Serious thoughts on this Harry Greb shadow boxing video?

Since you and Vesti think raising the elbow before punching is insignificant, that tells me all I need to know about your "knowledge" of boxing. You're the type who looks at a record or reads what some sports writer (who probably doesn't know anything about boxing either) wrote and get excited about the boxer the way a child does about a super hero, all while having no understanding about what you are seeing. FD, Vesti, and surfinghb, have all exposed their "knowledge" of boxing and athletics in the last two days.
None of you think fundamentals or technique is important and one of you thinks being stronger, and faster doesn't make one a better athlete. Have a cig and a beer, read some Bert Sugar and keep on believing that technique, fundamentals, and athleticism are not important...

Vesti, I watched the Charles video, the man doesn't raise his right elbow before throwing the punch. You don't even understand what we're discussing here...

 

TIL: Ezzard Charles had bad technique.

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Needs more PEDs.

 

Hello darkness, my old friend

 

Wow! Can you imagine if, the poor guy despite never having won the light heavyweight title but considered by many to be the greatest Light heavyweightof all time, actually had decent technique!

 

Who gives a **** about what Greb looks or looked like, it simply isn’t important.
He could have looked like the most awkward,incorrect,ungainly fighter you had ever seen.
The fact is he was obviously extremely effective and was a nightmare for every fighter he fought from middleweight up to heavyweight.
I would suggest that after a very short amateur career and sometimes fighting every 3 or 4 days as a pro there wasn’t the time to be working on or improving techniques, this man was always fighting, he was the epitome of the hungry fighter.
Maybe he may have lacked some of the fundamentals, but if he did surely that makes him even more of a phenom considering who he beat.
I’m at a loss to explain the motives of Greb’s detractors here.
It would be best if they simply had a modernist agenda here because if they haven’t i’d have to actually question their actual intelligence if they’re judging Greb’s abilities on watching a few seconds of film.

 

I haven't expressed any knowledge about boxing. I'm just trolling your absurd notion that Greb was crap because you reviewed a 10 second video and ignored not only his achievements in the ring but the opinions of many, many, many more qualified reporters on the Sweet Science than I, and you, ever could be.

I have a couple Butt Sugar books, he has (had) his own opinions and he was welcome to them. I don't smoke, though.

 

Preach Cecil, preach!

 

I haven’t read through all the posts here, said my piece and responded to people who responded to me, but I don’t see why anyone gives a **** about people actually discussing this historic bit of film.

The fact is Greb is hailed as perhaps the greatest P4P fighter ever. Yet he’s a mystery man precisely because we don’t have film of him fighting.

If we had a collection of fight films, this clip would just be chuckled at and then we’d discuss how he looked in action. But we cannot do that.

This clip is a curiosity because he looks ridiculously bad. And we don’t know if that’s because he fought like that and it worked in those days or because he was goofing off or what.

But tell me, is Greb so sacred that no one dare utter a word other than “OMG he’s the greatestest, bestestest boxer ever” and anyone who doesn’t step in line with this must be banished to the wilderness forever, with no food or shelter from the elements? Is his holiness such that we are not allowed to gaze upon the only existing bit of film on which we have to judge him lest we go blind from seeing his whirling display of ‘shadowboxing’?

As I said, I haven’t gone through all the thread but are people saying he wasn’t any good, or are they saying IN THIS CLIP HE DOESN’T LOOK GOOD? And has anyone looked at it and shared their great depth of knowledge of the true secrets of the sweet science to explain how what we see here is actually technique so advanced that only those of genius IQ can appreciate it ... or do the people upset at us talking about this bit of film actually think he looks pretty ridiculous in it, too?

 

In short, to answer your questions and saving you the enjoyment of reading the craziness first hand YES!!!

Each of those things which you have identified as indeed taking place in this thread. Everything from the video is nuanced genius which the unwashed are incapable of comprehending to he was actually unskilled and vulnerable to a ko had he entered the ring with the poster!

I will leave it to you to see who is who in this cast of usual suspects. Don’t cheat yourself , read them!

 

As you know, my take is that he looks ridiculous in the clip. And that it doesn't matter for his boxing ability.

That being said, I'll offer my own speculation for what his "shadowboxing" is. Take this with a strong grain of salt, since I don't pretend to know much about the 1920s boxing scene, or about boxing training. However, I think Greb's goofy "shadowboxing" technique comes from the way fighters used to work out with pulleys. To me, Greb's chicken-wing flailing looks similar to the movements that you see Dempsey using on the pulley machines in training clips.

 

I don't think anyone said Greb looks good in the clip, just that you can see some of his awkward speed and athleticism.

 

Ali did as well hmmmm

 

You can't hardly see the punching form in the clip. It's Charlie Chaplin physics dipped in radioactive mud.