Harry Greb vs Fred Fulton

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I do agree though that it would take more than a short film to reach any conclusions. That being said Fulton wasnt unbeatable. He appears to have had a glass jaw but his former manager Mike Collins dropped him and swore up and down that it wasnt his jaw that was weak but instead that he lacked heart. You dont want to be a frontrunner against Greb. Like I said, it would be interesting to see how Greb dealt with Fultons combination of size and ability but when that fight was in the offing Fulton was already on the slide and his limitations had been exposed more than once so its not out of the realm of possibility that a guy like Greb, who was great at mapping out a strategy and finding weak points, could beat him.

 

He jabbed its just not like he was one of these Wlad or Lewis types that fought tall and kept a guy outside.

 

Very interesting matchup. I do think Greb has a slimmer margin of error in this fight than Fulton, who carries a lot of power along with his size, does. Greb did have a disheartening style to fight against that could frustrate the heck out of the big man, but lacks enough pop for me to call him the favorite.

 

Id agree that the impetus is on Greb to fight a great fight but Greb was also a guy who had a heck of a lot of "perfect" performances in his career, more often than not and against better opposition than Fulton. Bartley Madden and Bob Roper were not huge guys and they both gave Fulton a good beating around the time that a Greb fight was suggested. Neither guy was a huge puncher either and neither was anywhere near Greb in terms of speed or elusiveness. So the door is open for Greb to have success against Fulton. Also, I dont of anybody that kept Greb off of them during a fight regardless of a height or reach advantage. If Greb gets inside on Fulton consisently I think he could very well render Fulton's reach a huge disadvantage on the inside. Its definately one to puzzle over because neither of them ever fought anyone like the other.

 

Great points. This isn't a fight I'd ever bet on as either man winning wouldn't surprise me. I wouldn't count out Grey's ability to deliver that kind of performance by any stretch.

 

Thanks for the pics/screen grabs. Never seen anything of Fulton before (although I admit it's not something I've gone seeking, just mostly seen him referenced here and there).

I don't care how tall or big FF was, Greb was a handful and from what I've read if he did negotiate the distance (likely given his record against top-notch opposition) then all of that works to FF's disadvantage.

 

Tell that to Mike Gibbons, Tommy Gibbons, Freddie Welsh, Benny Leonard, Gene Tunney, Jack Delaney...Benny Leonard could do as good or better than a Ray Robinson or Willie Pep in the ring...
Now tell me my dad and Charley Chaplin and others of that time walked differently than your hero's of today ??? The difference is
the hand cranked out of sync camera's of that time showed
wrongly that the "oldtimers" were somehow clumsier than todays fighters...BUNKO...Most of todays "super heavyweights " would film as lacking "technique" were they filmed by hand cranked cameras jumping frames as the oldsters were...

 

I am going to have to disagree there.

I think that by this stage, boxing technique was a done deal, if indeed you can call the previous changes "advances".

 

So because "walking technique" hasnt evolved over the last 100 years... the same must hold true for boxing technique? What a silly idea!

 

Odd comment considering Leonard knocked out the two best black lightweights of the era. Delaney knocked out the best black mw of the erav(while he was still fighting at mw) Gibbons knocked out the best black lhw of the era. I didnt realize skin color dictated how good you were...

 

An interesting one. Fulton strikes me as the kind of fighter who needed a good pilot in the corner, not unlike George Groves today, to get their tactics straight. He had a good jab but also liked to have it out. You'd have to say a victory is within Greb's capabilities though he'd have to be super alert because Fred could punch a ton.

 

Joe Gans? George Dixon?

 

Even if we are ONLY talking about the 20s hes wrong. I take his point to mean that black fighters werent given the chance to mix with white fighters and as such the sport didnt really develop until later when it was more mixed. Thats just not true though. Sure Wills didnt get a shot at Dempsey but he did mix with a lot of other top white fighters. Kid Norfolk didnt get a shot at Levinsky or Carpentier but he did mix with top white fighters and never really showed that he was dominant over them. Siki was black, he got the title, and he was probably one of the least skilled fighters of the era and his impact on boxing technique was non existent. Tiger Flowers became champion and prior to that mixed with plenty of white fighters. Panama Joe Gans was probably the best black welterweight and for a time middleweight of his era and he fought a ton of white fighters, not always winning either. The two best black lightweights were Eddie Dorsey and Leo Johnson, Benny Leonard fought them both in their primes six days apart and knocked them out in 1 and 2 rounds respectively. Chick Suggs was probably the best black LW after them in the 1920s and he fought and lost to a bunch of white fighters all throughout his career. There was plenty of injustice that all of these guys suffered I have no doubt. But simply being black didnt make them better than anyone else and that was proven in the ring multiple times. Something to consider is that boxing has always been a sport driven by poverty. In that era simply by virtue of the fact that blacks were a minority (a much smaller minority group both in numbers and on a percentage basis than today) and a higher percentage of whites (Irish, Jews, Italians, eastern Europeans, etc) were poor and of a much greater majority you are going to see them dominate. Its just a numbers game at that point. You can watch that demographic shift throughout the sports history as it moved from Irish, to Jewish, to Italian, and the with baby boom era as America became ridiculously prosperous (especially for whites) the shift went to african americans and now its going south of the border and over to Europe. In the ring boxing goes where the money isnt, outside of the ring it follows the money. Its always been that way.