Why was Greb ranked as no.1 so late?

At 17 he outboxed a great champion in Antonio Cervantes to take the Light Welter title.
At 20 he decisioned Carlos Palomino to win the WBC Welter title.
At 22 he kod Maurice Hope to win the WBC Light Middle crown.
At 23 He outboxed ATG Roberto Duran.

None of which gets him rated as a serious p4p ,neither does it get him rated higher than no 4 out of the 4 best of his era and appropriate weight classes. The difference is not just resume, it's longevity too .
Langford was a top class fighter for several decades.
Comets that flame briefly and then crash such as Tyson and El Radar can never attain the status of a Greb or a Langford.
Then we have the retrospective reassessment of the greats, years after their careers are over ,were they spoken of as atg's and legends whilst they were still active?
Ezzard Charles was perceived as a cautious fighter who lacked colour when he was practising his trade ,an ordinary champion succeeding a great one I have the 50's Ring magazines there's no talk of him being a p4p ATG in any of them .
As Joni Mitchell said "you dont know what you've got till its gone".

 

Thank you Doug, that means a lot to me.

 

Greb beat Tunney in the first two bouts but lost a gift decision in the second. The third bout was won by Tunney in a fight that was closer than most people today realize. The fourth bout was won by Greb and the fifth bout was won by Tunney. The interesting thing about ths fifth bout is that it is often depicted as the point at which Tunney really achieved dominance over Greb. What most people dont know is that Greb either won the first three rounds of that bout or at least won 2 and drew one. Greb was carrying around a rib injury he acquired in the Tiger Flowers bout several months earlier and in either the third or fourth rounds Tunney (a great body puncher) found that injury and either broke or cracked Greb's rib. From that point Greb became less active and less aggressive and Tunney took over and won. That combined with the fact that Tunney was entering his prime while Greb was leaving his and Tunney came into this fight weighing more than he ever had in any of their previous fights and you can see how the impression would be that Tunney finally figured Greb out. Im not so sure thats the case though.

I dont believe Greb fought "very" dirty per se. The one foul he was most often and consistently criticized for was holding and hitting which I think was clearly necessitated by his lack of depth perception due to the loss of sight in one eye. I think he had to clamp down on these guys to know where they were to hit them. Also keep in mind that he was only DQd once in his entire career and even that DQ was controversial with the local boxing commissioner siding with Greb on the matter. No, I think Greb did what great fighters do when faced a disadvantage, he adapted and continued to win. Prior to his sight being compromised he was rarely criticized for dirty tactics and usually if he was it was as a result of him retaliating against a fighter who used dirty tactics on him. For instance, I found numerous accounts where Greb was repeatedly fouled by fighters who were frustrated by their inability to have any success with him and he refused to be ruffled or lower himself to that level but kept on beating them.

Id say Greb was really in his prime about 1919/1920.

I dont know that theres anyone Id make a favorite over Greb at 168. Im sure there are guys who would be good matches or 50/50 odds but the problem with picking against a guy like Greb is that he is a super fast, super tough volume puncher, who is all about going the distance. Those guys are notorious for building wide point leads, putting their opponents in a position where a KO is needed to win and against a guy like Greb who is a tough and slippery thats not a place you want to be in the late rounds of a fight.

 

OK thank you Klompton. Though I had heard that his eyesight was the main cause of losing the last Tunney fight, & you did not even cite that.

As for fighting dirty, I had read that a referre asked Greb what he thought he was doing, & he said, amazed, can't you see, gouging his eye? But the holding & hitting-that he may have needed to do so to do well does not remotelye xcuse that cheating tactic, does it? Boxing is supposed to measure how good you are within the rules. Whether biting, groin shots, holding & hitting...If he did this, at least with any regularity, this must be marked against how good he would be in a fair fight.

Though this would not apply if he was clean in his prime before his injury.
And you have some guys 50/50 at his weight? Who?

Thus presumably you would have others favored over him up to LHW, which does not show an untoward bias. Who, many?

 

I cant totally blame the eye. Obviously thats a major handicap but its the same handicap he had 3 years earlier in their first fight. It just so happens that this time he wasnt only blind in one eye but had an injured rib, 3 years of extra wear and tear (and three years older) and was faced with a Tunney who was bigger and better than in any of their previous bouts. Thats a lot to overcome.

