What would Harry Greb look like on film?

I certainly don't doubt that it happened.

 

Probably not. I think in those days film was on a nitrate base and it was unstable over the years. One can hope, but I think not.

 

I imagine Harry Greb looking very unorthodox is his style.
Punches coming from ridiculous angles at ridiculous speed, with a load of fouls flying in perpetual motion.
Michael Spinks, Roy Jones Jr, and Rocky Marciano all rolled into one - with less power than those big hitters but considerably more volume.
I imagine him doing something like what Calzaghe did to Lacy against most his opponents, but with more fouls and more speed.
Defensively I see him as slick as Duran, or slicker than any aggressive fighter than ever lived.

 

Armstrongs got some underrated power, especially in his earlier divisions. Greb mainly wore you down thru surreal accumulation from what i can gather.

 

The rumor, of course, is that some footage *has* survived and is being hoarded by a handful of collectors. There is at least one vendor online who claims to have footage of Dempsey and Greb sparring, but when you inquire you get hemming and hawing. Until I see at least a single frame captured from the footage I'm more inclined to believe that it has been lost to time and neglect, like the known-to-be-filmed footage from Greb vs Walker (last viewed in the 1950s), and any claims to the contrary are based on misidentification.

 

By most accounts, he was a tricky pressure fighter who was difficult to catch with a clean punch, and who relied on volume punching (and a lot of dirty tactics) to overwhelm an opponent. Something tells me that a fighter like that wouldn't have been easy for any middleweight to fight.

 

Assuming he didnt get DQ first.

 

I just imagine him as a hybrid of Zivic and Duran.

 

Poor,

because MOST of the early footage is terrible and doesn't conyey Proper Movement, in fact a lot of it doesn't really capture fast movement, but rather just Holding, grabling and the dance.

But, I believe Greb would in reality look like a fast Box/Fighter, not a one punch KO man, nor would he or any of them hold the refined athletic stylist Boxers that came more regularly by the 30s.

But hard indeed, strong, durable Prizefighting men all the same.

I have rarely seen Quality Footage before 1938, I think it was from Australia, where Archie Moore is fighting Ron Richard and also the Auz MW Fred Henneberry against Ambrose Palmer I believe it was.

The is good Footage of Tony Canzoneri against Joe Glick, I think it is, which must be mid 30s or there about also the French Gypsy Theo Medina, which is also good Proper Footage.

The Problem is, the Fighters don't look Right until the Footage IS Right and that isn't reliably regularly sadly until the 40s, generally speaking.

There are a few exceptions of course, where as mentioned the Footage isn't bad.

 

Maybe Turki can buy it, kind of like a Van Gogh.

 

Like Duran for the aggressive, dirty pressure mixed with the awkwardness and weird angles of Pac.
Truly a generational talent by all accounts

 

Couldn’t we just take a look at all the guys Greb is compared to and compile them? It’ll make a picture of some sort… @janitor who do we have film of that people called “Greb like” or something like that.

 

Honestly… I imagine all of his fights to look like Dorsey vs Paez 1-2 - just Greb would be buckets of skill and a lot more elusive.

 

Through the early 1950s, almost all commercial films were on a nitrate base. It was tough, durable, and produced astonishingly clear images. It was also highly inflammable and dangerous if it wasn’t handled correctly. In most countries, projection booths had to be fireproof. If stored under conditions where the temperature was too high and ventilation insufficient, nitrate would deteriorate and become even more inflammable. Many films were lost in studio vault fires. Many more were lost when studios deliberately destroyed old films which had no remaining commercial value to salvage their silver content and do away with the fire risk they posed. However, under certain conditions, nitrate film is amazingly stable. A number of such films have been discovered over the years, mislabeled in national archives, in estate sales of film collections, or even in the basement of what used to be a theater. Some were in almost pristine condition. For example, a George Melies film made in 1896 was discovered in an archive in 2004. The images on it were very sharp. Whether any footage of Harry Greb still exists, then, is very unlikely but by no means impossible. For those rumored collectors squirreling away such film, however, one can only hope that they know what they have and are taking the proper precautions.