Harry Greb Footage

As I've already explained to you, you're wrong that fighters weren't concerned as to how the newspapers scored it. If they couldn't score the KO, they were absolutely concerned about how the fight would be scored, just as is the case today.

Oh c'mon now, it should be obvious why you should limit your rankings to fighters who fought in the post no decision era. How can you properly appraise a fighters career if you disregard over half their fights?

 

You raised an interesting point - at least for me, since I never put much thought into it and I didn't know why the things worked the way They did in those times.

Now, reading a bit more about it, the way I understand it - and maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong - is that boxers and organisers had to work around some stupid laws, which did not allow for decision to be given in certain cirumstances.

Now, the question is - what was the perception and approach of the fighters involved?
I'll give maybe a stupid example, but I hope You'll understand the analogy. Where I live, having supermarkets or grocery stores open on most Sundays is against the law. What many owners do, is change their market-store to "reading room" or sports equipment rental service on Sundays. So They put one table, two chairs, couple books - and They have a reading room, as the store functions as usual. Everyone knows what's going on.

Reading a bit more about the no-decision bouts and newspaper decisions, seems to me that it worked in similar way. Due to the laws in place, alternative ways of declaring the winner had to be established - and what happend was newspapermen took over the role of the judges.
If everyone in the business knew it was the case, I don't see fighters coming into a bout with a mindset of "Oh, it will officially be a no decision anyway if I just go the distance, who cares what those guys write in their papers". If everyone in the business knew how the things worked and relied on the newspaper reports - and if the fighters fought to "win newspaper decisions", they served the same function, at least on the level of perception, as the official judges's scorecards do today.

Is this accurate, or am I missing something?

 

<--- here is one if his ring entrances.

bitcoin payments only.

 

On your question of approach in the nd fights

If a fighter was cut the boxers would carry each other for them to get another payday the week after.Tremendous respect…

Greb opponent Frank Moody’s brother mentioned this in a documentary

Dirty Harry perhaps being the exception of course?

 

How can someone compare Greb and Canelo. They are almost polar opposites. Greb fought every man he could and the rest ducked him unashamedly. Canelo carefully selected the easiest opponent at each section of his career. Greb never got the A-side support, while Canelo has relied on it for most of his career. Greb was great in an era of real boxing fans, Canelo's support comes from social media and teenage girls.

 

Here's another crude unevolved has been:

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Looks terrible doesn't he.. i cant imagine the pasting Joe Smith Jr would give him

If boxing has evolved so much then why can't i picture Sergio Martinez, Canelo Alvarez, Kelly Pavlik & Triple G beating prime Tunney Loughran & Tommy Gibbons like little ol Harry did.. i must be stuck in the past.. LMAO.. Tunney would fkin murder any of those ffs

 

There’s no way to parse it, really.

There are probably old-timers who are in who were the equivalent of Gatti and Johansson level in their day but over time there’s been a fresh coat of paint on them to make them look like immortal greats when they were just very good fighters in their own time.

I mean Gatti and Johansson accomplished more than Firpo, so …

 

I’ve ready too many accounts from guys back in those days to believe the ‘newspaper decision’ hook, line and sinker.

For one, we know fighters would sometimes have a gentlemen’s agreement, probably unspoken, to take a fight the distance and put on a good show in one town so they could do it a week or two later in another. Seems like more of an exhibition approach — you don’t hurt me, I won’t hurt you, we both get paid multiple times for putting on a good show.

For another, I’ll have to side with trained and experienced judges and referees over newspapermen whose qualifications are questionable at best — sports writers don’t just cover boxing, they would be covering every sport under the sun. They might appreciate watching and writing about a good fight, but do we really think they scored on the four points that are taught today?

Sure, we get bum decisions to this day … but are we to believe those guys didn’t get it wrong ever? Or that they even know what basis upon which to score?

