BoxRec

I was trying to enlighten a friend of mine to the greatness of Greb last night. He seemed unwilling to accept that I could rate a man so highly who I'd never seen on film. I showed him his record and although impressed he still did not seem convinced.

I guess my points are

1) Greb is probably never going to get the credit he deserves becasue he isn't on film.

2) How do we go about rating a man we've never seen in action but who might just have the best record of any boxer ever.

3) How much can we trust the newspaper reports from the time. I know that going on the contemporary newspapers that many of the writers seem to have been watching a different contest to me. Also, was there any prejudice towards certain sections of the population based on race or religion etc which may have coloured reports.

I think Greb might just have been the greatest Middleweight of all time (and he must be top 3 on his record alone). What are the forum's thoughts?

You are preaching to choir about Harry Greb's greatness :)

In my opinion, he is the 2nd greatest MW (behind Monzon), but his worth as a fighter was in a p4p sense. Literally, having fought about 300 times, he faced just about every contender in the middleweight division and many in the LH division giving up a lot of weight. He brutalized Tunney once and always gave him tough fights. One of the poster's here, klompton, has a book coming out on Greb in the future that I am waiting for.

And on the ND bouts, even if you don't consider them, the record is still impressive and speaks for itself. There was no hiding or ducking going on with him.

The greatness of Greb will never be underestimated, except by people that know absolutely nothing about the past, but students and historians of boxing will never slight what Greb accomplished in the ring...I just like to imagine how Greb would be remembered now if he had had a punch like Mickey Walker...I have little doubt that Robinson would be coming in second. Punching power is the only sort of negative aspect anyone kind find about Greb, but it didn't really matter because he was still great without it, but imagine if he would have had it though!

Barry

I take your point about the lack of KOs on his record, although I know that back in those days there were far fewer premature stoppages and you really had to destroy your opponent before ref would intervene.

I imagine Greb to be the ultimate swarmer, difficult to hit with a very high punch rate. The great thing about Greb is that he did not draw the colour line something which raises doubts over certain fighters (I definitely feel that Dempsey suffers for not having fought Wills, I know he signed for a fight but other events took it away).

In P4P terms Greb must be a top 10 fighter minimum.

greb had enough power to bash tunneys nose andb reak both his eye bones and basicaly tear off tunneys face.

i rate geb # 2 middleweight of all time. behind robinson. i think very highly of him.

BB

I think Robinson is in the top 2 p4p fighters as a welter but at middle I think he was beatable. Still an all-tiem great and still top 3-5.

I take your point though regarding Greb's punching and the Tunney fights. Apparently the second figth was very very close and could have gone either way. i have also read much that suggests that Greb was unlucky in both of his fights with Flowers (an underrated champion himself).

Greb had brittle hands and injured them pretty bad early in his career, so he had to develop a high punch-output style to compensate. I believe but may be mistaken that Tommy Loughran might have had similar hand problems. In those days with those small gloves if you didn't have naturally strong fists you had some trouble . . .

Maybe Grebs punching power was affected by the fact that he was always on the move... bobbing and weaving and moving at crazy angles and so he wasn't getting 'set' for his punches and lost some of the power as a consequence. But he must have had pretty good power otherwise opponents would have just walked right through him.

Can`t wait for Klompton to finally get his book ready, just hope it lives up to the expectations.

I loved `Give him to the angels` just about the only book written on Harry Greb, but Klompton trashes it, so I`m hoping his book really does give a good insightfull view on this real ring legend.

By the way there is shortly to be a book published on Sam langford, the author is a real brains on anything boxing and he has investigated all known avenues to get the `real` facts....this will be one book guaranteed to be worthy of a place on anybodys book shelf.

I'm looking very forward to the Langford book that Clay Moyle has written...31 chapters and a biography that is long overdue. As charismatic outside the ring and as great as he was inside it, it's hard to believe that this is the first ever biography of Langford as none has ever been published, other than the partial biography that Nat Fleisher wrote is one of his Black Dynamite volumes...I know for a fact that Clay has really, really researched Langford's career and his book should be fantastic!

I take it you also have reserved a copy then

Clay is guaranteed to make it worthwhile