Sugar Ray Robinson would have cut Greb to pieces

This thread is pretty interesting so far.

 

I posted this a while back.


I watched Greb's training film again, which includes some sparring. While it's just a training film, I do believe you can pick up some of Greb's styles and tendencies.

Described as fast, amateurish, and a little dirty with the stamina of two men in their prime, I think the video shows something else.

DEFENSE. Greb was boxing with his left glove high in near his face. Sometimes he waves it around, other times he sticks his arm out to block or parry the blow. In way he's a bit like Jack Johnson with the glove blocking however Greb adds additional layers around this " glove-like " defense that has become nearly extinct.

1 ) He's very quick and balanced. Greb circles around the ring like a spinning top in control of its actions meaning he's on balance and hard to time or catch. He’s anything but flat-footed and stationary. Slower footed fighters aren't going to catch him. Could he spin and move then use the momentum and change it to a punch? I did not see that on this film but believe its plausible due to his balance.

2 ) He's quick to duck a blow, or bend at the waist to attack. This takes makes him tough to jab and hit for fighters who mostly target the head from mid to long range.

3 ) He has fast hands, and once in range, likes the uppercut or the body as well as the head. In my opinion, once he lands he then buries his man with a blizzard of punches, sometimes mixing in elbows or fouls, other times spinning away. He wasn't called " The human windmill for nothing."

Upon a ref breaking the action, he's back to moving and circling with stamina as if he just started the fight. With a top level chin, this type of style is very hard to solve. You really have to press him and in-fight back all night. Some might view this style as it as fast & messy boxing that spoils the other fighter's more classical or orthodox mode of preference but for Greb, it worked in the spades. Very few since had the right attributes to replicate it.

[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNE6V_RyBwg[/url]

 

I'd pick Robinson. Greb I believe would have trouble with a skilled power puncher with speed simply because of his style and lack of fire power.

While he's durable as heck and could fight all night, Robinson, for the most part, had excellent stamina in the later rounds and speed to match. SRR could hit!

Greb beat Walker partly based on superior stamina in the later rounds. A grinder type who kept his foot on the gas, a bit like Marciano, but without the punch and likely with much better skills and speed.

I have an interest in seeing the scorecards on Greb fights. My thinking was he was not a shut out master type on the scorecards, like say Calzaghe, Whitaker or Mayweather was, rather he was a whirlwind of activity type who set a pace that few could match and lost his share of rounds long the way because he wasn't very tall or powerfull.

I'd also like to know if possible how many times Greb was down. Perhaps an impossible number to find due to his amount of fights.

 

I'd pick Greb probably. He was more a middle/light-heavy, and Robinson was a welter/middle.

 

I can tell you that in 1916 stadiums ltd offered Jack Dillon $7500 (roughly given the exchange rate at the time for pounds) to face Darcy, to which Dillon laughed at and refused considering he had just been paid $15,000 to fight Frank Moran in New York. So no. Fighters werent making more in Australia and yes Darcy freely admitted the purses came faster and bigger in the usa than in Australia. Darcy never saw the day he made a purse of $15,000. Dillon did. Mike Gibbons did. You can go down the list. Americans went to Australia because it was an all expenses paid vacation where they could pick up money as well. Not because the purses were so huge. Some guys no doubt found it easier to make money there because they were big fish in a small pond there. Guys like Brown, Christie, Crouse, etc. Lower tier guys who had to scratch to make a lot of money in the sport at the time. Guys like Gibbons, Dillon, etc didnt need to travel half way around the world to make bigger purses. They could do that at home in relative comfort. And to get those fights, and those purses who ended up having travel: Darcy. Because at the end of the day guys like Clabby, McGoorty, and Chip were already starting to fade from the scene in America when Darcy fought them. Their careers were just starting to peter out and found new life in Australia where, again, they became big fish in a small pond. Smith, Christie, Brown, those guys all always had to work their asses off to get purses. They had to travel and hustle to make money. They were never superstars. So getting to be treated like a big shot in australia and getting a 30% larger purse and free vacation to those guys is of course enticing. But if you pay a guy that normally makes $1000 for a fight $1500 or even $2000 but cant even come close to the purses of the marquee fighters are you really sure you want to brag about the money being in Australia? Again, the largest purse Darcy was ever offered or paid in Australia didnt come close to what he was going to make in the USA. He was paid $1000 a week just to spar on stage while here. Its doubtful he ever made that much money over the same duration in his life in Australia. Id have to see it to believe it.

