If you've never seen someone fight,

Even if the fighter deserves it . this is dumb like hell rating a fighter that you never watched

 

You no rate Greb/WW Robinson?

 

Depends on their resume, respected historians opinions etc.

I’ve never seen Greb fight.

Granted he looked like utter dog**** on that video when he was shadow boxing and the like, but when you hear about who he beat, how they looked, what divisions he beat them in etc then you have to accept that he was something else.

 

In the pro ring , I saw live, Sugar Ray Leonard vs Daniel Mendoza, March 24 1979, KO 1, Alexis Arguello vs Ruben Castillo, Jan 20 1980, Arguello won TKO 11. Thomas The Hitman Hearns vs Randy Shields, April 25 1981, won by Hearns, TKO 12. I saw the Ali vs Patterson title fight on closed circuit tv, live on Nov 22 1965, won by Ali, TKO 12. I saw the Marvelous Marvin Hagler vs Roberto Duran, Nov 10 1983, won by Hagler, by decision and Ali vs Frazier II, on Jan 28 1974, won by Ali. The Ali and Hagler fights were seen on closed circuit television. All great fights. If I had not seen any boxing matches through the years, I would know nothing about this great sport that I really enjoy. Over the years I saw many great fights on television.

 

Depends imo. You can have a strong grasp on how great someone is without much footage. However, you can't assess how good someone is without footage. You can gauge and infer that Greb is the best ever, but you can't assess the intricacies and minimalist details of a style without watching it.

Sure, you can assess how great they are by going off résumé and achievements but you can't pre their abilities from reports imo.

 

You can judge robinson perfectly because we watched him at mw. And greb on the paper had Good wins but i can't judge a fighter who i never watched on film fighting

 

Because respected figures have seen them.

Roger Mayweather sang Duran’s praises and JCC’s praises in interviews.

Imagine not seeing them, yet Roger waxes lyrical about them. See where this is going?

 

By the way, if you're looking to change that I'd speak to @ChrisJS, or you can read these.

 

Well go and watch some Jofre on YouTube then.

 

You can form remarkably accurate perceptions of how a guy fights by reading about his fights, looking at his results and seeing one or two of his opponents fight.
Anybody that remembers reading the results and ringside reports in the back of Ring magazine knows what I am talking about. And you remember feeling pretty good about yourself when you finally got to see a guy fight and he fought like you had figured he would.

 

There may not be footage available of Greb, but what we do have is records, accounts, and footage of his opponents, who look pretty good and have good records and accounts themselves.

In contrast, for instance Jeffries for me doesn't pass the "eye test"... He looks awful and inept on film to me. People debate here about his opponents and accounts, and those things negating themselves being so debatable, I have to go on what I see. And what I see is a guy who would have NO business in there with the other HW greats that are discussed on these threads.

Greb fails the eye test, at least playful sparring with an old contemporary icon, smiling and laughing at one point in the film, so in that case I defer to his record, accounts, and watching what's available of Walker and Tunney, both of whom should get a nod of approval from most astute boxing students and armchair knowitalls when they see the available footage...

If Greb splattered Tunney's nose in the first round (I could be wrong, but it was early in the fight) and basically put him through a meat grinder for the remainder of the fight the first time, regardless of what I see of Greb, I've seen Tunney too, and anyone who pulls that off is a monster.

 

I like this answer.

I think to have a rounded a view as possible of a fighter, then footage has to play a part somewhere. Many are happy to rate Greb (as the obvious example) without this, but many aren't.

It's certainly easier to rate Greb p4p than H2H - I personally find that impossible and it's why I never contribute to mythical head to head matchups on this forum that involve him.