been able to see him. SRR doesn't have to rely on writers (who in case you didn't know, can and do have bias) to watch SRR and some of his fights. We don't need tales of the fights we can view some of the fights. Now, that is in STARK contrast to Greb, who we can see NOTHING of. We see a whole bunch of ND on his resume and can only go by ringside reports, which as stated earlier, can be many things other than 100% accurate. It defies logic to think you can place Greb above SRR when you have nothing to compare SRR to.

 

but we have footage of people greb beat and dominated. tunney for instance looks tremendous on film and he's past his best on the footage we have. in his true prime, he was destroyed and pasted by greb. that is a means of evaluating his worth by evaluating the men he beat

 

ummmm actually Tunney THRASHED Greb more times than not, so that really proves very little.

 

Yep, sounds about right :good

 

His fights with Walker were all VERY close and both took a beating in them. Look nobody is claiming Greb isn't a great fighter, certainly not me. What I AM saying, is he's not in my top 5 because there is no footage of him to go by. To me logic dictates such a stance. You people are acting like the burder of proof is the same here, when it clearly is not. If you're in court and you have one witness who is trying to recount the crime he saw that night on the stand... and you have another case with video evidence of the crime.. Which do you think the prosecutor would be more secure with? I mean come on people this really isn't THAT hard. I think some of you pick Greb because it's become the "cool" thing to do with the level of mystique involved with Greb. That doesn't change the fact that he doesn't have as much supporting evidence as SRR.. Period

 

Even if we picked against Greb in every fight where there was a significant body of doubt, it would still be hard to find five fighters with better resumes.

Why does it matter how good or bad he looked doing what he did?

The point is he did it!

 

Everything matters... wins, losses, longevity, complete record, peak record, overall skills, how good they looked at their best, who they beat, who they lost to & which periods of their career these wins/losses occured.... Robinson passes with flying colours in all areas.

Robinson is the greatest & best fighter that ever lived, its that simple.

 

No, he didn't.

Only in ONE of their fights (the last one) did Greb receive anything even remotely resembling a thrashing.

In fact you can make a very good case for Harry being 3-2 versus Tunney

 

tunney only decisively won the final fight against a near blind greb. the only thrashing occured in the 2nd fight, which was by all accounts nearly a homicide by greb