Harry Greb: GOAT?

@Melankomas this makes me feel so much better lmao

 

Where do you rank Langford?

 

#3

 

Well played. Kudos.

 

**** no.

 

Thanks Greg thats a great informative post with plenty to ponder over,It does look a bit convenient with weights and timeframes as to when it suits mind you.Just the 6 men in his top 10 (11 in top 20 with 1 black fighter (2 Black fighters in the top 40 for Mr Amnesty International,For someone who took on all the great black fighters its revealing) Which way do these damn parentheses go now )or back this way ) again? () .....

Lil Mickey Walker was outweighed by 10lb vs the betting Fav Savage & Bigger Harry Greb,See what i mean by convenient when you point out the bigger men Greb vs and point out the welterweights with Lamotta

He was also betting fav vs Tunney in their first battle your #1 Greb Win.


#21 Pound for Pound all time fighter Tunney,Thats interesting and seems a mammoth task to undertake,How long did it take you to complete? Do you have Jimmy Wilde or Manny Pacquiao in your list?

Reporters were mostly unanimous of a Greb victory,Anyone with a different opinion was shouted @ or talked down to

One writer Davis J Walsh basically calls Damon Runyon a clown for backing Tunney by KO

"This will be doubted without laying the doubter open to a seance of immoderate laughter,Tunney has never shown any particular ability....."



"In the first 10 seconds of the first round Greb broke Gene's nose in two places. Seconds later he opened a long, ugly gash over Gene's left eye, and from then on until the bell ended it in the 15th round Tunney's face was an inch-thick mask of blood. Doctors estimated he may have lost two quarts. "By the third round," wrote Grantland Rice, "Gene was literally wading in his own blood." The gore was so thick on Greb's gloves that he had to step back and hold them out so the referee could wipe them off with a towel."


Tunney himself, interviewed after the fight, had a less dramatic but perhaps more informative explanation of what had happened. He gave at least some of the credit to Abe Attell, the old (1904-1912) featherweight champion who was a ringside spectator. "Abe was sitting near my corner," said Gene, "and when he saw the sorry condition I was in he ducked out to the nearest druggist and bought his entire supply of adrenalin chloride, a coagulant. He slipped the bottle to Doc Bagley, my manager. Between rounds Doc's fingers flew. He is a superb cut man. He managed to stop the bleeding, but he couldn't keep Greb from busting my face apart after that."

As a boxing writer, I must have covered more than 10,000 fights. I never in all my life saw anyone take a more sustained beating or lose more blood than Tunney did that night. And yet as he lay on the rubbing table, in complete control of his mental faculties but too weak to sit up, he recalled every round of the fight from opening to closing bell, and discussed them like an impartial expert.


"I discovered early that it was possible for me to whip Greb," he said. "As each round went by, this discovery became a positive certainty."


https://vault.si.com/vault/1967/03/27/blood-sweat-toil-but-no-tears-from-tunney


The fight reports make it sound close and not the horror show its kind of made out to be like George A Romero's ultra violent Dawn of The Dead with Tunney landing plenty of heavy blows himself.

It aint a Colonel John Chivington scalp but still a famous one that will be remembered forever.

 

Hello you seem a nice polite fellow

I said he wasn't considered.

I didnt say Lamotta was the "GOAT",(Bait perhaps,I might have come in for some wrath had i chosen Graziano) Greatest of All Time is a hell of a title to put on someone's shoulders without much evidence in this thread until Greg Price99 came up with his evidence that would make the most stonefaced jury take notice.

I may narrow that Greb list down soon with all them 6round Newspaper battles & youtube opponents taken out,Lamotta's then might look equal

I'm no Stevie Wonder when it comes to boxing knowledge thats for sure Mr Cannon

Must be seen there's no doubt
He's the coolest one with the biggest mouth
He's Misstra Know-It-All

This content is protected

Read some disturbing stuff here recently and thats why im asking all these questions on Dirty Harry after reading facts about contracts,Facts about fake contracts,Facts about the personal lives of fighters & promoters i dont think they themselves even knew about all on this website recently on the 1920s era.Harry Greb was the frontlines during the roaring 20s

Two days ago in another thread one poster asked a question on a fighter then one poster kind of insinuated a fix was in when he knows himself what really happened.