 

To try to dissect Harry Greb's true style of fighting based on a little clip of Greb sparring with an old Phil Jack O'Brien,who was assisting Greb for his fight with the great Mickey Walker, is an exercise in futility...How would any of us look sparring
with an older man before a movie picture camera you were not familiar with ???
I have used this ****ogy before...A thoughtful person would not have to be in the midst of a typhoon to judge the severity of it's destructive power, he would judge the typhoon by the damage it inflicted in it's aftermath... Harry Greb along with the great Jack Britton and Maxie Rosenbloom are NOT TO BLAME
for the fact that combined these 3 great fighters had a total of 943 bouts in their careers , not one film exists today of them in a boxing bout...Harry Greb
to all who saw him fight and to his worthy opponents many of them larger HOF
fighters, RAVED about him to the end of their days, as my dad did who saw him ringside...Earnest Hemingway,once said publicly to a public figure " imagine, he never heard of one of our greatest Americans Harry Greb" ! The best description of the Pittsburgh Windmill was given by an opponent of Greb's who after the bout said " I felt the ceiling opened up and a truckload of boxing gloves came down crashing on my head "...Greb was a great. great fighter who's like we will never see again....Mickey Walker and Maxie Rosenbloom and Gene Tunney as well as Jack Dempsey along with Benny Leonard thought so, and so should any thoughtful boxing fan...I'm outa here...

 

It's not fair to judge Greb by the one piece of footage.

But the best I can sum it up; he can do anything on his bicycle. Punch hard, jump in and out, bob and weave, throw any punch and any combo.

 

Ok, that's fine you are talking about 1915 and before. How much was the biggest purse he made in 1915? Because it still wasn't anywhere near what fighters made in the USA. Gibbons made $15,000 for one single fight in 1915. How much did Darcy make the entire year? The Adelaide Mail for February 13, 1915 has an article where Baker states that in the last 18 months Les Darcy made NEARLY 2000 pounds. At that time that would translate to roughly $7,888. In August of 1916 Baker was offering the same amount for any of the marquee middleweights to come to Australia and face Darcy. Like I said, the year before Gibbons got $15,000 to face McFarland and Dillon got the same to face Moran. Why travel to Australia to fight on Darcy's home turf for less? Less than six months later Darcy was offered $25,000 and 33.3 percent of the motion picture rights to face Mike Gibbons in America. Lets pretend Darcy was making double what his opponents (he wasn't, often he was splitting the purse 50/50 with his opponents) So lets pretend he gets paid $15,776 to fight George Chip (He didnt. He made FAR less, but lets pretend). Which purse sounds more attractive to you by far: $15,776 or $25,000 plus 33.3 percent of the motion picture rights? In 1915 Darcy made the largest purse of his career to that point in his second fight with McGoorty held in December of that year and held before 15,000. Prices were raised for the tickets of this fight so before a large crowd and unusually high ticket prices Darcy was paid only about $4,000. So he clearly wasn't making anywhere near what marquee American fighters would make fighting before such large audiences. I don't think your excuse for why purses were smaller in 1916 jives either (they weren't, they were larger). You say the business dried up and so Darcy who was supposedly making more in 1915 than he was in 1916 had to come to America to make his fortune but Darcy's last fight in Australia was in late 1916 and it was fought before a similarly large audience as the 15,000 and 16,000 he was drawing down in 1915. So unless you are saying that Stadiums dramatically reduced its pricing (it didn't) or that the Australian pound dramatically crashed in 1916 (it didn't, it was worth one American penny less than it had been in 1915) your reasoning for Darcy leaving is incorrect. The reality is that purses were ALWAYS higher in America and that's why Darcy came here (that and the fact that he thought he was about to be conscripted which would have prevented him from earning). Not because people suddenly stopped paying admission to his fights and the purses dried up. I'll give you another example. You clearly think that Darcy was better than Jack Dillon. In November 1916 (the same time a fight could have been held in Australia that Baker was offering $7,888 to Darcy's potential opponents for) Gibbons was paid a guaranteed $10,000 to fight Dillon and didn't have to travel around the world to do it in his opponents back yard.

Its a little bit telling that you constantly trumpet how much you know about Darcy and how you have all of these sources at your finger tips but when called on something very simple, figures that simply do not lie, you suddenly cant put your hands on them. Yet here I am sitting on the other side of the world and I can pull these figures up in 10 minutes. Like I said, you can argue styles, and intangibles like greatness but purse figures and attendance figures don't lie. I pulled all of the above from Australian sources and they paint a pretty clear indication of who was making what, when, and how.

 

Greb seems to have a lot of the characteristics that we see in fighters who beat Robinson, or gave him very competitive fights.

Combine this with his size advantage, and his incredible record, and it would be a rash man who dismissed his chances.

 

Agreed! SRR would have used the jab to create openings.

 

Mickey Walker was a pretty decent fighter. Greb lost to Flowers both times. Lost the majority of fights with Tunney. Lost to Gibbons twice. Loughran was alright but not an ATG.

Robinson beat Gavilan multiple times, Zivic multiple times, beat Lamotta 5/6 times stopping him in the last fight. Knocked out Graziano. Knocked out Bobo Olson multiple times. Knocked out Fullmer. Was winning against Maxim before the heat got to him. Retired the first time 131-3 and undefeated at welterweight his entire career. Had it not been for money troubles, Robinson would be remembered that way. In fact, Robinson planned on going for the Heavyweight title if he had won the Light Heavyweight.