Harry Greb Footage

Hi Greg.
If you build it, they will come, a tour de force expose on Greb, honestly the best post on his career and achievements I have ever read, the research, time, and patience you spend on topics like this, should be savoured and appreciated by all posters, your neutral and unbiased writings should be lesson to all and sundry, no hyperbole, no vitriol, just devine, many, many, thanks.
stay safe buddy, chat soon.
Mike.

 

This post is why i love the classic.. amazing research:

Amazing to hear Jimmy McLarnin praise him like than.. other than Greb he beat more HOFers (ring mag period) than anyone else .. when people like that are saying he's the greatest you know you're talking about someone very special.. Loughran & Maxie too.. both HOF LHWs.. look who they fought.. they both agree with McLarnin..

 

Thank you Mike, you're far too kind.

 

I can't imagine all the punishment Greb must have endured throughout his whole career even before he died which was obviously related to injury itself.

 

Trust Greg to come in and add balance and perspective.

One of your best mate.

 

Cheers JT, much appreciated.

 

Are you talking about the guy who scribbled cartoons? The guy who was born when Greb was blind in one eye? Did he see the final Flowers fight when he was 4 years old? That guy knew more than Tunney and Walker and Dempsey and all the writers who saw Greb fight live?

 

Excellent post mate.

 

Right according to him some guy's opinion trumps all those unreal.

 

Why are we arguing with a guy whose supposedly unimpeachable source is a BWAA poll taken 54 years after Harry Greb died in order to specifically market a clip video released by Jim Jacobs?

 

It's crazy how in an age of near limitless information, people's opinions change.

 

This is a far more concise, but no less effective way, of making the key point, I was trying to make within the massive wall of text on my post from the previous page, George.

 

I agree with everything you wrote ... I just disagree with the last part.

People who post quotes made in the 1920s saying he was the greatest someone ever saw ... are also the same people who often don't acknowledge those people making the quotes hadn't seen more than 100 years of the fighters who came later at the time they said that.

They aren't comparing Greb to every fighter up today.

They missed A CENTURY of fighters.

I read a quote the other night from Jack Dempsey, who was asked about Ray Robinson, and Dempsey said he wouldn't rate a fighter he never saw and he hadn't seen Ray Robinson yet. And the quote was from 1950 or 1951. Robinson had 121 wins by that point, more than Greb ever amassed.

Lots of old timers in articles would add the disclaimer he was the best "I saw." And they didn't bring up people they hadn't seen.

We also know, after listening to boxers for hundreds of years, that boxers themselves sometimes have a kindred spirit with some fighters they meet and hold them in higher regard than others.

For example, I read this week Roberto Duran said again that Esteban DeJesus was the hardest puncher he ever fought. DeJesus dropped Duran twice, in two fights, and never stopped him.

I'm sure both punches stunned him for a bit. And they were close friends as they aged. Duran visited DeJesus on his death bed. But Duran poo pooed his KO loss to Hearns, saying he just wasn't in shape.

Now, without film on these guys, anyone could say "Duran fought both guys and Duran says DeJesus hit harder." And that would probably be the end of that.

But no one with eyes could look at the film of the DeJesus-Duran series and Hearns-Duran and say DeJesus hit Duran harder than Hearns did with a straight face.

I'm sure Gene Tunney had great respect and was friends with Greb. They shared a lot in the ring. But Tunney also thought he could knock out at 500-pound gorilla with a body shot, because he knew "anatomy." (Which has become a meme now around could 100 men beat a gorilla?) He also thought Greb could beat Rocky Marciano and Rex Layne in the same night.

Gene Tunney was also a great fighter, but there are a lot of fighters who most rank ahead of Tunney.

In Greb threads, however, Gene Tunney's opinion on who the best fighter ever was seems to be TOTAL AND FINAL.

But I'm not sure why Tunney's opinion should matter more than someone like Joe Louis, or Muhammad Ali or Larry Holmes or George Foreman or even Lennox Lewis or Vitali Klitschko (the latter of whom have the internet and has probably seen more fighters than Gene Tunney ever did) ... and if you don't agree with Tunney, then there's something wrong with you.

Did Joe Louis say Harry Greb was the best fighter ever? Did Rocky Marciano think Harry Greb could beat him and Rex Layne in the same night? Did Foreman and Holmes bring up Harry Greb's name once in their lives, let alone say he was the greatest fighter who ever lived?

Having film dispels a lot of myths and personal opinions (and sometimes raises more).

I also agree that having more information helps change opinions. We've all changed our opinions on fighters because we can watch most of them like fans in earlier generations never could.

I also agree making lists can often change opinions. Lots of quotes were being thrown around, but not many were in the context of name the FIVE best you ever saw, or name the 10 best you ever saw. Or name the 10 best all-time. Lots of quotes touting Greb are just one-off comments, like I thought he was the best. I didn't see many where they were asked the follow up: Name the 9 best below him?

We've all started to make lists, and then started moving names around after we thought about it a second or two.

So, I look forward to seeing Harry Greb film someday.

But, like many fans and fighters throughout history, I'm certainly not ranking anyone I never saw fight, and certainly not at the very top.

Now, back to the question why nobody bothered to save any Greb films ....

 

Just on the question of how many of Greb's fights were filmed in the first place, Jimmy Jacobs famously spent years unsuccessfully searching for them. Near the end of his life, Jacobs said that the only one he knew for certain was filmed was the first Tunney fight. Beyond that, all he would say was that he was "fairly certain films were made of at least three". Seems incredible now, but it was an era when even world title bouts weren't necessarily filmed as a matter of course.

https://ibb.co/XrNJhKt1

 

I think you misinterpreted (or maybe I wasn't clear) what I meant by "the opinions of men who were paid to watch boxing matches and then give their opinion on who won", because nothing in your post is relevant to the part of my post that you have quoted.

To be clear, what I was effectively saying is, if you respect newspaper decisions, then Greb has the highest quality and deepest win resume in all of boxing history, and it's not even close.

If quality and depth of win resume are key amongst you're ranking criteria, as they are mine, then Greb is a lock for the top 5 p4p all time and has a good a case as anyone for the GOAT.

Personally speaking, people's opinons, be they writers, trainers, opponents or whomever, interesting as they may be, do not factor into my ranking criteria. Instead I consider only a fighters record and all the relevant context I am aware of around those records. I thereby keep my ranking criteria as objective as possible, accepting the subject matter is inherently subjective as it is.

If your all time p4p rankings heavily factor in the "eye test", then you're right to enitrely exclude Greb from your rankings, as well as many other fighters from distant eras with little (in terms of quality and/or quantity) or no footage available.