The way Cerdan fights is how I've envisioned Greb in the ring...Has anyone else try to evaluate how Greb might have operated? I've posted before, that Larry Kent an old trainer thought Cerdan did indeed resemble Greb 'With a wind mill style of coming forward and throwing punches' From the reports I've read, Greb was very fast of hand and foot...In a newspapaer article on harrygreb.com re the Walker fight, it stated that Greb was not as fast as he once was, but he was still faster than the welterweight, Mickey Walker...Cerdan certainly looks fast as well, with his hands and feet (agility from soccer, in an article by Mike Casey)perhaps he was not as quick as Harry, but he might have hit harder than Greb...Greb was more durable it's safe to say...His record backs that up... But I can imagine these two being similar with their approach. Greb's opponents look very good on film...Loughran,Gibbons,Walker,Norfolk,...I haven't seen the Mike Gibbons/O'Dowd fight. I'm very impressed with Cerdan on film, he looks relentless...I think that if the fight between he and Robinson had come off, it would have been a classic...What does the board think? Is it a realistic comparison or not?
Greb's style to me was a mix of the following fighters: The energy of Wayne McCollough. The roughness of Fritz Zivic The speed of Willie Pep. The Chin of Marvin Hagler. The heart of Henry Armstrong. The only thing Greb lacked was power.
reb had freakish powers of endurance,along the lines of Armstrong,Loughran said he learned to neutralise his assaults by starting fast andfing short punches to the body as Harry came in,I beleive Tunney adopted much the same tactics.
That's some mighty good attributes to have. And the thing with his power is not that he didn't have it(as he had a few one punch KO's in there) but that he didn't use it as it wasn't his style. In order to go all fight long non stop as he did, he relied on simply overwhelming and outworking his opponent, while not throwing the big bombs as they would tire him out more quickly. Only thing keeping him from my #1 ATG spot is lack of footage.
I was a long time skeptic of Mr Calzaghe but it is becoming increasingly apparent that he wanted to fight the best around for a good while before circumstances allowed it.
There lay similar stylistic traits, moreso when Cerdan was in his zippy, welterweight days, but Cerdan was always the more defensively conventional, shuffling fighter; Greb the more erratic, foul prone ball of energy with lots of lateral movement.
