Were there ever any rough punchstats for a Greb fight, for example, done by a ringside newsmen? Was this ever done for any other fighters? It'd be interesting.
Yes. However usually they were in a negative sense. So and so only threw " x " amount of punches in the round. Some old timers threw a good amount of punches. I tend to beleive the low punch volume fighters would have a tough time winning on the world class level in a modern era
But even back then some fights were cited as never stopping, such as Armstrong and Greb. Were any rough numbers ever taken of their fights?
I watched -on tape, of course- fiftteen minutes of Barney Ross Vs Armstrong and i still can't believe that such punch output, by both fighters, is possible. Amazing. And what ferocity.
The earliest punch stats (of sorts) that I've seen from the early days of the sport was when the referee of the controversial Jack McAuliffe/Young Griffo fight, Maxey Moore (who, I believe, was a friend or at least an acquantance of McAuliffe's), tried to use his counting of punches as a defense as to why he gave McAuliffe the ten round decision in that one. Apparently he used an indicator in each hand, counted only the "clean blows" landed (said he didn't count Griffo's "slaps"), wrote them down on a round-by-round basis, and at the end of the fight he was said to have a 137 to 123 count in favour of McAuliffe. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle has those stats in their postfight writeups.
Michael Hunnicut has done a lot of work on punch stats from historic fight films. The punch outputs in historic fights range from the sedate to the unbelievable.
A lot of the pioneers picked and placed punches more for a number of reasons... longer rounds, lighter gloves (more chance of injury)...etc...
Some of the early lightweights like Bat Nelson and Joe Rivers were clocking up 80+ punches per round in 45 round bouts and 90+ in 20 round bouts. The lightweights of that era particularly seem to have been little dynamos. Obviously this is hand picking exceptional cases but even so.
I remember Jack (Kid) Berg showing better workrate than even Henry Armstrong. Although they were only highlights of one fight, so no chance to count his stats.