I dont think its up to you or I to monday morning quarterback whether Greb's style, in terms of the use of holding and hitting, detracts from the prestige he deserves. Thats up to the referee. If the referee doesnt see enough to disqualify then its not my job to second guess him. The bottom line is that under the rules of the day Greb fought and won at an extremely high rate/level and was only DQd once (controversially) in 300 fights. Thats says enough for me. That means that 1/3 of 1% of the time his tactics were deamed so overt as to disqualify him. Ali held, Larry Holmes thumbed, Marciano elbowed, hit low, and headbutted, Sugar Ray Robinson threw more kidney punches than any fighter Ive ever seen, Henry Armstrong hit low, elbowed, and headbutted. Are we going to go back and second guess their legacy? Its a fight not a ballet. Its a sport for rough and tough guys, not cream puffs. I think most fighters expect a certain amount of that in fights. They certainly did back then. So who is to say the fight wasnt fair? The referee and 99.6% of the time he said it was fair. Thats enough for me.

I dont know of anybody off the top of my head but Im sure there are great fighters out there who would be a good match.

 

Well that is where we disagree. If a referee allows one fighter to do things that helps him appreciably or cause the win, of course we should "2nd guess" this. This forum is all aboiut what would happen under neutral, fair conditions. The faaily recent Klitchko hug fest or Ali-0Frazier 2 are prime examples.

If a guy may well have lost without obvious cheating, or we have no idea if he could win-like Ali completely cmothering Frazier in 2-then it effects what would happen if both fighters played by the rules.

That these guys are very tough & expect dirty play does not change this one iota.

Now the qwuestion is how much they cheated, how much their opponent did, & how much it might have effected the outcome. I do not know enough about the situation with Greb to say, but to merely go by what is permitted does not sound right.

Ali holding & pulling down on Foreman & the loose ropes must have made a significant difference. This cheating far outstripped any pushing George did, in amount, severity & efficacy of cheating. I do not know if absent it Ali would have just worn down Foreman a couple of rounds earlier, or Ali who admitted beingout on his feet a couple of times would have lost. In a street fight Foreman would have used much other "dirty" tactice, so to consider who was better we cannot just allow as OK any degree of cheating an (often favored & popular) boxer can get away with.

Dempsey & low blows & KO of Sharkey after this is a prime example. Sharkey never should have left himself undefended in the ring. But a boxer should never lose due to absorbingpunches to the gonads, unless they are permitted to do the same thing.

 

I agree but I dont know if using extreme examples as a cross comparison to Greb is legitimate. For instance, by and large Greb's reputation as a dirty fighter was garnered in New York (where they had an axe to grind against him) and primarily against Gene Tunney (a New York fighter). So it would be irresponsible to suggest that a guy who in his entire career was DQd once was this abysmally dirty fighter based on the words of a minority of sportswriters who were literally bought and paid for to character assassinate Greb. For instance Dave *********, a New York fighter, had about 1/5 the fights Greb had and was DQd three times in New York. So if a hometown boy can get DQd that many times in that few fights (comparatively) at home and Greb NEVER got DQd in New York where they were looking for any opportunity to get rid of him, well, that says something.

I would ask again: If we think less of Greb for holding and hitting late in his career do we think less of someone like Henry Armstrong? Because Armstrong, for how much I love him and how highly he is regarded, was a dirty fighter. Marciano is beloved and he was a very dirty fighter. I love Hopkins and hes a dirty fighter. Graziano was a dirty fighter. The list of guys who excel in this sport while using some form of bending the rules is probably longer than not. Where is the line drawn? If you tear down every single champion who did it then the entire playing field gets lowered and Greb still stands out among the rest for his accomplishments. So I just dont have a major issue with it.

 

OK so we agree in principle on some things.

I do not presume to know how dirty Greb was, maybe you are mostly or 100% correct that his sins were overstated by the NY media. Sorry my hometown (I live in Midtown NYC) has sometimes been so corrupt!

When I clicked on a web site with oodles of stories I read a bunch about all the ways Greb allegedly cheated. Low blows, hitting anywhere, eye-gouging, lace-raking...And you are correct that many fighters cheat more or less. As for "leveling the playing field"...To an extent.

