If Greb footage is found and it is mediocre how would it change your view of his opposition??

This statement is crazy. Fighters from the modern era get in WAY easier than the old timers for the simple fact that the electors for the HOF dont know **** about old time boxing and the modern era fighters are elected way easier just on the basis of them being alive in order to show up to HOF events and draw crowds and sign memorabilia for the Brophy family to then sell. You can find WAY more undeserving fighters in the modern category than the old timers. Unless you are referring to the recent change by the IBHOF in which the old timers category cutoff date was extended to 1988 which is both crazy and does nothing to enhance a fighter like Greb's HOF scalp list. All this does is water the category down to get more living fighters to attend events for the Brophy's but it will likely also make it HARDER for actual old timers to get elected.

Never mind the fact that modern fighters today get in to the hall of fame based how many paper titles theyve won etc which is a ridiculously low bar compared to the old timers. That isnt to say the old timers have a some undeserving fighters. Personally I dont think Kid Norfolk or Billy Miske should be in the HOF which would cut Greb's number of scalps. I can see an argument for Houck though. He has a terrific record, was remarkably consistent, fought for over 20 years, and was hugely influential in Pennsylvania not just as a fighter but also as a judge, referee, and trainer when Pennsylvania was one of the best states in the Union for boxing.

 

The footage of him shadow boxing exists and he looks ridiculous. Everybody has seen it. He was just messing about is the most common excuse used.
I wasn't there at the time but im pretty sure they didn't waste film on guys just messing about. . The camera was pointed at him and rolling because he was showing off his "skills"

Also wonder if the footage is deliberately being hidden from public eye because it paints a very unflattering picture of his boxing "skill "

 

Two-thirds of Greb's fights had no judges. Two-thirds had no official scorecards. In two-thirds of those fights, no one lost points for fouling because there were no points to lose. There was no scoring system, no judges and no cards to remove points from. And, in nearly two-thirds of his fights, no one's hand was raised, not even Harry's, at the end of the fight because a knockout wasn't scored.

There's nothing to debunk.

That's about as common today as holding an NBA game, forgetting to turn on the scoreboard, refusing to penalize any players for any fouls until someone is ejected, no winner being named at the end ... and people waiting until the next day to ask reporters how many points they counted. Or how many free throws the other team would've received if there was actually someone there to blow the whistle and award free throws to the player who got fouled. It's ridiculous.

About one-third of Greb's fights actually had judges and had an official result.

Greb has an "official" record (when they decided to actually keep score with actual judges) of 9-5-1 against guys who held the title, which is just fine.

And his record in title fights is 5-2. Also fine.

He didn't win 40+ fights in 1919. He won 9. (Still impressive. But it wasn't 40+.)

Any number of champions in history have a much better official record in title fights and against other titlists.

Having a visual record is very important. Having actual officials keeping score in a distance fight is important.

People can argue that it's NOT important to keep score in a fight and it's not important to take away points and penalize boxers for fouls until they are blue in the face.

But it is.

When we can see Greb, he'll be scrutinized and bashed just like every other boxer on the planet is. I think Floyd Mayweather has a record of something like 25-0 against titlists and 28-0 in title fights, and people still eat him alive for his performances and the judging in those contests, because we can see them.

Greb has gotten off easy so far.

 

Sure buddy. You do you. Luckily youll continue to rant on a corner of the internet while real historians interpret real history. LOL.

 

Yup. Its a big conspiracy. LOL. We know for a fact he was filmed fighting Gibbons, Walker, and Ted Moore and may have been filmed fighting Tunney. He won all of those fights. Three of those fighters were hall of famers and and he dominated all of them in the fights that would have been filmed. Id be less concerned about Greb somehow looking bad against those guys in dominating them than I am about the people who look at Bob Fitzsimmons and Jim Corbett and think they could compete in 1920s much less the 1950s or 1980s.

 

That's already happening.

 

How many official results did he have? A little over 100.

How many "newspaper" results did he have? Roughly 200.

So, two-thirds were unofficial results (with no judges, no points being tallied, no points being deducted for fouls, and no official result) and one-third were official.

What's there to debunk?

 

There’s always a few debatables, but give it 100 years and all the top guys from certain eras are already in and they keep taking more.

We could be seeing Ernesto Espana and Mike Rossman and Angel Espada and Trevor Berbick all inducted over time … then look at all the wins over Hall of Famers people have.

 

Well, "we can see Ali in other fights" ... so if the tape of Berbick-Ali goes missing, I'm sure old Trevor will get in. (Just kidding. That's sarcasm.)

 

Every year, new people go in.

Every year, every fighter from Greb’s day has been eligible since the day they started voting. And they all remain eligible. So they can go in as old-timers every single time there’s a vote.

