Better All-Around Fighter: Primo Carnera or Riddick Bowe?

I won't criticize one fighter for one thing, and praise another for the same thing.
Call it a false equivalence if you want. I call it not being a hypocrite.

 

Disagree. Maybe barely higher, but not much higher.

They both plod way more than Primo.
Lewis has some lumbering punches to contrast his beautiful jab.

The difference is with Primo, you don't have footage where you hear the snap of the jab landing, and the impact of the power punches, and camera angles that make it easy to ignore bad form and bad balance because you get distracted by the violence.

With old school footage form and technique are always at the forefront in terms of what we see. And the violence is hardly noticeable resulting in less empathy for the danger the fighters are in.

 

It's funny that the top fighters of the day rated Carnera, and cotradict mere writers like Galico, Schuberg and Runyon that have established the Hollywood side of Primos story.

Larry Gains called primo a "damaging puncher just the same".

Sharkey said Primo was a "much better fighter than given credit for" who he "didn't credit he might improve" from their first fight and "handled me with ease" in the rematch.

Max Schmeling called Primo a "technically sound boxer" who "could penetrate any defence" with his reach and leverage. Unsurprisingly, Max "was not surprised Carnera kayoed sharkey".

Max Baer even predicted Carnera would beat Joe Louis!!! That's how serious he rated primo.

So it seems like all the fighters of the day took Primo Carnera very seriously indeed!!!

 

You've cherry picked extracts from their comments and you know as well as I do they said negative things in those quotes but you left them out. Which is dishonest and rather shabby.

 

I posted the full quote of Max Schmeling, he had nothing negative to say about Primo in his entire book. Max disagreed with "experts" over Carnera. But if you prefere the opinion founded by a broadway musical writer who's wife had an affair with Carnera that's up to you.

I have produced everything Gains had to say about Carnera. "Damaging puncher just the same, even though he was not a great champion he was still a champion" was about the gist of it. And I can reproduce it again if you like. That is far from being a fraud fighter.

Sharkey said negative things about his first fight with Carnera but by the second time he was eager to say Carnera had improved a lot in the 30 extra fights he had between their meeting each other in the ring.

 

QUOTE="choklab, post: 18526199, member: 50845"]I posted the full quote of Max Schmeling, he had nothing negative to say about Primo in his entire book. Max disagreed with "experts" over Carnera. But if you prefere the opinion founded by a broadway musical writer who's wife had an affair with Carnera that's up to you.

I have produced everything Gains had to say about Carnera. "Damaging puncher just the same, even though he was not a great champion he was still a champion" was about the gist of it. And I can reproduce it again if you like. That is far from being a fraud fighter.

Sharkey said negative things about his first fight with Carnera but by the second time he was eager to say Carnera had improved a lot in the 30 extra fights he had between their meeting each other in the ring.[/QUOTE]
What does the underlined have to do with this. Runyon was one of the premier boxing writers of his time. He wrote a short story called Guys and Dolls he didn't write any Broadway musical it was adapted from his book 9 years after he died!

Gains said Carnera could not land a knockout blow and I've posted it.
Sharkey in retirement mentioned that most of Carnera's record had been dubious and that the wins were sceptical.
Baer never said a complimentary thing about Joe Louis in his whole life and after their fight he made some racist remarks about him.
Schmeling just praised Carnera's courage, unlike you he said Carnera was
"not a great fighter".

You're verging on deliberate lying here ,and its not a nice thing to see.

 

No there is no lying. I earlier posted the full quotes as well as the positive points and whilst nobody says Primo was a great champion nobody says he was not good enough to have won the fights he did. No champion says he was a total fraud or that any of his key fights in his career were fixed. I have posted a full fight report of the Neusel fight that was on the level after the point that Hollywood says he was thrown to the wolves and could never beat a good fighter "once the cuffs were off". Instead the report mentions hard punches landed by both fighters in a madison square garden main event.


Well here's the whole report.


