Greatest Middleweight once and for all- Greb? Monzon? Hagler?

Surf, when I'm back home I'll list the great victories I feel he achieved as a lhw.

 

Well then lets stay on subject and include only the victories he achieved in the mw division :good

 

Greb is so far ahead of the people being aligned against him here as a fighter, that it would almost be a pyrrhic victory if you found criteria under which they were ranked ahead of him.

You would be excluding so much of his record, that it would be like trying finding a formula under which John Major won the 1997 election!

 

He chose to fight at higher weights than lightweight not because he couldn't make 135 lbs, but for a different reason or reasons. He was a natural lightweight, basically.

 

Did he identify himself as a lightweight? Did begin and end his career as a lightweight? Did he actively campaign his entire career for the lightweight championship? The answer to all three of those questions is no which means you are comparing apples and oranges once again.

I keep coming back to the fact that some people want to chip away at so many of the factors that made Greb so remarkable in order to level the playing field for everyone who came afterwards when it seems to me that they broke the mold with him.

Had Greb abandoned the middleweight division and declared for all times he was a light heavyweight, then that is where we would rank him. But the fact is he didnt. Took catchweight matches between bouts of greater magnitude, just like every single other middleweight of the era, and always maintained that he could make the middleweight limit whenever called upon to do so if the championship was on the line, either as champion or challenger. He proved this in his final fight at age 32 when most fighters have far outgrown their original division. To me it seems preposterous to call him anything but a middleweight.

Go through the records of those old time fighters. Tiger Flowers, Mickey Walker, Kid Norfolk, Johnny Wilson, Jeff Smith, Bob Moha, Battling Levinsky, Al McCoy, Leo Houck, Jack Dillon, George Chip, and pretty much every body else fought significant amounts of fights, some of which were important to their legacy, above the weight class that they are associated with and above the weight class that they claimed as their own. Weight was an entirely different issue in the old days than it is today. Where does it stop?

Mickey Walker had more fights above 147 while he was fighting in that division than below. Do we stop considering him as a welterweight at that time? What about all of those other middleweights and light heavys above? Should we throw out the record books and rankings on them and re-establish a new category for fighters who fought catchweight bouts?

 

Catchweights apply to the limit not the division.


The only person detracting from Greb here is you. We are saying he is a great lhw as well as a great mw. You are denying this and saying he is merely a mw.

I just think you have a deep seated bias against Greb.

 

Greb,Monzon,Hagler

 

It's not the fighters themselves who identify themselves at certain weight, it's how the writers call them. Say, Lewis and Britton were often called lightweights, even in fights where they weighed 140-145 pounds. An earlier example would be Jack Blackburn, who was often called a lightweight, even though he only made that weight limit on one or two occasions. Sam Langford was called a lightweight early in his career, even though he started as a welterweight.
No, Lewis didn't start as a lightweight, same as Greb didn't start as a middleweight.
Being able to make weight and actually weighing below certain limit are two different things. If 90% of their fights are above the limit, it's unfair to call them a lightweight or a middleweight. It's not like Greb was out of shape and fat when regularly weighing around 165 pounds. If he had to make it every time, he may have been not as successful, considering his relentless style.

Who cares what the fighter himself declare? We have the figures of actual weigh-ins for a lot of fights, so we can judge it ourselves.

When catchweights become a rule, and fights at actual middleweight limit a rare exception, it becomes unfair for those who actually fought at that weight limit most of the time.

Not when titles are on the line, or when involving the champion or top contender of certain weight class. It's not as different as you may think.

When evaluating his welterweight status - we should consider only the fights where he fought as a welterweight. Everything else should go to his middleweight, l/h or P4P status. Regardless of where he identified himself. I recall seeing some old ratings where Billy Conn was mentioned among the greatest middleweights of all time.

 

still hagler

 

As I said in my previous post, which addresses every issue you just stated: Go back and look at what the actual "rule" was because most fighters fought at catchweights back then. By your standard, based on a problematic logic, most of the middleweights of the era should actually be considered light heavyweights. Most of the welterweights should be middleweights, most of the lightweights should be welterweights and so on. Back then they only had eight weight divisions which meant you had larger middleweights, and smaller middleweights.

The only people who would be considered actual middleweights by your standard are the smaller fighters of the era like Mike O'Dowd, Bryan Downey, and Mike Gibbons who were too big for middleweight but fairly small middleweights. This kind of thinking completely ignores the reality of the situation for that era and tries to place these fighters within neat little compartments based on todays standards. That doesnt work, its bad history.

No the writers dont dictate what weight class a fighter is in. Writers for years stated Greb could not make the middleweight limit, lo and behold he did, and was until his last fight. Had Greb been forced to go by what the writers dictated he would never have been a middleweight champion. His career is the best proof to refute your argument.

 

I'll repeat the beginning of the last paragraph.

Another example would be Duran losing to De Jesus. Everyone agrees (and it is a fact) that Duran never lost a pro fight at lightweight. Even though both him and De Jesus were lightweights at the time. But not in that particular bout.

 

And I will repeat, if you judge every weight class from the 10s and 20s based on catch weight fights you will completely rewrite history and be laughed at by people who know better. Be my guest.

 

LT, correct ! Since this thread started, everything I have read for the past
50 years or so, led me to BELIEVE that some fighter by the name of Harry Greb was a MIDDLEWEIGHT champion of the 1920s !!! Lo and behold
some posters on a website called ESB have proven I was wrong in my assertion...atschThey to strengthen their choice that a Carlos Monzon or Marvin Hagler were BETTER middleweights than Harry Greb simply because
Harry Greb for many years beat the very best middleweights of his times,
some HOFamers, but to keep BUSY and put money on the table,challenged and whipped some great lightheavyweight Hall of Famers, whilst fighting over the 160 pound weight class...But everytime Greb at 5ft8" had to defend his MW crown, he trained to get under the 160 pound weight and never failed to make the weight. NEVER. In fact in his great victory over Mickey Walker Greb weighed in at 158 pounds,and in his last 2 fights with Tiger Flowers ,Greb came in under 160 after 298 bouts....He was always known as a great MW champion who had the guts, the sheer ability, to
tackle great lightheavyweight fighters and heavyweight fighters,through all his career,though weighing above 160 because he wanted to enjoy life by not having to make weight every week or so in his hectic career...EVERY
MIDDLEWEIGHT today I'm sure walks around 165-70 pounds between fights
and usually can eat what they want after the MW bout cause they fight every 6 months, but Greb fought almost every week and fighting at his
walking around weight made the rigors of training and fighting more tolerable....Hence Greb in his non MW title fights fought at over 160 lbs.
Would he beat a Carlos monzon or Marvin Hagler in a H2H match ?
I think so strongly because both Monzon and Hagler never took on bigger
lightheavyweights or heavyweights at all. They Knew their limitations,
but truly Harry Greb HAD no limitations as his unique boxing mix of tremendous handspeed, footspeed, iron chin and sheer toughness, always carried him through a 300 bout career, in which he was NEVER stopped in his last 290 fights... Greb was always considered a middleweight by
the boxing fraternity,who had the ability to tackle men 10-35 pounds heavier than he, but when his title was at stake ALWAYS made 160 lbs. Cheers.

 

It's fairly straight forward.

When considering what one achieved in the division in question you look at the fights one had in the division in question.

 

In the top ten rankings we done for the site greb ranked 2nd at middleweight and 7th in the light-heavyweight division could it be that we ranked greb to low in the light-heavies perhaps his résumé suggests he should be higher