Who Ranks Greb As The Greatest?

Yeah that's a excellent article.

 

On a logical, unbiassed, none-rose-tint basis, its my 1-5 you should be questioning more so than my no.6

 

Well, tthere are some people who would dispute the fact tha Tunney won the series. There are arguments it ended 2-2-1. I'm no Greb specialist but Janitor brought some good arguments for his in the past.

 

The series against Tunney took place as Tunney was coming up in the ranks, and growing both physically and mentally all the time. By the latter half of their series, he'd hit his peak. On the other hand, Greb had been on the downslide for the duration of the series, and had in fact gone totally blind in one eye by the end of it. You'll note the change in the tone of their series mid-way through once these points had been made clear. That said, no less than 2 of the fights are very controversial. Many believe Greb should've been given the slight edge in fact, 3-2, if not 2-2-1. Both men recieved the worst beatings of their fighting careers at the other's hands.

To clear that up: a smaller, past prime champion gone blind in one eye facing one of the very best LHW's of all time and more or less drawing a series of 5 with him, and giving him the only official loss of his career (and what perhaps should've been 1 or 2 more).

That's the meat of what makes Greb arguably the greatest of all time, in a 4 course meal.:good

 

Boxrec lists just over 300 fights.

No, he fought for 13 years, the only time during that span in which he wasn't among the very best in the sport being his first couple. He was the best fighter in the sport for nearly a decade. That's a long time. Even if that weren't the case, what does it matter that it wasn't a particularly long period of time when he was fighting up to 45 fights a year (and going undefeated in the process against the best fighters in the sport)? Do you believe Louis's reign from 37-49 to be more impressive based on the amount of years he ranked at the top, despite fighting about 1/12 as often as Greb during that period, and against inferior opposition on the whole?

 

Look at the this question in an objective way...
1.Fighter number one, has 202 bouts.Beats the best of his time as a welterweight, then wins most of the times as AS a middleweight...Only time Fighter number one ventured into the lightheavy division,against a very light puncher is not succesful...Loses,and never everchallenges the TOP lightheavies at all...
Fighter number two....Has 300 fights as middlleweight...than at tale end of career .licks Gene Tunney OTG, 15 pounds heavier,Tommy Gibbons, Tommy Loughran, Jack Dillon,Battling Levinsky,Maxie Rosenbloom,etc all Hall of Fame,lightheavyweights who outweighed him by 15 pounds,some multiple times...Than Fighter number two ,moves up in weightclass and licks Gunboat Smith,who once kod Sam Langford,Bartley Madden, Bill Brennan,etc top heavyweights ,who outweighed him By 40 to 50 pounds, He ducked NO ONE, big or small, black or white, and oh yes...He fought the last part of his career, BLIND IN ONE EYE...Any fighter that Ray Robinson Fought Greb would have certainly licked...But could Ray Robinson Licked the likes of the heavier and stronger Tunney, Loughran,Gibbons,Jack Dillon, Brennan,etc? Not so say I...Greb P4P number one ,Robinson,and Langford two and three...

 

I have Greb as the greatest...but I don't have Langford above SRR. SRR is the 2nd greatest though.

 

what I want to know is was greb a big box office smash? In any other era if a fighter stands out hes huge. If another great guy is around who also stands out and sells tickets and the public demand it the money is there and the promoters fight to stage it. I dont find greb's biggest gates in any box ofice records.
Was he a phenominon like Louis or john L sulivan? Did fans vote with tickets?
I ask myself isnt grebs a record that reads like a riddle? Theres no film, he fought a lot of times and had a good record against other champions. And -news paper verdics! Theres basicly an answer for all the questions im sure but there is a nagging thought (posibly wrong) that the answers could be vauge.
I get the impresion that at worse greb was the most seasoned guy in the world who had an answer for anything in the ring. I bet he was that experienced he mastered the knack of making all fights close and could coast, smother and hold his own with anyone. since news paper verdics are unreliable either he edged a lot of guys, beat a lot of guys, drew or lost. news paper verdics were often corupt anyway.
since greb fought so often there is always the excuse "imagine how good he would have been with more rest between fights". when he lost he fought so many guys more than 4 times theres the chance he beat them back also.
I also wonder when there is a circuit of guys fighting each other so many times how freindly they all get. i mean, these were no decision days after all -and they were not filmed.
IMO greb is a great character and I do rate him as an ATG even if in the future its proved only half the storys were true. I just wonder about rating champs in top 3 p4p without film. Im not knocking him I just wonder.

 

Greb, Robinson and Armstrong are all perfectly sane picks to me for p4p number 1.

 

who of the three sold more tickets...

 

who gives a **** about tickets all the money is in PPV buys