I'm not talking the obvious sparring sessions or non fight attempts, but the actually fights people had with no decision rendered. Should they count on a fighter's record and should they be considered when discussion a fighter's resume?
they are rightly on a fighters career record but i am not sure about the effect they have on a fighters resume it may depend on whether there are any newspaper articles on the fights
Say, for instance, greb's nws victories over the lhw's of his era. I count them as equally as his official fights. The only time I don't is when the fight was clearly thrown or sparred.
Sometimes even having a newspaper report on the fight is not enough, as is the case, for example, with Freddie Welsh. One has to read more on him to understand he just didn't give a damn to newspaper decisions most of the time and went there to last the distance and grab the money. When he actually fought on the level, such as in the rematch with Benny Leonard, he showed what a wonderful fighter he was.
not saying he was a journeyman but today that attitude would have him described as one . and if he chose to not fight on the level then he must be marked down for that i would think
People are pretty lazy creatures and they adjust to the conditions they live/work in. You can't really appraise his class if you ignore that.
En contraire I think you can appraise it for just that reason. A man who could really turn it on on his day but was largely inconsistent and unmotivated. Dare I say that sounds similar to buster douglas and oliver mccall?
Not really. His defense was always top notch, whether motivated or not. It's only his offense that he rarely showed, but when he did, he proved it was top notch as well.
More like a james toney then? Either way I think nws fights do mean something and mean just as much as official fights. Does my head in seeing champions losing 6 nws fights a year where they got battered but not stopped so kept their belt. It's ridiculous.
Try and look at it like Roberto Duran losing to Esteban DeJesus in that non-title fight when RD was champion.
That was fought at light welter though with de jesus weighing in at 138. That's closer to lww than lw. For me that doesn't indicate anything about his championship status at lw.
From my perspective this is how I see it now. If your a champion and you lose a nws fight that has a decent writeup and recorded weights that are around your divisional limit, your claim is ****. A bog standard 6 round nws win/loss with no writeup and no recorded weights is very hard to fathom anything about so for championship purposes I'd just consider it as what it is at face value; a no decision fight. Practically treating it like a draw. I do appreciate the effort boxrec have put into tracing down news decision results and by and large I'll take their word when they say "4 nws voted for boxer a, 1 nws voted for boxer b so a gets the nws decision" that's perfectly fine. It's the smaller fights with no reports I'm dubious about. If just one newspaper was covering it, giving no write up then I'm not too sure what to make of it.
Looking into Grebs career he definitely wasnt the fighter he was in a title defense and we have Tommy Laughran confirming that. A typical Greb ND vs Rosenbloom comes to mind Written up by the greatest Greb writer of them all, Regis Welsh of the Pittsburgh Post Harrys portrayed as breezing into Cleveland, indulging in a pre fight party at onna the finer hotels, the name escapes me, warning Maxie pre fight hey kid dont get fresh and i wont hurt ya Maxie seizing the opportunity gets fresh and nails Greb with a good one in the 4th......BIG MISTAKE!!!!!...as Maxie recollected for the rest of his life Grebs response was pure fury. Lets just say MAXIE got very put in his place