There are people from Greb’s era (and before and in the years that followed) who have had way more bites at the apple than guys from the 1980s and 1990s. And there are plenty of old-timers in who were bypassed a few times then got in … who are far from immortals.

You just admitted it yourself: That someone should be in the INTERNATIONAL boxing hall of fame because ‘he was very influential in Pennsylvania’ is pretty ‘crazy.’ Makes a great case for him being in the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame (presuming there is one) but THE hall of fame, not so much.

The 2023 class includes three in the modern category and three old-timers. Tiger Jack Fox is now becoming a Hall of Famer … how many times has he been passed over and NOT made it until finally they got around to him and said, ‘what the heck, let him in’?

So Tiger Jack could have been inducted anytime from 1990 to 20023 … That’s more than three decades he’s been able to get in and now everyone who beat him now gets ‘beat a hall of famer’ on their ledger. How long will it be before the 1990 equivalent of Tiger Jack gets in and all of the 1990s guys get that added to their resumes? Young Firpo beat him a couple of times and Battling Bozo fought him to a draw … maybe this will help them get indicated one day, lol.

 

Hold up , hold up.
He beat Tunney only ONCE out of about 6 fights. So this post is generalizing and ignores context.
Context matters.
Grebs only win was against a Tunny who was injured from the first round. All the subsequent fights Greb lost against a healthy non-injured Tunney.
Tunney is routinely referenced to prove Grebs greatness as if Greb was better. But the full fight series proves Tunney was the better man.

He dominated all these men you said. Thats straight up dishonesty. Everything about this man's career is shrouded with dishonesty and this post is further proof of it.
There's a very real possibility that Harry had a skillset that was no better than Chris Eubank Jr.

 

Get ready for a 10,000-word dissertation from a self-published author who doesn’t know how to use the paragraph key explaining how Regis Welsh of Greb’s hometown newspaper in his totally unbiased opinion as the finest man ever born of a woman thought his buddy Greb won all the encounters with Tunney, lol.

 

Klopton I understood with a Metaphysical degree of comprehension precisely what you were saying.
I was not debating these things.
IF I disagreed I would have zero reluctance to argue.

But your post again seems to have no connection to what I just wrote.
You are using my replies as a launch pad to attack other's skepticism & reiterate points that you already made clear.

 

100 years? People are already saying that

 

Why are we acting like Greb was ever a fundamentally sound fighter? Every description of the man emphasizes how amateurish his style looked, so the shadowboxing video probably wasn't even that far off on how he really looked.

“Greb doesn’t box. That’s why he can beat the boxers. They know what a boxer ought to do, and that’s just what Greb never does.”—Robert Edgren

“Boxers are lost before Greb because he doesn’t respond to the usual boxing movements.”—Arkansas Democrat

“There’s no use trying to be scientific with Greb. He pays no attention to it. He hit me so often I didn’t see anything but stars, and there wasn’t a punch that came over the way it ought to.”—Gene Tunney, 7/2/1922

Greb is far different from the average boxer. He does things that others tried. When the average boxer maps out a campaign for a contest, he bears in mind the strong points of his opponent and how he does this or that thing. Any boxer, however, who sets out to line up methods to thwart Greb will have his hands full.

“I saw him have even that super-boxer, Mike Gibbons, tied into a half dozen knots one night in Pittsburgh and you know that anybody who can treat Mike in that scandalous manner must be pretty much of a fighting article.” –Ed W. Smith

“Greb is fast and bounds like a kangaroo all over the ring, hitting from awkward positions. One can never tell when he is going to let fly a solid punch or a light tap….No matter how good a boxer may be he will have a hard time figuring out Greb.”—Mike Gibbons

“How can you make a good showing against a fellow who does everything backwards?”—Jeff Smith

“He is the hardest man in the world to fight, because he does everything wrong and shows a fellow up.” –Tommy Gibbons

He was the windmill, shooting punches from every angle, catapulting himself at the other fellows with a ferocity and suddenness that could not be handled by pure boxing skill.”—Ed Hughes, Brooklyn Daily Eagle

“Greb was a puzzle to all boxers, trainers and managers….When his opponent thought Harry was about to lead, he would jump back out of range and make the other fellow look silly. Then, when his rival thought he was about to rest, Greb would cut loose with a volley of blows which came from every direction with the speed of a hurricane and landed on every vulnerable spot of his rival’s anatomy from the waistline to the top of his head.

“He always kept his adversary guessing on what he would do and usually did opposite to what the other bucko expected.”—George Barton

Wait, I'm supposed to be surprised that this dude looks bad in his shadowboxing? The guy who 'does everything wrong' according to Tommy Gibbons? It's just a fact that, in spite of Greb's fundamental flaws, he was able to achieve success against technically sound fighters.