I notice looking through Greb’s record that it seems no Pittsburgh newspapers seemed to EVER go against him. He was the hometown boy and surely got the wink-wink/nod-nod from his friends in the hometown press. He never really made it big in NYC, right? It’s noteworthy to say the least.

 

Official judges scored Lewis vs Holyfield 1 a draw. The "newspaper decision" was/would have been that Lewis won. Which do you consider correct and fair?

Ultimately neither newspaper and official scoring systems are infallible. In fact, both have substantial flaws. There will be a multitude of instances where the outcomes of both did not fairly reflect the action, yet more often than not, both will have scored for the just winner.

If, on balance, you place, more weight on official decisions than newspaper decisions, then fair enough, that's your opinion and you're certainly entitled to it.

It's easy to give reasons that undermine the legitimacy of newspaper decisions, just as it is to do the same with official decisions, what's not so easy, is to define how you factor newspaper decisions, if at all, into your appraisal of a fighters career. Take Harry Greb vs Battling Levinksy 1 as an example. All newspapers scored the fight to Greb, including 4 x papers based in Buffalo, New York State. How do you assess this fight, Pat, in terms of how it contributes to Greb and Levisnky's all time ranking? Do you consider it a draw that doesn't improve or detract from the record of either? Do you simply consider it a no decision contest that went the distance and so doesn't improve or detract from the record of either? Do you completely disregard it? This is where we get to the true crux of the matter and if your answer to any of these questions is yes, my suggestion, and it's only suggestion based on what clearly makes the most sense to me, is that you limit your all time rankings to fighters who competed in the post no decision era only. It would seem to be the very definition of a futile exercise to rank fighters historically, whilst entirely disregarding, in the instances of some fighters from the no decision era, over half of their fights.

 

You've got it.

There are instances of where Greb rematched fighters, because whilst the majority of newspapers scored for him, one did not, and that wasn't enough for him, he wanted to prove his superiority unanimously.

The notion that fighters were either only interested in scoring a stoppage, or avoiding a stoppage defeat if they couldn't, and that if the fight went the distance it was completely irrelevant whether the newspapers scored it as a shut out victory or shut out defeat, isn't just erroneous, it's amongst the most absurd, laughable notions I've ever read, on this forum, or anywhere else.

Fighters were absolutely aware that a fight could go the distance and were certainly mindful of how the newspapers would score it in the event it did.

 

Didnt Greb lose a newspaper decision to Tommy Gibbons in Pittsburgh? Didnt want one or two Pittsburgh papers pick Tunney over Greb in their Cleveland fight?

If you think Greb was being given biased reports hy his hometown papers compare those to the reports he was getting when fighting away from home, which seem pretty sterling.

Another thing thats being missed here is that while Greb has a ton of newspaper wins, which was good enough for everyone in that era, he also has plenty of actual decision wins against all time great fighters and champions. This supports a level of consistency thats really being discounted by a minority on this website.

 

You don't think similar was done in the modern era? Hell, didn't we watch Mercer try to do something similar in real time against Jesse Ferguson? I heard George Foreman himself once say that if we knew how many fights were actually preordained in outcome we would never watch the sport.

To your point on modern scoring, it seems to be getting worse not better. Perhaps I am just getting more jaded but I see horrible scorecards monthly if not weekly. Are these due to ineptitude or something more sinister? I tend to believe both with weight to the latter. In regards to the old timey scoring, if we are to believe it was done poorly, statistically that would swing both for and against Greb's favor with equal frequency, making his lopsided win column even more impressive.

And yet when he travelled to NY, where he fought Tunney and Flowers in championship bouts, his opponents got some questionable decisions. That, too, is noteworthy. One of Compton's points in his book is that Greb's Pittsburgh base of operations kept him sailing against the dominant promotional winds of the sport.

You bring up very good points. I'm just suggesting there are two sides to all these arguments. Every era has its issues in operations, in talent pool, in opportunity. Considering that, to emerge from an era with a record so astonishingly excellent, against opponents so excellent, still reveals what it appears to reveal. At the end of the day, you can only chop it so far down without chopping down every record.