So i am now Sgt Barnes from Oliver Stone's Platoon @The Mai Lai village and this is now unofficially a interrogation.

Im going to start with Greb himself @Calvary cemetery Pittsburgh ill go see for myself if that eye is made of glass


All the best and Adios Carnal

 

You're welcome JD85.

As I said, the ordering was very rough, done for speed, which is why I ranked multiple wins over the same fighters in one batch. If I sat down & properly analysed it, it's likely wins over the same fighters would be ordered differently dependant on how prime that fighter was in the respective fights. Indeed, the ordering in general would be different if I spent hours/days analysing in depth.

For the purposes of ranking, I don't consider race. Just the quality of fighters beaten & lost too, the timings, circumstances of the fights, etc.

I did factor in size to my ordering. e.g. Of all Greb's wins, I rank Walker the highest on my p4p list, yet I listed him as Greb's 9th best win, because Greb outweighed him by 7lbs & the likes of Tunney, T. Gibbons & Loughran were all naturally bigger than Greb.

I don't factor in betting favourites or who was expected to win, when evaluating wins. Logically, it doesn't make sense to do so, to me. If the best fighter in history was always favoured to win, because he was the best fighter in history, does that mean he shouldn't be ranked the best fighter in history, because he was always the betting favourite?

I started making cursory all time p4p rankings over 20-years ago. I properly started researching them during lockdown. My p4p top 50 is still a work-in-progress, so 3-years & counting, some weeks no time spent at all, others several hours. I have Wilde #16 & Pacquiao #19.

 

Thanks again for a honest assessment.Factoring everything including race,betting odds,weights,experience etc ive seen mentioned as facts in the past on here and extremely important when certain fighters are involved,So ill play that game with Harry

On the betting ye i like to know what they were at the time,It gives you a sense of what they thought.In 200 years Buster Douglas's odds will highlight how great Mike Tyson was seen 1990,A couple of Roberto Duran's big scalps cost the bookie a fortune.Terry McGovern v Joe Gans its good to know

20years damn! Fair play.I'll keep a eye out for a thread when you complete it

 

I finally found the clip I mentioned earlier in this thread. Tunney's first visit to Australia. He's asked about his toughest fight and answers Harry Greb with a brief description of his not so happy experience against the Human Windmill.


https://tinyurl.com/ykhcdyk7

 

How refreshing, a nice back and forth, with no acrimony, you have grown in stature in my eyes buddy, have seen your posts and you know more than you profess, a little bit of humility is welcome on the site, look forward to our next chat.
stay safe hombre.

 

What an amazing clip !!!! Great post. First time I ever heard Tunney speak. Wow !

 

Interesting to see that. So Tunney was at a disadvantage from round 1 having his nose broken and both eyes opened up. He was clearly not at his best when he took his first and only loss to Greb.

A rematch is an evaluation of greatness. For the loser their morale is down , they lack confidence and carry self doubt. The victor of the previous bout has confidence on his side.
Rematches are always the test of greatness because to win you have to overcome those mental setbacks but it also shows you have the skill to learn and adapt to yourself and the opponent. Tunney excelled and proved he was better than Greb while coming off a loss.

Greb could never achieve another victory over Tunney and when you factor the state of Tunny in the first contest its fair to say Greb could only defeat a Tunny who was hampered by injury.
His greatness is always linked to that one-off win over Tunney but recent video footage puts the value of that win into perspective.

Where's ShameUs now lol

 

Hell no!
There's not even any film of his that we can go off.

The only descriptions we have of him are from newspapers (the paragons of non biased, non agenda driven truths).

Also, he thrived in a segregated era. That is a huge knock on his legacy.

Even if he himself did not draw any color lines, his era and his contemporaries did, vastly watering down the competition.