Harry Greb Footage

I've seen him, and boy is his guard low.

 

I imagine if there is original film, it won't be preserved

What undertaking has been attempted though? Where can you find archives of 1920s film?

 

Will you ever post that small training film ??!

 

Where do i find it?

 

1923. A summer full of fights in New York. ALL FILMED:

Willard-Floyd Johnson/Firpo-McAuliffe
Criqui-Kilbane
Villa-Wilde
Leonard-Tendler
Dundee-Criqui
Dempsey-Firpo

Two big fights were held outside New York: Dempsey-Gibbons and Firpo-Willard.

But, somehow, another fight—in New York. The Polo Grounds. For the middleweight championship—-doesn’t get filmed? It seems impossible. And what makes it all the more frustrating: All the other films are still available for viewing. The quality varies but the film exists. HOW did the Greb-Wilson fight not get filmed?

 

I know Greb fans hate hearing this.

Does anyone want to watch Canelo-Scull ever again? It was a major fight for a major prize, after all.

But, hell no. Who wants to see that frustrating mess again?

Well, Greb was a guy who rarely stopped people. He moved a lot. He had a really awkward, frustrating style, by all accounts.

Everyone fought him, often over and over, but they weren't scared of him. He was just hard to figure out. Tough to outbox.

Other than the fact that many films simply deteriorated from the early 20th Century, I've always believed many Greb fights that were filmed and don't exist anymore are gone because the people who held them probably didn't want to watch them again.

As in EVER again. Because awkward, frustrating guys who don't punch hard aren't fun to watch, then or now, regardless of how important the fight is (like Canelo-Scull isn't fun to watch).

I was never going to be surprised if a Greb fight showed up and it sucked. His shadow boxing certainly does (which we've all seen.)

Because even a lot of people who saw Greb fight didn't fawn over him like modern fans do who never saw a single frame of him in a real fight.

Boxing mags from the 60s don't even mention him often when the best ever are mentioned. And that's when people who saw him were still alive.

Even guys who wrote books about him, like Compton, admit when they were growing up they knew little about him because the magazines they read and the documentaries from the 60s, 70s and 80s never brought him up.

This 'Greb is the best ever' stuff is relatively new, and it was started by fans who have never seen a single minute of him in an actual fight.

It's easy to keep a lot of fights now, if you're a collector. And I still don't save everything if I think I will never watch it again.

If someone was sitting on a pile of film cannisters that take up a lot of space, and the Greb fight on one roll sucked, I don't see why they'd keep it.

And pretty much nobody did.

The question is why didn't anyone bother to save them? And, likely, it's the same reason why nobody saves every fight going on now.

The boring fights are the first to get dumped.

 

Off topic, but congrats on making your 1st post after 13 years of membership.

 

The problem with this idea is that the Greb-Walker fight, which was filmed, was considered a great fight. The Greb-Gibbons fight was considered a great fight. Dempsey-Gibbons was a fizzle but survives. Mike Gibbons wasnt a big puncher and was more of a stylist but footage of him survives. Its just a sad statistic that most of the silent film era footage has been lost.

 

Greb vs Tunney 1 doesn't exactly read like it lacked action, either.

Greb clearly lacked concussive power, but his fights typically don't read like they lacked action. I could be a mile off, of course, but rightly or wrongly, I've long imagined him lack Calzaghe is that regard.

 

I find it hard to believe that people who see value of preserving boxing footage in the first place would think in those terms. It's about preserving history - not even for oneself, but moreso for the future generations. Real collectors are similar to the ancient monks spending their life making copies of manuscripts... and yes, there are people today also that save fights that many would consider boring.

 

In fairness to Greb I think older boxing historians tended to rate him very highly in P4P lists I have seen many as such. I don't know if him being seen as the best ever was completely pulled out of thin air.

However outside this sub he appears to be a lot less popular which is something I have noticed. On this sub most people have him top 5 possibly even further which doesn't appear to be the case anywhere near as much outside this sub. Why that's the case I don't know however.

 

Pretty much agree hence why I don't rank him high despite his "wins" and got into pretty heated arguments over it with people who claims he's the greatest ever despite 0 footage of him existing........

 

I've been collecting fights since the mid 1980s. Trust me.

After decades, you don't keep everything. You just don't.

A bad fight is a bad fight. It doesn't matter what year it took place.

Now, it's easier than ever to store digital fights on small devices. Having walls of large plastic bins full of vhs tapes was a nightmare. Converting them to DVDs and then converting them to digital files you can stream has been a monstrous task.

I can't imagine people who had to store cannisters of film reels. The fact that so many took the time to preserve those films ... and someone took the time to then convert them to Beta or VHS, and then continued to convert them digitally is a miracle.

And if the fights are dull, you move on to the more exciting ones.

These days, if anyone is recording all nine hours of fights on broadcasts that run all day long ... and I know there are people who do ... believe me ... in a handful of years ... when their hard drives start piling up ... they're are going to start purging the hours upon hours upon hours of fights nobody ever asks for or has any interest in watching again.

 

You are right, there's too much boxing today for anyone to keep everything - and people collecting fights had to sacrifice a lot of time, effort and money. The further back with go, those costs were greater.

My point was regarding discarding elite level fights because They were "boring". I don't believe that at all. First of all, what's good, or entertaining is subjective. Second of all, the perception is very time-era dependent.

Then I also don't see any indication where the fights kept from the old times were more entertaining ones. Some of the Jack Johnson's fights on tape are quite frankly horrendous. A lot of holding, a lot of clowning. Why did those survive the test of times? Those were major historical events and some people saw the value of it.

 

Older boxing historians these days never saw him fight. People who have written all the books on him have never seen him fight. But I'm just talking about why he fought so many times and why there is no film around anymore.

It is weird his fights are the ones that are all gone.

Leaving aside the debate about who he beat ... and where he stands all time ... and who has him rated where ... and just looking at it from a film collector's standpoint (film collectors then and now) ... and the work that goes into preserving them and moving them en masse onto new formats as the older formats are phased out ... THE BORING FIGHTS NO ONE WANTS TO WATCH EVER AGAIN are the first to go.

So, if ALL his fights are the ones people can't find ... it doesn't take a leap of reasoning why.