 

Newspaper reporters DID NOT take over the role of judges. In a no-decision fight, you could only win by knockout. There were no judges. There was absolutely no need for judges. Because "NO DECISION" (the name of the fight) would be rendered.

The fighters who signed to compete in a no-decision fight knew IN ORDER TO WIN they had to stop the other guy.

It was very straightforward. If you stopped the guy, you won. If you didn't, the official result was a no-decision.

There was nothing wrong with a fight resulting in a no-decision. That was an accepted fight result.

Nobody got knocked out. So it was a no-decision.

Somehow, along the way, this era of boxing fans have gotten it all messed up. A no-decision result is looked on as bad. There "has" to be a winner, even though nobody won (according to the rules of the fight). And WE MUST name someone the winner and someone the loser ... even though everyone is dead.

And they have INVENTED a scoring system (counting newspaper reports) on their own and have now forced that on fights and combatants who weren't competing under those rules.

It's truly ****ed, to put it politely.

 

I'm not "disregarding" anything. No-decisions were official results. To win, you had to knock the other guy out. If you didn't, it was a no-decision.

It was probably the most clear-cut the sport has ever been. No bad decisions. You just won if you stopped the other guy.

Now, you guys are screwing it all up. Making it all convoluted. Making a new scoring system (determining a winner by media poll). Changing official results.

YOU are the one who wants to use unofficial results, using scoring that the fighters weren't competing under, to change the official results and hand wins and losses to guys who, in their lifetimes, weren't handed those wins and losses.

Screw that. It's insane.

No-decisions weren't fought on the ROUNDS system. They weren't fought on the POINTS system.
You had to score a KO to win.

I'm not limiting ANYTHING. I take official no-decision results in the same context as I take all official results.

I'm not taking ANYTHING away from Harry Greb or any fighter who had a no-decision result.

In life, Harry Greb's hand wasn't raised and he wasn't announced as the official winner via decision after any no-decision fight, because there WAS NO DECISION.

His record in life was the record I posted with all those NDs included.
http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/greb.htm

You might be used to seeing his alternate record with all the "NEW" WINS on it (that change depending on how many news accounts cyber nerds can find that were scanned and upload). But that's bull****.

What you guys are following is just as ludicrous as if another site sprung up and just decided that ONLY FIGHTS BY KO were wins and losses.

And they changed everyone's official record to show only the fights he won and only the fights he lost by KO. If someone said, "Well, Ali could've stopped Buster Mathis, but he knew he'd win on points, so he let him go to the end" ... and the answer from the site was "Well, I don't care what the official rules or the official verdict was, we now say he had to win by KO or it's not a win" ... FANS would think that was ludicrous.

Why? Because, like I've been saying with no-decisions, they would be changing official results and everyone didn't fight their bouts thinking the only way they could win was by KO. Their plan was to win a decision.

WELL, when you know you can't win a decision, and the only way to win is by KO, you fight accordingly. Some guys punched a lot hoping to chop someone down. Some waited for openings, unconcerned because a decision was off the table for both of them.

So changing the rules of that fight 100 years later, and naming winners and losers using a made-up scoring system they weren't competing under long after they're dead, is an INSULT to all of them.

I can't even argue this any more because it's like arguing with people who say "I HAD HIM WINNING, so screw the official result."

That's all you people are doing ... you just have a boxing site now (Boxrec) that aids you in this.

Frankly, it's terrible. As is anyone who bashes other fans for not going along with this CRIME against the sport's history and its fighters.

 

All newspapers, including 4 from Buffalo, scored Greb vs Levinsky 1 to Greb.

How does this fight impact how you rank both fighters from an historical perspective?:

1. Is there no impact for either? I.e. you disregard the impact of this fight when assessing the "greatness" or all time standing of both, therefore the impact is the same as if the fight never happened?

2. Is there a positive impact for one and negative the other? If so, in what way?

3. A positive impact for both? If so, how?

4. Some other impact?