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

This is an objective and honest appraisal.

 

I would say that he was a lot better than a fringe contender.

He fought three people who finished in the end of year rankings for the year.

This definitely puts him in the furnace before he meets Schmeling, and it is easy to see why there were high hopes for him.

He probably took the Len Harvey fight a bit soon after his loss to Schmeling.

I would say that he was in the same boat as Carnera when they fought, i.e. coming off a key loss, but still a going concern.

 

I stand corrected, they were both draws.

That explains why he ended the year ranked in the lower half of the top ten.

I was wondering why he didn’t end up higher.

 

Fighting them is not beating them is it? Fireman Jim Flynn fought loads of ranked fighters probably more than any other heavyweight,how many did he beat?

 

He also lost to McCorkindale.
Drawing with Brown 19-17-4 who had won none of his last 8 fights does not indicate he was world class

 

This is mindblowing. Im not a fan of Bowe at all but i just dont see how this discussion is still ongoing

 

Curiouser and curiouser!

 

Getting two draws is actually pretty darn unlucky when you are going for a ranking.

You would be much better off losing one outright, and winning the next in that era.

 

Let me ask you something... and I'm being serious here... Do you actually watch the footage of the Primo fights we do have, and go, what a technical marvel this guy was? I'm mean really, do you? I sure don't. He fails the eye test pretty miserably when it comes to the upper or even medium echelon of boxing. There seems to be a disconnect going on here, and I'm not exactly sure why. The "anti" Primo people aren't saying he was completely without any skill. Nobody is making such a claim. He was a champion and a professional boxer, so it stands to reason he had some skill and knowledge. However, that doesn't mean, by default he was technically skilled compared to the majority of boxers who ever lived. He simply isn't. The footage bears this out. We don't need contemporary accounts of him, we can SEE him on film for ourselves; and what we see, quite frankly leaves a lot to be desired. Even without footage, we'd still have to be skeptical because the wins you're giving him credit for, and using as your premise that he must've been technically skilled, were fixed fights. So we're left with, poor eye test, and a mystery on which fights were on the level to even give him credit for. That isn't a good mix imo, and I'm not sure how you can argue it can or should be a good mix for evaluating somebody positively

 

How anyone can watch Carnera's fight footage and describe him as a great fighter is simply beyond me.

 

If you can only scrape a draw with a guy who has not won any of his last 8 fights and whose current record was
18-17-4 you definitely do not deserve a ranking.

 

I actually dont think Bowe was much better than Old Foreman, Holyfield just happened to try to outpunch him, try to push him back and to keep throwing lead rights even though he kept falling into the counter right uppercut. If Holyfield had tried to fight foreman the way he fought bowe, coming forward trying to Brawl he would have lost as well IMO. Another common opponent was Coetzer and I found Foremans performance just as convincing.
STILL Bowe is better than carnera

 

Because you can even find snippets of old foreman looking nimble and agile.

 

It would depend what the other superheavyweights could manage against those guys, which might well be up for question.

 

Which would be valuable and relevant if his status in Boxiana was relegated to a ponderous clumsy oaf.