We all know that Primo Carnera, a large SHW, won the HW title in the 1930’s. But throughout the last year, we collectively seemed to have discovered a trove of SHWs from that same era. Hundreds perhaps. Some of them fought the more notable names at the time, and some never did. Who do you guys think are some of the really good, talented SHWs from the 30’s?
Other than Primo, I'm not sure how you would make much a case for any of them being "really good" and "talented."
Have to agree with this .Primo obviously stands out , he got to the top of the tree. But other super sized skilled heavy s weren't being seen to be flooding the heavy division. These big fellas would have been challenging the best .They may have been larger but perhaps not so talented. But with respect to Rez ,I'm all for learning new stuff so I've a open mind.
I think Mitu was a novelty. There are tons of 6’5-6’9 guys from the era who did much better. What about guys like Long Tom Hawkins? Bearcat Wright? Jose Santa? George Godfrey?
Godfrey was really good. Former sparring partner of Dempsey if I remember. Some believe his fight with Primo was fixed. He lost close decision to Sharkey and was the second leading black contender behind Wills in the post Johnson era. Bearcat wright supposedly took dives as well, he lost to a lot of names of the era and I believe defeated a very old Jack Johnson's with a body shot
The 1930's Bearcat Wright was about 6' 1" and 210 in shape. His son who fought a bit in the 1950's before turning to wrestling, was billed as 6' 7" and 230 to 275 lbs. The two have often been mixed up. Santa just lost a lot. There is a film called The Prizefighter and the Lady which starred Max Baer and has an extensive movie fight between Baer and Santa (as well as a movie fight between Baer and Carnera at the climax) so one can see what Santa was like. Godfrey is the only one of this group who was world-class in the 1930's.
Wright was 220 for some later fights although I don’t know what shape he was in, so that one could be borderline. Godfrey seems to have been a victim of matchmaking practices of the time. Is it possible that some other big guys suffered the same fate? I mean there were so many of them, and I don’t see why they wouldn’t be able to master and employ the same techniques the welterweights of the time were employing. I can also see these giants being looked at as short term opportunities by overzealous managers.
From memory, Jack Trammel was a top 10 contender and actually bigger than Primo Carnera when they fought.
It was something of an era of giants. There weer a lot more decent super heavyweights in the 1930s, than there were in the 1950s for example. Carnera was the only one who was genuinely elite, but you had guys like Trammel, Impeletiere, Hankison, and Campollo breaking the top ten. You also had fringe contenders such as Santa and Moroz.
Buddy Baer would have knocked out carnera. It's too bad Baer never developed a jab because he would have been really good. He could punch, he would have tagged the stationary carnera easily and put him on the floor
