Greb vs Calzaghe

I would be verry skeptical about anything in that book that was not corroborated by another source.

 

McGrain, Chinx is the one who told me about it.

Im sure Chinx will expand on this as his Dad went to the retirement home near where he lived to talk to Harry Grebs mistress. And there were a few others.

 

what would be cool

 

There is truth in this but again the legend is a half truth.

Greb seems to have been a devoted family man. His wife tragicaly died in her 20s and after that he went off the rails a bit.

I think that the stories about his womanising will stand better scrutiny than stories of him drinking and not training but again we have a case of the legend eclipsing reality.

 

A couple of quotes from Stonehands profile of Harry Greb...

"At the end of Greb-Tunney fight, Tunney collapsed and had to be carried into his dressing room. Stubbornly refusing to go to the hospital, doctors on the scene stitched up Gene’s face, reset his nose, and used a stomach pump to remove about two quarts of blood, brandy and orange juice, and adrenalin chloride. Greb, unmarked, didn’t look like he even had a fight. He spent the night drinking ginger ale (his preferred beverage) in a speakeasy surrounded by friends."

"According to the Boston Daily Globe, Greb earned a few more technical knockouts in Pittsburgh one night, though unofficially. After a female companion in his car was relieved of $95 and a ring on a lonely road in Highland Park by five robbers, Greb reported the incident to the police.

When they arrived on the scene, the officers noticed blood all over the road. It was not Greb’s.

Moved at the ensuing hearing by the weeping wife and children of one of the assailants, Greb offered to post bail. For those close to him, this was not a surprise. Contrary to the myth that he was a half-cocked hell-raiser, Greb was a kind man and a practicing Roman Catholic. There is nothing to suggest that he was anything less than in love with his wife Mildred throughout their courtship and marriage. When she died of tuberculosis in 1923, he was at her bedside. Harry was a faithful husband even if he was not the kind of widower who held a candle."

 

yeh, his Dad adored Greb being from Pittsburgh and being a fighter.

Womanising is the vice of most men, fighers like De La Hoya, Arguello, Duran etc... while being honest family men were all involved in other women.

I dont doubt his training though.

 

Ha, womanizing, my favorite subject!

First, I want to agree with what Bill Butcher said or didn't say: No film equals no comment, as far as Greb and Calzaghe.

Womanizing, boozing, my general opinion on folklore is most often where there is smoke there is fire. I have heard and or read, sometimes sources blur over the years, that Harry had two, count 'em Two women the day of the fight; it relaxed him, took the rough edge off. True or false, I have no idea, but the true romantic in me wants to believe it.

It's true that Harry's mistress was in a retirement home at the end of my block when I was growing up, and it's also true that my dad used to go up there to visit her. How close he was to her, I just don't know. If I'd have known he was going to die young I would have asked him about a lot of things.

 

Way to take clips out of context. Calzaghe in one of the worst onesided ass beatings in history. And trumped up Greb looking for all the world amateurish in training footage.

I have to go with what my eyes have seen... Calzaghe UD12 Greb.

 

I like what Seamus has to say here.

Greb is impressive on paper, but that is almost all we have. There is no video footage justifying Greb's ability to defeat me captured on film.

 

The thing is, though, that Gene Tunney is impressive. And Jack Dempsey is impressive. There is absolutely no way that man is not a terror in that ring. We know what the solution to the question is already -- he's great -- but the formula that leads up to that solution is entirely concealed exept for these short bits of video and the fight report clippings -- the video suggests he was not physically imposing nor lightning fast, the clippings have him as someone incredibly busy and wily -- swarming his opponents like an octopus.

I think the only viable conclusion you can draw is that Harry Greb used a lot of short arm punches (few clean knockouts, lots of facial damage to opponents), leaping into opponents, forcing opponents to fight a horrid pace and a fight in a style they were not accustomed to. You get the sense it was very hard to take a step back and jab the man -- like he wouldn't allow you that much breathing space.

It also seems he was very smart in the clinches and inside, and he was so busy that even if hed be sloppy and open sometimes, he probably scored more even though that was the case.

I don't see him like a mix of Calzaghe and Roy Jones -- I don't see any Roy Jones in him at all -- if anything, I would expect his offense to be most like Calzaghe, his defense to be a mix of Marciano's and Duran's, crouching coupled with head slips and reflexive bending of the waist while also maintaining a smart distance when not in the pocket, and moreso Hopkins inside skills than Durans, if you get what I mean. I expect him to outsmart rather than out-muscle and out-tough his opponents with fiery determination.

If this mix sounds ridiculously strong, well, why wouldn't it be? He has arguably the strongest resume in the history of the sport.