Harry Greb,why do people rank a man they have never seen fight so high?

We know. You JUST ****ING SAW HIM, and the answer is **** NO! Lol you ****ing guys... you're as bad as republicans, if you don't want to believe it nothing you see, hear or learn will make you believe it.

And the fact that you say Greb has the 'greatest resume' and in the next breath say Armstrong accomplished more is just pure comedy gold. My question would be this: If you're dumb, and you KNOW you're dumb (and I know you do) why do ever post anything except humble questions for smarter people?

 

I'll ignore all the sly digs for now.

Yes Greb has the greatest resume in history.

Armstrong simultaneously was the best FW, LW and WW before going on to be the best MW in the world, staggering achievements.

Robinson in the championship victory over LaMotta looks like the perfect fighter.

 

I'm not making sly digs, I'm outright saying that you're an idiot.

 

FFS it's laughable how some judge Greb on that footage. O'Brien is in his fifties,the guys are obviously clowning around,and some of the clowns on here write Greb off on that 40 seconds of footage.
So this guy who beat Tunney,Walker,Loughran,Flowers and Gibbons amongst many others is written off on that basis.
He probably beat more top class fighters than any other fighter in history.

 

Yeah i'm sure you are pal. Unless you also possess a first class honours degree i'm gonna assume you aint as smart as me.

Boxing wise I can't see how you can possibly disagree with the quality of his resume. Nor the significance of Armstrong's achievements.

 

A middleweight fighting a heavyweight back then makes a lot more sense than it does now, because the heavyweights of the time would mostly be light heavyweights today. That sort of thing does still happen. Look at Bernard Hopkins. When Harry Greb fights Gene Tunney the weight discrepancy is ten or fifteen pounds. He wasn't fighting a 240 lb monster like David Tua or Wlad Klitschko.

Meanwhile, Sam Langford's reputation as a giant killer while impressive is nothing modern fighters don't do today. Langford was outweighed by 30 pounds when he fought Jack Johnson and 40 pounds when he fought Jim Johnson, but just in recent times Ruslan Chagaev and David Haye both beat Nikolai Valuev who outweighed both by at least 90 pounds. It makes one think of what's been happening in the UFC a century later. Fedor Emelianenko was sort of fat middleweight who caught bigger opponents (Semmy Schilt, Choi Hong-man) with massive holes in their games, and was dominant until the game evolved past him.

I would be willing to support a theory for an evolutionary period to the sport. You can see the same thing happening with MMA. In the early 90s it's toughman street brawler level with local heroes. By 2000 it's a profession, but most of the top level guys are one sided in their technique, second hand in their athleticism, and would probably be high school wrestling coaches or karate instructors if they weren't fighting. Ten years after that, techniques have mostly been worked out and we're starting to see the first group of high level athletes who grew up training for this sport.

I think you need a few things to get ATG athletes in any sport. You need the athlete, of course, but you also need the leisure to properly train. An athlete must have the money and time, which means he must be a full time professional with no second job to distract him. He also needs access to the best trainers and coaches. A great athlete doesn't learn technique by instinct and practice alone, he must have help from older wiser advisers in order to make the most of his talent. How long does something like that take? First for the sport and it's techniques to evolve at the professional level, say 20 years and then for the new generation to grow up training it with the best of the last generation. Then you have to consider the amount of exposure the sport has had, to accurately gauge it's talent pool. How many people are competing? How many boxing gyms are there in an area?

Whether or not the sport had enough time to evolve to it's highest level by the time Harry Greb has his career depends on when you start the clock on boxing as a professional sport. If the modern era of boxing starts in 1867 with the Marquess of Queensberry Rules then I'd say it had enough time. But there was that prohibition period and that might have withered the harvest and set it back generations. If it started in 1892 with Corbett fighting Sullivan, then maybe it hadn't finished evolving by Greb's time.

Some of that early footage does look clumsy with way too much grappling for my taste, but I want to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it's just a style I'm not as familiar with as modern boxing. Also, maybe the fights that we're seeing on film from that era aren't he greatest fights, or the boxers with the greatest styles. On the surface, you want to look at a phenomenal record like Grebs and think "That's impossible! The only way to get a record like that is to fight bums." But considering that Sugar Ray Robinson, Willie Pep, and Henry Armstrong have similar records, and they weren't fighting bums, maybe it's just possible that Greb was an ATG like most people say.

 

Very good post!

 

Look at all the great names ,only man beat Tunney,beat micket walker,jeff smith top 10,lookat the record

 

The strongest eras and highest participant rate/saturation levels came from the 30s-50s.

SRR is the greatest.

 

I'll take Langford. No other fighter can boast such an all-time resume over such a wide range of weights.

 

Of course you're right most sports move on. I mean Leonard,Hearns,Duran,Hagler,Benitez and company from the eighties couldn't have coped with todays super athletes and more skilful technicians.

 

testimonials of fighters he beat and people who have seen him in action, adds weight to his status.....

 

Most felt Greb really beat Tunney twice. He also wasn't scared to slap around the black champs when most wouldn't go near them. Just ask Flowers.:hi:

Flowers
Walker
Tunney (2 times really)
Rosenbloom
Loughran
Gibbons

I mean really? How can you ignore those huge atg wins. So did Napoleon really not try and take over Europe just because you didn't see it happening :verysad