Is Harry Greb the GOAT?

I am not sure if you are trying to bait with this post. But, yes he is probably the greatest fighter of all time on paper. However, you will get people using the excuse that he can't be, because there is no video recordings of his fights. But, these are usually the people who lack imagination, and struggle to comprehend how to break down the newspaper articles and first hand accounts of his fights.

 

Not imo because I rank on H2H and I've never seen him fight.

If I rank on resume I do believe he's beaten most HOF fighters in history .

 

Roy Jones was better

 

ANSWER : YES YES YES.
With 300 bouts fighting and beating great HOFs, such as Gene Tunney, Tommy Loughran, Tommy Gibbons, Jack Dillon, Gunboat Smith, Kid Norfolk, Maxie Rosenbloom, Mickey Walker, Jimmy Slattery etc. He gave up more weight to his opponents from 10 to 50 pounds on a regular bases, traveling town to town without time to rest his injuries.
AND for the last 5 years or so Harry Greb was fighting with but ONE EYE
Think of that ! In ONE year Greb had 45 fights winning them all.
Harry Greb, one for the ages...

 

The only fighters I can see in the argument are Greb, Ray Robinson and Sam Langford.

Roy Jones is a close 114th.

 

:good

 

And like Burt implies, despite all this Jack Dempsey ducked Greb and refused to fight him in the centuries biggest superfight.

 

You almost had me.

 

Then they're not boxing fans. :-( Simple as.

As to whom the GOAT is; well who the hell really knows?

 

Surprising, consider you champion the moderns at any given opportunity. :hey

 

For sheer depth and breadth of resume, only Robinson and Langford are really on a par with Greb. Tough call to say who takes it out of those three.

 

Luf, I have no skin in this game because both Greb, Dempsey and joe Louis were my favorite fighters along with the greatest fighter I ever saw ringside Ray Robinson. But a couple of points which I posted before.
It is true that Dempsey never gave Harry Greb a title fight but I think were I Dempsey's braintrust I would have done the same thing.
If Dempsey gave Greb the MW a title shot and somehow Greb dodged the bullet avoiding Dempsey's power shots, to win a decision, well there goes the Dempsey mealticket and HWt championship, worth millions of dollars. If on the other hand Dempsey catches up to the much tinier Greb and ko's Greb, [which I believe] the vast boxing public would protest " why doesn't Dempsey pick on someone his own size and not a middleweight " ?...Truly a NO Win situation for the Dempsey braintrust...
P.S. As I posted before many decades ago I read an article by a famous boxing writer whose name escapes me now, who spoke to Harry Greb not long before Greb died, in which Greb stated "after about five rounds or so Dempsey would have killed me". Unquote.

 

Like you say, Greb already beat the men Dempsey defended against, such was his talent. Yet Dempsey never wanted to risk losing to him.

As you imply Burt, for all the courage Greb had, Dempsey didn't.

 

Many years ago my dad and I, a youngster was introduced to a former tough looking old man in his late 50s, in my uncle's restaurant.
The old pug playfully drew me in a clinch, and proceeded to tattoo my ribs hurting me until my dad pulled him off me. His name was Soldier Bartfield who fought the great Harry Greb about 5 times in tough fights.
So in a small way I am "connected" to the great Harry Greb...