Very hard with no footage of one and very limited footage of the other but i think Greb should probably be favoured based upon what we know.
Ketchel. You know all the old timers say Stanley was great and he is mention in the top fighters of the first 50 years. Harry never seems to be in those old polls for some reason. There has to be a reason for that. Maybe because the writers thought he was a dirty fighter? I don't know. But I go with the full speed Ketchel to win. Every bit as rough and a harder puncher for sure. Great match-up though, whoever wins. They say Ketchel, Dempsey and Graziano were made of the same clothe. I can't see any middleweight overwhelming The Assassin. This is another matchup where guys who actually saw both wrote in books that they thought more of Stanley. There HAS to be reasons for Greb's constantly being left out of these lists back then of greatest (like in Fleischers'). I think they may have thought he was just too dirty, regardless of the shower and cleaning job done on him by recent authors.
Charley Rose certainly rated him: 1 - Stanley Ketchel 2 - Harry Greb 3 - Mickey Walker 4 - Mike Gibbons 5 - Tiger Flowers 6 - Eddie McGoorty 7 - Jeff Smith 8 - **** Tiger 9 - Frank Klaus 10-Billy Papke But right behind Ketchel.
You dont want to go up against Greb with only a punchers chance and i think thats what this boils down to. I think ketchel would have to stop greb to win and i think thats a very remote possibility.
Fleischer made no secret that he idolized Ketchel so theres one reason why he rated him so highly but Emerson ****erson who was editor of the Rocky Mountain News and later the Grand Rapids Herald and also managed Harry Lewis and acted as a promoter at various times knew Ketchel a damn sight better than Fleischer ever did and saw a lot more of him as well. He had a great deal of respect for Ketchel but rated Greb as the greatest fighter he had ever seen. But that being said, Papke overwhelmed Ketchel in their second fight, and held him close to even in their fourth fight (many thinking he should have won) by infighting. Greb's own townsman Frank Klaus sent Ketchel to the hospital. So its not modern revisionism that Ketchel is viewed as the human being he was. Its just that some of us dont have the rose colored glasses on that someone like Fleischer, who cast a long shadow, did. And for the record, if Ketchel was cut from the same cloth as Graziano hed get his ass handed to him by Greb without question because Graziano is one of the weakest MW champions in history. The guy feasted on ex WW and LWs who were all past their primes (and couldnt always beat them) before getting a greatly faded Zale.
A little follow up on who would have won between Stanley Ketchel and Harry Greb ?. Nat Fleischer who saw Ketchel fight and wrote a book on Ketchel that I have and saved from Hurricane Sandy a few years ago always chose Stanley Ketchel as the greatest MW he had ever seen in his Ring Magazine... BUT---in the last few years of his life Fleischer in his monthly Question Box column answered a readers question of Nat, who would have won a bout between Stanley Ketchel and Harry Greb ? Nat Fleischer answered the reader HARRY GREB, for what it's worth... P.S. During Rocky Graziano's hayday ,Rocky my favorite excitement fighter, was being compared to Stanley Ketchel, because of his slam, bang, take no prisoner's style of fighting. Nat Fleischer wrote a column shooting down the comparison, explaining that there was no comparison and Ketchel was so much the greater fighter of the two... As for my opinion, I cannot see any middleweight ever beating a well rested Harry Greb in his prime. You would have had to ko him to beat Greb and in his last 280 or so fights against everyone, everywhere no one could ever do that. Once after sparring with Greb , the retired ex champion Jack Johnson told Harry, "you are the fastest fighter I ever saw"... PPS. the one man who would have known best who would have won that bout between Ketchel and Greb was Phil. Jack O'Brien who fought Ketchel twice and was flattened by Stanley once, in the second fight with O'Brien's head landing in a resin box, and later on trained a fading Greb in his great victory over a young prime Mickey Walker in 1925, would surely have had the best insight of who was greater Stanley Ketchel or Harry Greb ??? I have never read any article stating his valued opinion. Too bad...
Of course they did... because they saw Stanley first. It's as simple as that! With no footage of Greb, it's hard to make a pick - but from what I've have seen of Ketchel, Greb would have to be a lot worse than his resume indicates to lose this one!
