Pre-internet, who had the best fight library?

Jimmy Jacobs, Tyson's former manager had an extensive fight film collection.

 

Well I have some news clippings of Corrie Sanders

 

Jimmy Jackobs had the largest collection in the world in 1987 he told how he was missing but three known to be recorded fights one being the first Harry Greb Gene Tunney fight. I think ESPN have his films now.

 

Jim Jacobs was collecting footage since he was a teenager, his library was bigger than any other in the world, espn acquired the library for millions and then restaured the fights, the only great fighter who wasn't in his library was Greb, said by Jacobs himself, he even went to talk with one guy who recorded some of Greb fights, but the guy lost the footage.

 

My dad and Jimmy Jacobs were best buds growing up as they were both world class hand ball champs,,,,,,

I spent many a week end over at Uncle Jimmys house with my paps watching his fight films,,,,,

Uncle Jimmy was always telling me to pay attention to such and such film he was showing my dad when I was always wanting to swim in his pool, lol,,,,

I think I have probably seen just about every fight ever filmed, might not of paid attention to them all but I certainly got into boxing after getting into so many.

haha, just joking, I was trying to make the forum jealous for a few seconds

my dad did play handball against him once however,,,

 

espn has all that footage and every time i go on on demand its the same 3 or 4 ali or tyson fights or the best of the bean

how disappointing

 

LOL, practically the same thing.

 

In the early 90s, in Boxing Illustrated, a bunch of us used to post ads looking for people to trade boxing VHS tapes.

Some people had really large collections. Others didn't. Most people started recording fights when they bought a VCR in the 1980s. There weren't any channels rebroadcasting fights from the 1970s or earlier unless a fight ended early and ABC might show a few rounds from Foreman-Lyle or something. So guys really wanted to get their hands on fights that are pretty common now. I remember going crazy when I got a copy of Holmes-Shavers II and Ali-Patterson II, even though I could barely see through the static. They were just nearly impossible to find.

Until we saw the ads in Boxing Illustrated, most people didn't know others were also recording fights. "I didn't know anyone else recorded fights" was a common response when someone new started trading.

People weren't real sticklers on quality. In the 1980s, there wasn't digital TV. Most people had either an antenna or cable. With an antenna, you were likely to get ghost images in your picture or the picture might be grainy. But most of us didn't care.

You just needed two VCRs. One to play the tape and the other to record it. If I recorded a fight, and I made a copy for someone, and he made a copy for someone else, the copy would deginerate pretty quickly. Invariably, someone would play the tape on their VCR, and they'd put it in their dusty VCR and the picture would get tracking lines on it ... and then they would copy it. Eventually, people would get copies of fights that were a mess.

When the first digital TVs came out (not HD quality, just sharper), people started focusing on quality more. Today, people are ****ed if they can't get an HD copy of a fight that wasn't broadcast in HD to begin with.

But I went back and looked at some of the guys I traded with back then who had good lists. They included:

Kurt Noltimer (who was a jerk, but was posting ads in magazines and collecting fights in the early 1980s), Barry Keeling, Jeff Comastro, Dennis Magin, Pat Merrick, Gregg McClelland, John McNeece, Michael Johnson, Antoine LaFleur (not sure if I'm spelling that right), Adolph Feldstein (who only wanted Ali stuff), Lonis Tuna (who only wanted heavyweights), Sal Rappa (who had the old 50s fights on film and used to do his own voiceovers), and I do recall trading with Steve Compton once in the 1990s ... and there was a fellow in England I traded with. I can't recall his name now. I know he worked at a television studio because he'd always include clips of himself at the beginning of his tapes. And one older guy in New Zealand named Will Halley. It was rare to get tapes from England and New Zealand because, in the U.S., we recorded in NTSC and they recorded in PAL. So you needed someone who could convert tapes from PAL to NTSC and vice versa.

It was quite a chore.

 

I never saw a cataloged list for the Jacobs collection.


[url]http://articles.latimes.com/1990-05-19/sports/sp-225_1_harry-greb[/url]

One evening in 1986, Jim Jacobs was talking about his collection of boxing films, the most extensive in the world.

"Thomas Edison invented the motion picture camera in 1894," he said. "From 1894 to the present, there is only one great fighter missing from my collection--Harry Greb."

Jacobs, who died at 58 in 1988, never gave up hope that one day film of Greb, a brawling middleweight and light-heavyweight champion, would turn up.

It has.

To Jacobs, the frustrating aspect of his 30-year quest was that he knew at least three Greb fights had been filmed.



"I have three frames of the first Greb-Gene Tunney fight that I found stapled to a copyright application for the film," he said in 1986.

"I've tried everything. . . . It's frustrating. Greb's the only great fighter I don't have.

"The guy who filmed the 1922 Greb-Tunney fight was George Dawson. I even know what hotel he stayed at the night before the fight. I've interviewed his heirs. None of them know anything about the film."

Film of Greb has been found, 64 years after his death. It's not a fight film, but it's the next best thing.

Bill Herr, a retired truck driver from Shelby, Ohio, found a Harry Greb entry on a computer list of boxing film material from the University of South Carolina library. Herr also is a fight film collector and also has been on Greb's trail since 1964.

"I learned that the Fox Movietone Newsreels, along with out-takes, were donated to the University of South Carolina. So I wrote a letter and asked if there was any boxing footage in the collection.

"They sent me a computer list, and I saw a 400-foot item described as, 'Harry Greb working out.' So I bought it."

Herr looked at the film and sent it to Steve Lott, who works for Jacobs' former business partner, Bill Cayton, in New York. Jacobs and Cayton were partners in their fight film business, and also in the early management of former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.

On the 4 1/2-minute newsreel, Greb is shown sparring with turn-of-the-century light-heavyweight champion Philadelphia Jack O'Brien, jumping rope, punching a speed bag, doing sit-ups, mugging for the camera and playing handball.

To boxing historians, Greb is best known as the only man to defeat Gene Tunney. Tunney later became heavyweight champion by beating Jack Dempsey.

In their May 23, 1922 fight, Greb, weighing 162 1/2 pounds, broke Tunney's nose in the first 20 seconds and gave Tunney, at 174 1/2, a 15-round beating for the light heavyweight title. Tunney avenged the loss twice, beating Greb in 1923 and '24.



Greb was a puncher-brawler called "the Human Windmill" in an era when nicknames were mandatory. He fought 294 times, knocking out 47, winning 64 decisions and receiving 170 non-decisions from 1913 to 1926. States frequently refused to recognize anything other than a knockout to decide a fight then because of gambling concerns.

Greb won fights with his thumbs, his forehead, his laces, holding and hitting, tripping, hitting on the break and hitting low.

Greb was 32 when he died in 1926 during surgery to remove bone chips from his nose.

^^ A few questions. Did Greb win fights by tripping as the author writes?

Though improbable, you have to wonder if such stuff is part of the reason why we can't see any Greb fights.

 

Bump.

 

You have just described my father in the 80s. The moment we got a VCR, he started recording everything and keeping a log of what he had. We had cable, so quality wasn't half bad on many of them. He really wanted copies of the great 70s era fights to show me, never could find most.

When I showed him that all the old fights were on YouTube, he was thrilled. Once covid hit, pre-vaccine, I'd go over his house on Sunday evenings, where we'd hang out outside. We'd bbq, drink scotch, smoke cigars, and watch old fights -- he had a TV mounted on his porch, and I stuck a chromecast in it to stream to. The very first one he wanted to see was Ali-Liston 2 to check for a dive.

 

That's awesome.

 

You need to get up on ebay!

 

Wait, I’ve been reading newspaper decisions this whole time.