Is there no film whatsoever of Harry Greb in an actual fight?

All champions do it. When Johnny Kilbane got $50-60,000 to defend against Danny Frush he wouldnt leave his dressing room until the referee he wanted was agreed upon. The referee for the Carlos Monzon-Denny Moyer fight travelled to Italy with Monzon and even carried his bags for him. Even Greb occasionally made sure that his championship was protected in ND fights away from home by demanding a referee he trusted. And thats the crux of the argument. It can give the impression of impropriety, and in some cases it clearly was (such as McTigue-Stribling 1) but often times it was purely innocent in that the champion simply wanted someone he trusted to be fair and not steal his championship with an unjust DQ or something. Its a high stakes game when you are champion and your livelyhood is on the line. Youd be stupid not to make an effort to protect yourself against devious acts that could rob you of that livelihood. Is there any evidence to suggest that Jack Johnson's draw with Jim Johnson was crooked? Ive read first hand reports that suggest the fight was unsatisfying but that the decision wasnt unjust. Those are two entirely different things and anyone trying to draw a parallel between them is once again exhibiting their bias unless they have solid proof (which as yet I havent seen in any of Mendoza's ramblings).

 

Might this be a reason why close calls and bad decisions seldom go against the champion's team picking the ref and the judges? I think so.

Louis and Ali with better judges likely have 1-2 losses on their resume. Ali for sure.

Let's not pretend that boxing is a business and those given work at a high rate of pay aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them.

 

Well, the old adage is that you have to TAKE the championship, i.e. really prove your are the better man. Not simply eek out a slim decision. If you want to harp about champions getting perks in fights why are you even a boxing fan? You might as well ***** that grass is green or that **** stinks.

 

So that's what the smell was!
Seriously I think we have to make a major differentiation between a top fighter fighting 20-30 times a year and once or twice. Only top amatures to-day fight twenty times a year at a top level but obviously only over three rounds.Even then the top guys drop the odd decision, bad judging or sometimes not just as up up for a low key fight as an opponent.

 

With all due respect Klompton, I don't think that's the point Dubblechin is trying to make.
From what I gather from reading all this thread (in the hope of finding some info on Greb footage), Dubblechin is trying to say that seeing actual footage of Greb will tell us if he actually won fights that historians/newspapers credit him for, or if some of his wins are actually noteworthy, as in did he win fair and square or did he won dirty, or his opponent was in bad shape that night. Basically, we can evaluate the context in which he won or lost some fights.
The only problem I see with his reasoning is that just 1 or 2 matches won't suffice, we'd need at least a dozen in order to do a pretty accurate evaluation.

Again, with all due respect, I beg to differ. If all we had about Rocky were exaggerated tales from guys like Bert Sugar, we'd think he's pretty much unbeatable.
But given that I've seen him with my own eyes, I wouldn't give him a snowballs chance in Hell to beat up guys like Ali or Tyson.
Another example: Ali vs Liston rematch. If I hadn't seen the fight, I might have believed the crap Ali invented (anchor punch) and that he actually KOd Liston.. Having seen it, I know it was a dive.
Another thing worth mentioning is Marciano's busted nose against Ezzard Charles. By today's standards, that fight would be stopped and he'd loose on cuts.
That's another point that I think Dubblechin was making: that based on the way they scored fights then Greb won (you said something like who looked better at the end won, regardless of how many rounds he won/lost), but by modern standards we'd award those fights to his opponent.

To sum this up, how Greb looks:
1. might change his rating on the ATG list if we see that historians/newspapers were wrong in some of the decisions they gave him (Greb might benefit from this or not)
2. will definitely change our perception on how well he'd do on a hypothetical H2H, prime vs prime fight

And finally, sorry for bumping such an old thread, but this might help us find some footage. I'm dying to see how he fought.

 

Klompton, is your improved film also available on youtube ?

 

Just 5 seconds would do lol .. i bet somebody somewhere has some but is keeping it under wraps

 

No video? Are we even sure Harry Greb was a real person?