Who Ranks Greb As The Greatest?

my favourite fight quote comes from that fight:

"When the 12th round ended, I believed it was a good time to take swallow of orange juice and brandy. I had no sooner done so when the ring started swirling around. I had never taken anything during the fight up to that time. Nor did I ever again. When the thirteenth round started, I saw two bobbing red opponents rushing in at me. I don't know to this day how I ever survived that round, or the last two. The only consciousness I had was to stay on my feet and keep trying. I knew if I ever relaxed, I would either fall on my face or the referee would stop the fight."

 

Yeah, I'm not doubting Greb's punching power, I'm just saying fighters who dont score KOs are forced to rely on winning on points.
But in NO-DECISION matches nobody can win that way.

Yes, it's true that newspapers wrote up the fights and picked winners, but who's to say the verdicts and reports they give are fair and accurate ? Sportswriters of the era had reputation for being corrupt, or drunk, or both. It's impossible to verify many of those reports.
Of course, you could say the same about judges' decisions, but with Greb the problem is confounded by the facts that NONE of his fights are on film and SO MANY of his fights were no-decisions !

The other problem with the NO-DECISIONS is that the fighters may well have fought accordingly. If you go the distance you dont lose, - unless you get KO'd you dont lose - , and you really have to get beaten from pillar to post for the full duration for anyone to really be able to claim with unanimity any "unofficial" win on you (which admittedly Greb did often). The way to WIN a bout to no-decision is by KO, and that's that.
Whether all fighters would box exactly the same strategically (and with the same urgency) under those rules as they would under the rule of official decisions is an open question. We just dont know.

 

I have Greb as #1 but would not argue with SSR and I always have Pep and Armstrong and Langford around the top.....Greb, Pep, SRR can never be duplicated. Will will never see fighters with there ring experience

 

this is a really good point and too often with fighters of high regard such as greb, we give them the benefit of the doubt when we shouldn't

 

Greb gets the benefit of the doubt...You fight nearly 300 times in 12-13 years you are going to lose some fights.

Whats important is the overwhelming evidence that supports how Greb did in his most important fights, against his most important opponents.

 

This.

 

good point:good

 

I agree.

 

Greb can only be 1, 2 or 3 in my opinion. Any lower just doesn't fly. His body of work is utterly, utterly spectacular.

 

Its not right to rate someone with 0 fighting footage as the best ever fighter, regardless of who they have on their record or what some 80 year old eye witness says about them.... we actually have good footage of Robinson & you can see in his work why people rank him as such & thats not even at his best weight.

Robinson is no1, arguing against that **** just makes me think whoever is arguing is just trying to make themselves sound extra knowledgeable... thats my view anyway.

 

Nah, Greb is no 1 Bill :good

 

i'm still torn as well

but bill, the same argument can be made against robinson. we have lots of fight footage but none at his best weight. let's be honest, judging from footage alone and his middleweight career alone, he might not make top 5 or top 10 in many people's lists. it's his anecdotal welterweight career that brings him up.

just playing devil's advocate

 

A lot of the reason why pretty much forever and even now Id only have Armstrong or Robinson as no1...Robinson takes the spot at the moment.

But even then Im starting to rethink it...which is why these discussions are good.
At the very least there is ample footage of the fighters Greb beat...and their quality can not be denied. And its not such some witness, it was the consensus of the time that saw him as the best fighter on the planet pretty much..with unrivaled speed of hand and foot and conditioning.

I mean even Raging_Bull isnt going to see every fight and fighter that was ever filmed...I feel that how a guy looks on film is probably the least important of the ranking criteria. And on that basis then Im not sure why I have had Sugar and Hank sharing my personal no1 spot.

 

I think you have an excellent top 3 and i can see why you wouldnt change the number one, but I wouldnt discount the possibility of putting Ruby Robert up there with Greb (I have him no1 and he is pulling further and further from the field) That guy is astonishing. And the more you look at his record the more amazing it becomes. For instance, just today, it dawned on me that when Fitzsimmons won the world middleweight title, he had already been undefeated as a middleweight and lightweight for nearly 10 years! (Save for an almost certain dive against a world class challenger that was avenged). And as i write this post, i amaze myself again! I just realised that in 1882, when Fitzsimmons won the New Zealand Lightweight tournament in the Jem Mace Tournament, there was no recognised World Lightweight championship because the title did not exist. This means that realistically, at worst, Fitzimmons NZ title was the equivalent of an Alphabet title today and, at best, he was the best lightweight fighter in the world. Certainly i think if i were going back in time, i wouldnt back any lightweight to beat him. And it this was the case, there is a very real argument that Fitz at one point in time could lay claim to being the best Lightweight to Heavyweight in the world. No one else could even come close to doing this.

Anyway, back to the original point, if anyone is better than Greb, it is Fitz, who matches him in every department. I can only assume that the number of people leaving him out of their lists havent yet studied him in detail or are not ranking him because of lack of film (or bias from looking at the poor quality film available).

 

rock, you've forgotten more than i'll know about boxing but i have to disagree. much like others (flea i believe to) i have trouble rating someone without footage. the footage of greb is training and is sloppy; i'll admit i unfairly held him back because of that for some time. but we don't have any great footage to compare with and many fighters should and are rated highly not just on resumes and reports but how they looked, how they fought and their spectacular performances. on resume along some of the best (marciano, ricardo lopez, duran) may not rate at the top but it's only when you see them that their true genius is revealed