WHO IS GREB

Tunney isn’t reliable when discussing Greb’s dirty tactics, he is known for flip flopping on Greb’s fouling, he’s been caught BSing and using it as an excuse for why he lost but many other times he comes clean and says Greb wasn’t dirty.

“I categorically state that Harry Greb was not a foul fighter. In my first fight with him my nose was broken. My seconds said that Greb butted me with his head. This I do not accept as factual; and if his head was the weapon, rather than his fists, my head should not have been where it was.”
Gene Tunney

Both Loughran and Gibbons were adamant that Greb was not a dirty fighter, odds are the headbutt was due to him being erratic like every other source attests to him being.

 

Greatest resume on paper. Likely the H2H best of his era. However I simply can't rate him as the best overall fighter of all time. The lack of film is a massive mark against him. I personally don't think his (described) style would be well suited for later eras with more set rules, scoring and changes in equipment and weight making. In comparison, I think Robinson or Duran, for example, would easily adapt H2H to any era, including current day and bare knuckle. Greb's style imo sounds very much a product of its time that benefitted from newspaper decisions.

Also, newspaper write ups on bouts could be very biased and could be written by guys who knew absolutely **** all about boxing. There have been threads on this forum where old time writers were exposed for outright lying about attending bouts. This is why you try to compare different write ups for a bout, but some bouts simply didn't have more than one or two write ups. For example, I was reading the Stars and Stripes write up for Harada - Rudkin. It was laughably inaccurate. Bear in mind this is decades later with more standardised point scoring and less reliance on I close aggressive in-fighting.
As an experiment, I advise looking up write ups for bouts, particularly older ones, and compare it to film on YouTube. You'll quickly start seeing discrepancies.

 

This is what a lot of people don’t understand in looking at Holyfield vs. Tyson I.

Mike comes forward with his head up and on a straight line repeatedly as he moves in to punch.

Most of Tyson’s opponents instinctively move their heads back, which puts it in the wheelhouse for his wider punches. They move into the danger zone. In fact, a large part of Tyson’s offense depends on this (same as Floyd Patterson with his kangaroo-punch leaping hook).

Holyfield’s tactic was to hold his ground and duck inside that wide punching arc. There’s no rule that says when a guy comes forward you have to get out of his way. Tyson’s momentum in almost every case of their heads clashing is forward … he’s initiating the contact.

Holyfield did exactly as I was taught and we taught in our gym — when heads are close, tuck your chin and give him the crown of your head. If a cut results, you’d rather be cut on top of your head than over your eye, where the blood obstructs your vision. Also, the rounded bone structure of the top of the skull makes it less likely that you’ll suffer a cut, whereas the eyebrows are located directly over a more jagged/edged bone, which means contact it more likely to result in a cut.

So Mike propels himself forward, Holyfield holds his ground and ducks his head inside Tyson’s punch. The butt occurs because of Tyson’s momentum and the fact that TYSON’S head is, as Tunney articulated, not where it should be. Because he was coming on a straight line and his head was up (giving his eyebrows as the contact point rather than the crown) — blaming Holyfield saying something on the tracks is at fault for being hit by a train … only boxing doesn’t require you to get out of the way and off the tracks.

Tyson, of course, in two fights (one brief) never made this simple adjustment.

 

If it was long after Grebs sad death when he made that comment then fair play to him.

 

I would reckon that Greb was a (mostly) fair fighter, but there are accounts of him holding and hitting, even through the ropes at some points.
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