"Primo made good use of his long left jab, keeping it regularly in his opponents face and racking up points. Even so Neusel made his best showing in the first round. He rushed at Carnera with the opening bell and the force of the attack completely surprised the ex champion. Early in the round Neusel landed a barrage of combination punches to Carneras head and shook the massive Italian who pawed futilely and pawed ineffectively at his opponent. As the round wore on, however, Primo regained composure and began pummelling Neusel with left and rights to the head and body in what was to become a rout.


The second round was even for the first minute. Neusel started fast, but soon began missing as Primo ducked and weaved. An uneffected and smiling Carnera began landing unanswered blows. Two quick rights snapped Neusels head back, staggering the German to the ropes. He spent the rest of the round trying to avoid Carneras blows by going into the clinch.


Neusel again rushed Carnera as the third stanza began. He landed a quick left and right to Primos body, but this time Carnera countered with a hard left and right to Neusels face. For the rest of the round Carnera landed punishing combinations with minimal response from his opponent. By the end of the session Neusel, who was now clearly in trouble, staggered around the ring.


In the fourth round Neusel was near exhaustion. Still game, however, he mustered what energy he had left and put it all into a hard right cross that landed high on Carneras head. The shot rocked Primo, but he quickly steadied himself and continued stalking his worn down foe. Soon afterward Primo landed a hard left hook to the head that opened a deep gash above the Germans right eye and left him clearly stunned. Still lacking the killer instinct and disinclined to hit Neusel again, Primo looked at referee Arthur Donovan in the hope that the arbiter would stop the bout. To Primos dismay, Donovan waved to the two men to continue. With his eyesight impaired by the ugly gash and the streams of blood it exuded, Neusel raised his right hand as a sign of surrender and walked to his corner. The wounded, exhausted German was declared the loser by technical knockout after two minutes and twenty three seconds of the round.

 

Interesting that the guy from Ghostown boxing who sparred all the recent HW legends said this about fighting Bowe:

"Riddicks power wasnt memorable to me. It probably got better as he got older, cause he never even remotely buzzed me in either of our contests."

I wonder how that translates through a 1930 journalistic filter.
Basically exactly the kind of testimony people here are relying on about Primo lol, excepting instead of coming from sparring partners, from Paul Gallico.

 

Calling things a false equivalency isn't immunity for hypocrisy.

I'm not even using this as a means to promote Carnera.
I'm using it to show how digging up reports by guys like Gallico is flimsy.

The reporters are the ones who criticized Carnera. As Choklab noted, he got pretty good reviews by his peers.

 

Joe Louis said," he had nothing." Should we just dismiss his opinion? Schmeling never praised his ability at all ,he just commended him for his courage,So did Max Baer.Tommy Loughran was equally scathing about Carnera. That's 4 of his peers ,3 of whom actually fought him. Larry Gains said he did not know how to throw a knockout punch,and ,when I asked him about Primo he just laughed and would not comment. A few years ago there was a discussion about how long should a fighter abstain from sex before a fight,an old trainer said they used to put rubber bands on Carnera to stop them him having,"wet dreams".
Angelo Dundee an Italian/American who was present said,"they coulda put ten bands on Carnera ,they still wouldn't have made him a fighter!"

 

That's why I said he got pretty good reviews by his peers.
I didn't say outstanding, I said pretty good.
This selective bias is exactly what I was trying to point out lol.

 

Carnera wasn't as bad as people claimed.
The problem was he was massively hyped based on his freakish size and was put on a cynical barnstorming tour around America. Boxing had only gained widespread acceptance/respectability in America in the previous 10 years or so and the commercialism of it was considered a problem. The Carnera phenomenon was a bit too much for some. It was phony. That doesn't mean he couldn't fight at all.

Riddick Bowe was a very good boxer with greats wins against Holyfield but let's be honest, he took far too many punches. He can't be a skilled as some people make out, he wouldn't have taken all those shots.