I see alot of people on this site putting Greb in their top ten p4p. Little footage of him exists pretty much the only footage I can find is; http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0xm8Y-pWzIg Its all very well to say he beat this guy and that guy but one of Hearn's farts would probably KO him. Its fair to say that he does not look much - his legs are skinny his body looks weak. Someone needs to convince me big time that this guy is serious. Is Greb just rated so highly because boxing was less professional, less scientific and less skillful in his day? It also seems, from what I read that he was the recipient of some fortunate decisions over black fighters, is this another reason that he prospered - because black fighters where cheated or prevented from challanging the white fighters.
Here is the bottom line. Although we dont have any footage of Harry Greb fightiing we do have footage of many of his victims such as Gene Tunney, Tommy Loughran, Mickey Walker, Jimmy Slatterey, Tommy Gibbons etc etc. We therfore have a prety good idea of the calibre of fighters he was beating. Now Grbbs resume is just ridiculous. In all he beat 14 fighters who held the lineal title in one weight class or another!!!!!!!!!!! Believe the hype.
I was in the same shoes you were not too long ago.... While I don't (and never did) think Greb looks weak, I did believe he didn't belong in the same ring or sentence with the other greats. I have since changed my mind. For one thing, as another poster said, look at the opposition he beat; we have footage of Tunney, Loughran and others who, as we see on film, were scientific and could pass for modern fighters... Another thing I've come to accept is that many greats, even the very early ones, had skills- maybe not on par with the most skillful we know of today, but skillful enough to get the job done and compete with just about anyone. There are plenty of fighters today who are champions and contenders who don't have much skill- They get by, winning some and losing some... Do we say this is an era of bums? No- there are many fighters with great skill and talent, and they shouldn't be penalized for being contemporaries with lesser skilled fighters. Not everyone from before 1940 was a bum.
And a "sparring session" with a 60 year old opponent at that. I think it's fair to say he wasn't exactly giving his all rather than just fooling around. As to the question, Janitor already answered that one well enough.
I dont think hat Heans has much chance against Gene Tunney and I know that Grebb beat Hearns twice. The footage dosnt really tell us anything about how good a fighter he was because it dosnt show him fighting. He is just doing random reflex exercises. Could be anything. Even if we had footage of him fighting and he looked awfull you would have to acknowledge that he obviously had some greatness that wasnt apparent from the film because of who he beat. His resume is so overwhelming that if he looked bad we would have to reasess our idea of what looked bad.
Philadelphia Jack O'Brien was about 60 when that was filmed. It would be like Vitally Klitschko sparring with the Joe Frazier of today. Again it dosnt really tell us anything.
I don't like to see personal abuse levied against guys in this part of the forum, but this is a fair post.
I have footage of Jack Dempsey(The heavyweight) vs a 50 or 60 year old former champion Jack McAuliffe. Now Dempsey look no WERE near the killer he was vs Willard. Hell, Dempsey was thowing slaps, and look very arkward, just as Harry Greb did vs a 60 year old Jack O'Brien. Neither champion wanted to hurt the former age former champ. If all we had of Dempsey was his sparing with McAuliffe, I sure people would say Dempsey suck too because he didnt blow him out with the first few punchings.