Why Is SRR Commonly Ranked Ahead of Harry Greb?

Four losses, actually. Randy Turpin I, Gene Fullmer I, Basilio I and Pender I. Which one did you miss? [I'm guessing Pender.]

 

youtube.com/watch?v=W8r-tXRLazs

 

Greb is the great boxing myth. How can their not be a SINGLE fight film of his in existence if he was THAT great?!

 

There is footage of Robinson, while Greb is nothing but words....

 

This

I'm very aware of how many he lost. The Louis-Tunney thread kinda wore me out. I get sloppy when I'm tired :dead

 

Fair enough. But if we take this approach and apply it across the board, it's a first class ticket to nonsense and chaos. Because then we have to rate Juan Roldan over Harry Greb too. Cyclone Hart over Tiger Flowers. Mike Rossman over Maxie Rosenbloom, Pete Ranzany over Barbados Joe Walcott and Wayne McCullough over George Dixon.

 

:confHey Buddy, just proof it happens to the best of us. You've earned the slack!

 

I understand what you're saying, but we're talking about why we can't rate a fighter we've never even seen fight over Sugar Ray Robinson, who's considered the P4P best of all-time....thats nonsense and chaos to me!

And just to mention, that Left Hook Robinson landed on Gene Fullmer's dome was the same punch that once took a mans life! I don't think Greb ever had that kind of power...

 

Burt, the reason we don't just take old people's word for it when they've been there is because well, they are old. The memories are old too, and maybe they don't quite remember them right any more. Eye witness testimony is notoriously bad, but in a courtroom film holds up. When people who saw both Greb and Robinson fight, and then they gave their opinion on them they were comparing something they just saw with something they saw twenty or thirty years before, and that's a hell of a way to make a comparison.

The old timers got it wrong again, and again, and again whenever they tried to compare the ages against each other. Even the experts were biased, experts like Nat Fleischer the famous journalist, or Jack Johnson the famous pugilist, people who should have known better compiled ridiculous lists when asked who the best was. The one common link regardless of who was describing the eras was that the people they'd seen in their youth or their prime were the best ever and the newer guys weren't as good.

You simply can't base your claims on what someone's opinion, probably a dead someone's opinion, once was at one time. That's called hearsay. That's just circumstantial evidence. The direct evidence which best supports Greb's case, or other all time great fighters for which no footage exists, is their win loss record. And that's really all we have to go on. We can look at footage of other fighters they fought and surmise how great they must have been to beat them but that's tangential, it's inferential. We have to use our imagination when we do that. How much better Greb has to be than Tunney to beat him can be either a lot or a little. It's not actually quantifiable. But we know for a fact how much better Robinson was than LaMotta because we can see it firsthand and it doesn't change from person to person based on how you tell the story.

 

O, nice try but no cigar. So ,for instance my dad in the 1940s who told me about Harry Greb beating Gene Tunney was an old fuddy duddy senile man ? Hmm, my dad was in his early 40s at the time, and lived til his eighties ,sharp and alert as you or I til the end... He saw Benny Leonard box in the 1920s,and raved about him til the end...He saw Gene Tunney box in Ny, in which we have film of Gene Tunney, and Tommy Gibbons,and
of the master boxer Tommy Loughran, all who look so darn impressive even on old hand cranked cameras...So my good man are we to believe these worthies all HoF lightheavyweights were topnotch but somehow a Harry Greb outweighed by these guys by 15 pounds who whipped these filmed worthies,should be penalized because today there is no available film
existing today, therefore his amazing record has no validity ???
My comment to you is this...We need no film of a violent tornado wrecking havoc on a city...We can see the destruction it caused......Same with the Iron City Express, Harry Greb...Show me sir, the record of Ray Robinson
even without film fighting such contemporaries as Ezzard Charles, Archie Moore, Harold Johnson, Lloyd Marshall, Charley Burley,and whipping them
outweighed by 15-20 pounds,and I would be astounded though I did not see the film, but I saw film of these great worthies above...cheers...

 

Not always, as the 1991 Rodney King and 1992 Reginald Denny beatings in Los Angeles so infamously proved. And countless convictions have been based entirely on hearsay.

A consensus then has to be measured against the record, a consensus including opponents, eyewitnesses and others familiar with the person in question. Published accounts of the person released during the course of that person's career must further factor in.

Everybody who remembered getting hit by Shavers said Earnie was the hardest puncher they ever squared off against. Likewise, it seems a consensus among many who shared the ring with him that Greb was the fastest they'd ever laced on the gloves against.

"The fastest fighter I ever saw. Hell, Greb is faster than Benny Leonard." -Jack Dempsey, speaking in the present tense while the careers of all three men were still in progress. That's a remark coming from a young active athlete about another young active athlete, not an after the fact reminisce by an old man with old memories, but an observation by one active sparring partner about another, who had also seen that other compete numerous times.

"A Man Must Fight" was published by Tunney in 1932, when Gene could very easily have still been the reigning heavyweight champion. Greb had been dead just half a dozen years at the time. Mickey Walker was still in his 50s when his account of Greb was published, at a time when many of Harry's opponents were also still in their 50s, and very many even younger readers of his autobiography had witnessed Greb-Walker and other scenes of Harry in action.

Distant recollections are far from the only sources of opinions on Greb, as Dempsey comments from during Harry's own career demonstrates. Robinson had much better mainstream coverage through the NYC media centric big city orientation (which also profited LaMotta tremendously. Harry did enjoy excellent electronic media coverage during the 1920s, but it was not preserved, and radio was nascent technology. Being a Pittsburgher didn't help him in New York, nor did the ban on interstate transport of boxing films. Racism may also play a bit of a role here. His willingness to take on opponents like Norfolk and Flowers boosts his historical standing today, but may have counted against him in some circles during his lifetime.

 

The collective knowledge on this thread from many who I assume are in their 20s 'n 30s, gives me hope before morning coffee that the sport I love won't be lost to extreme sports 'n cage fighting.

 

You're either not very smart, or 120 years old if you think Greb is better then Robinson.

 

No film of Harry Greb. Can't rate him.

 

I'd hazard a guess that even if there was film of Greb, many would still favour Robinson because of his smooth n' explosive style.

From everything I've read about Harry the man was like a tornado full of barb-wire; incredibly effective, though it may not have been to everyone's liking. Certainly he was a product of his time when boxers really mauled one another in the clinches.

It's not a question of legacy, the cold truth is that the fleet-footed, rapid-fire Sugar Man is a closer match to our idea of the perfect fighter.

Allegedly, nobody else fought like Greb. He is boxing's R-rated man, a banished video nasty.