We have a responsibility to figure oiut HOW much guys cheated & how much it helped them. So a Marciano is still great, but he did enough different things often enough-claiming he got carried away & it was not intentional, which likely is true, some go into a different head state. But it must at least slightly effect his rating compared to someone who did minimal or no cheating. Much of these things are breaking, not just bending the rules.

Though i have no information to doubt (or confirm independently) what you claim about Greb & the NY media. Anyway I want to love him, but am compelled to look at things as rigorously as I can.

For a guy who was not tall & lean for his weight, why did he not have more stoppages? I can understand his great speed preculded sitting down on his punches, butr I wonder if he had the capacity to finish more guys after he had worn them down? As Ali did but often did not have the heart to, but Ali KOed a much higher %.

 

There are far more first hand sources from Greb fights that call him a clean fighter and make mention of how he would be fouled and refuse to retaliate, or refuse to take unfair advantage of an opponent etc, as those which call him dirty.

Greb didnt have a high KO percentage for a few reasons: 1. He tended to get a bit wild when he got a guy hurt. He just wasnt really a good finisher. 2. He had several broken hands, wrists, and arms derived from fighting which necesitated a more point grabbing approach. 3. He was fighting so often he couldnt risk a severe injury which would keep him out of the ring for a long time so rather than sit down on his punches he just scored points.

There are several examples which show Greb could hit fairly well when he wanted to. He could drop you or stun you really good to where you were in trouble but as soon as that happened 1 of 2 things happened. He either went wild looking for the finish and lost the opportunity or he backed off rather than throw hard punches that could break a hand or wrist and may not even get a KO anyway.

There are literally tons of examples where newspaper reporters felt like Greb could have stopped a guy whenever he wanted but simply let him stay (Rosenbloom is a good example of this). I dont think Greb was being charitable so much as he was trying to protect his hands and keep the next few fights/paydays he likely already had lined up.

 

Alright, thank you very much Klompton!

 

Excellent stuff on Greb!! Thanks for the exhaustive research on the man Klompton. Fingers crossed footage of Greb is out there somewhere. Maybe a private collector is keeping mum. Even a few frames would be a major find.

 

Greb was undeniably great but to suggest his rep for bending the rules was rather undeserved is pushing it a bit. Dsq'd only once? Fritzie Zivic had 232 fights and was never thrown out for fouling,anyone want to tell me he wasn't a dirty fighter?

 

You can believe what you want, old reputations die hard, but Greb wasnt nearly as dirty as his reputation suggests. I say again he was primarily guilty of holding and hitting, necessitated by his blindness in one eye (which effects depth perception), and that came late in his career. The vast majority of his career he was considered a clean and sportsmanlike fighter.

Keep in mind that his reputation for being dirty is largely based on all the bull**** that was written about the first Tunney fight and most of that was totally untrue.

 

Was Kid Norfolk dirtier?:think

I have astygmatism that affects depth perception too. ,you have to give your eyes time to adjust when you put your glasses on.

 

Well consider that many felt Norfolk should have been disqualified against Greb and that he was the one who started the fight down the road to a wrasslin match and not a boxing match by throwing/pushing greb out of the ring and continually using the kidney punch and low blows. Yet it was Greb who was DQd for retaliating when nearly every source points out that Norfolk had hit Greb after the bell ending what would be the final bell. It was the only DQ of Greb's career whereas Norfolk lost on a DQ in his very next fight for the exact same tactics he was accused of using against Greb. Norfolk had just 13 fights after Greb and was DQd in 3 of them. On top of that he has at least a couple more DQ losses on his record despite having less than half the number of recorded fights that Greb has.

The point is that if Greb was as hellaciously dirty as some would have us believe how is it that he had such a low DQ rate in an era when other fighters who dont have that reputation had more DQs in less fights? Greb often fought on the home turf of his opponent or away from home so the idea that he was recieving special treatment doesnt jive. Never mind the fact that these sources often go out of their way to make mention of how clean and sportsmanlike he was. Is it just a coincidence that his reputation stems largely from New York where he was at odds with the exact people who started that reputation and fostered it throughout the rest of his career and after? I doubt it.