Harry Greb vs. Ray Robinson

Oh please.

Your fetish for Roy Jones Jr. proved for all time that you don't accept any examples -no matter how persuasive- that would contradict your position. You are merely proving it again here.

 

Without a doubt, Greb was a nightmare for virtually any style. Robinson, however, rarely was the stronger man in the ring anyway ... early press clippings did present this often, they called him "frail-looking"... but Ray compensated by becoming a machine-gunner on wheels. And he could find a foxhole in the middle of the ring to launch grenades -like that straight right or looping hook to the body where he turned the glove around.

It is no coincidence, by the way at least in my way of looking at it, that 2 of the 3 greatest boxers ever were Armstrong and Greb -their styles were hell.

There is another thread out now that matches up Pryor and Whitaker. I haven't posted there yet... but am curious, who would you take there?

 

Do you notice, that you are basically trying to call the sports journalists that have just seen Robinson's fight the previous night, and are giving their observations, incompetent liars who have a natural bias against Robinson, even though they are praising his long-range fighting skills, cleverness, toughness, heart in all the remaining part of their fight reports, from which I took those quotes? The ones that are calling him uncrowned king of welters, only because he wasn't given a chance at the title. The same people are calling him one of the best fighters in the world not only at the time they were writing that, but of all time, comparing very well to other all-time greats. But they are pointing out this in-fighting vulnerability of his all the same. They are doing this later into 1940 (where you can no longer claim he's a green 1 or 2 years of experience guy), they are continuing this into 1950's (and the film confirms these observations).
It would have served your position in this debate better if you tried to argue that in-fighting skills are not really necessary to be a complete fighter (which is argueable, but less so than the other point you've stuck to), than this psychological denial about your favorite fighters.

 

I posted contemporary observations. If that doesn't make a point, then I don't know what does.

You are talking about 5 min video of it? They don't show round numbers, plus it's damn hard to figure what's going on in the ring, because of how poor the video is. The picture is shaking and flickering and there are dropped frames all the time where portions of fights (from a fraction of a second to several seconds) are missing, so that both fighters are jumping from one part of the screen to another in a blink of an eye. And I mean it, when I say all the time, there is hardly any part in the video where you can see the fight non-stop for 10 seconds, without it skipping several seconds here or there, or getting so distorted you don't recognize what's going on at all.

 

LaMotta avoided getting into slug-fest with Satterfield, he got caught flush once or twice during the fight and he was hurt and kept away from Satterfield, instead of coming at the opponent the way he usually does against other fighters. There was nothing like "walking through bombs", but a cautious fighting on LaMotta's part.

 

I absolutely did not call any of them incompetent liars who have a natural bias against Robinson. What you just did is create a caricature of what I did say and then attack that.

"The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:

1. Person A has position X.
2. Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
3. Person B attacks position Y.
4. Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself."

I did say that you have a natural bias and that your choice of references bespeak exactly that.

...and others were calling him a great all-around ring general. And the film confirms that he had a preference for the outside due to his height, reach, and speed. Your insertion of the view that this reveals an incompetent infighter is how you see it --it is not how everyone must see it.

Senya is Senya. Interpretation of the above: "You would have been better off agreeing with me than disagreeing because I am right, even when I'm wrong."

Once again, Senya-roy, your arguments have failed to persuade me of anything except your narrow mindedness.

...I noted that you do not address the bulk of my post.

 

Great thread this. It's why I love the classic section so much...keep it rolling.

PS-Aside from petty name-calling that is.

 

I'm working on that!

 

Haha...okay then.:good

 

What I have done was:
quote next-day fight reports where the newspaper journalists are pointing out this flaw in Robinson's arsenal. The only thing that I added on my own there, was only sum up their observations and call it what it is - weakness at infighting. By calling this view biased and wrong, automatically implies that you are calling the authors I quoted naturally biased against Robinson and plain wrong in their observations, meaning telling lies that do not correspond to reality.

After that you continue to ignore that part of my posts where I repeated several times, that there are many more examples of Robinson having no clue how to fight in close, except for clinching and holding, but you still continue with your excuses about him being green and inexperienced, as well as you fail to come up with examples of him showing good infighting skills on film in any fight you saw of him, which would be the first thing to do if you wanted to provide any serious counter-argument to what I quoted. And that can be understood, because you will hardly find any such examples. LaMotta fight - Robinson takes a beating on the ropes. Turpin fight consisted of lots of in-fighting and Robinson didn't know what to do there, only sticking to holding. Etc, etc.

 

I was trying to figure out what exactly you saw in the Angott fight, considering how it's of such awful quality (if we are talking about the same film), that you can't make much out of it at all, regarding tactics or skills of either boxer.

 

Benny Leonard, Joe Gans, preferred to stay at long range too, but when pressured they showed they could fight inside as well as they could fight outside, they didn't just hold and/or rest, but rolled with punches, blocked them and fired back to the body and head. It's impossible to improve on perfection your experts say? Add him better defense and better in-fighting skills and he'll be much closer to perfection than he had been. Both Gans and Leonard were better than Robinson in their completeness.

 

I cant add much to this thread that hasn`t already been said, but I will add my two cents by saying that both Greb and Robinson are two of the greatest fighters the sport of boxing has produced, and as such I think neither man would have had a easy nights work with the other. Greb may have been stronger physically and the busier fighter, but Robinson was likely the faster and more precise/accurate puncher between the two.

I would expect Greb to walk away the winner in their initial bout due to his unorthodox style and roughhousing tactics, with Ray probably nicking the return by the skin of his teeth. A third encounter might never take place due to Ray`s financial demands for the fight, and Greb`s unwillingness to have anything less than a 50'50 split of the purse. This is just mere speculation on my part, but I think it is plausible considering how Ray wasn`t interested in facing Carmen for a third time even though the money was there on the table, only Ray wanted the lion`s share of it and Carmen said no deal then.