Why people hate Carnera...

What you say does make sense. He is not the person I would think of when I hear mention of the disease. He clearly seems more coordinated than most people that suffer from it. Having said that, each case is different. I read Tony Robbins the motivational speaker suffers from it and he isn’t someone that would jump out to me right away when hearing the disease. Basically there’s pros that I listed for Carnera having it and there’s cons that you mentioned regarding it.

 

Tony Robbins had brain surgery as a teen. He’s probably be dead if he left it alone.

 

He was diagnosed with a pituitary tumor at age 31, which explained why he grew 10 inches in one year as a teenager. The tumor mostly went away on its own, but the part that remains releases extra growth hormone into his body-and that gives him the stamina to travel and speak so often.

That’s straight from the Wall Street Journal. So I don’t know what brain surgery he had as teen. But it’s not related to his pituitary gland and his acromegaly. And it states it went away on its own. Perhaps same thing with Primo

 

"His hands were abnormally huge"

For his overall size? His fist is listed as 14 3/4"--Sonny Liston's fist size was 15". Carnera had an unusual reach of 85"--Liston's was 84", but Liston was 5" shorter and over 50 lbs. lighter than Carnera. Liston also died at a younger age with his autopsy stating the cause of death as vascular heart disease.

"The breaking down of his body physically in his later years"

Well, when exactly? He wrestled 21 times in 1962 when he was 56. So I assume he was still in pretty good shape. There is film of Carnera wrestling in the 1950's and he looks in top shape for man in his late forties.

His body did break down and he died at 60. He was heavyweight champion in the 1930's. Among the top male movie stars of that decade were Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn, Robert Taylor, Tyrone Power, and Humphrey Bogart. All died at a younger age than Carnera. Carnera lived to a normal age for his era. Bad habits like smoking and excessive drinking were the norm, and medicine was far behind where it is today.

"circumstantial evidence"

Using very common conditions such as diabetes or liver and kidney failure due to alcoholism to prove a rare disease such as acromegaly is simply poor logic. The vast majority of people who develop these problems do not have acromegaly.

"full grown man at 8"

What is the actual proof of this? Does it come from press agent exaggeration? I don't say it isn't or can't be true, but what is the actual evidence for this claim. The writers who run on about Carnera don't seem to have done much research over in his home town.

 

I watched a documentary on him a couple of years ago. I should’ve fact checked myself before posting.

 

The Harder They Fall is a work of fiction. I have never read the novel, but the movie is about Toro Moreno, a South American giant who is brought to a championship fight which he loses. I don't see how, or why, Carnera would sue about this. A law suit merely strengthens the connection of the story with Carnera. (a really cynical soul like myself might wonder if the lawsuit was a publicity gimmick by the studio to buoy the box office. Carnera might have been paid under the table to play his role.)

"It is all true."

I don't know where this quote comes from, but if this was his position, why sue? He is suing a work of fiction while admitting it was largely true?

I did look up Carnera's stated reaction to The Harder They Fall and found this quote from an article by Ken Jones in The Independent:

"That's not true. That's not true. That is not my story. I haven't done any harm to anybody. Why do they punish me? I have retired from boxing. Why do they want to treat me like that?"

So it leaves it all up in the air with conflicting quotes, except I found the one I quoted, although Jones doesn't say where he got it. Or if it is a response to the novel and its immediate late 1940's revisionism, or to the 1956 movie. It is possible that this explains why Carnera would sue, although it is hard to believe he could have any hope of success, which undergirds my cynical take above.

By the way, as bad as Carnera might look in the movie, Max Baer looks much worse, and yet he personally appeared in the movie, playing a version of himself who enjoys "butchering" opponents and getting credit for killing them. Shows what money can buy.

 

I don't think that people here in this forum actually "hate" Carnera, rather, I think it's more of a case of us resenting the persistent and busy agenda pushed on us that Primo was so much better than we all know what he was in reality.
That, and the simple fact that many of us are just simply

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of him...with the ever multiplying plethora of threads featuring him.

 

U sayn we don´t need Primo - Valuev ?? Or Primo - Tua

 

Well since you want to Cherry Pick the one heavyweight with a larger hand size than Primo Carnera’s to support your argument. I’ll list a plethora of heavyweights many taller than Primo and as you’ll see his hand is second only to Liston’s (whom’s measurements I have always been skeptical of). Carnera began his career 90 years ago and he still has second largest hand size. Does that mean he had Acromegaly of course not.

Sonny Liston: 15 inches.
Primo Carnera: 14 3/4 inches.
Frank Bruno: 14 inches.
Bonecrusher Smith: 13 3/4 inches.
Riddick Bowe: 13 1/2 inches.
Mike Tyson: 13 inches.
Wladimir Klitschko: 13 inches.
Joe Frazier: 13 inches.
Evander Holyfield: 12 1/2inches.
Muhammad Ali: 12 1/2 inches.
Lennox Lewis: 12 inches.
Earnie Shavers: 12 inches.
Joe Louis: 11 3/4 inches.
Rocky Marciano: 11 1/2 inches.
Jack Dempsey: 11 1/4 inches.
Vitali Klitschko: 11 inches.

Primo Carnera, had unusually large hands, and a large face. Their are reports he had Acromegaly- just google his name and the word. Also if you want to see the story about him fitting into adult clothes at age 8- bad left hook has the article. I don’t want to share the link here.
As for wrestling It’s fake and many wrestlers can do it way past optimal health.

I find it plausible that Primo Carnera could have suffered from Acromegaly. Maybe when I wrote likely it was too strong of word. Although unlike some other posters, he looks to me in pictures that he has it, or some form of excessive growth.

And make no mistake I didn’t suggest he had it to diminish the man. Contrary I think he did well for the gifts he was given, he improved and while I don’t believe him to great. Historically I believe he belongs in the hall of fame. I feel the negative treatment he has received is excessive.

 

FIFY you imbecile.

 

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No, it doesn't. The quote from The Independent article you provide, refers to the film; not the book.

Carnera made his comments, as to the accuracy of the book. The film was made almost 10 years later and it was the film he publicly took issue with.

I am not going to dismiss seemingly conflicting quotations, taken that far apart, about different forms of the same story.

Ironically, The Independent article also implies Carnera came to know he'd been unwittingly involved in setups and had discussed the same with his children - as per a letter from Carnera's daughter, Giovanna Maria.

For some reason, where Carnera is concerned, there seems to be a tendency to utterly dismiss evidence as flimsy, on even flimsier grounds.

I think the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the take that writers had on Carnera, at the time. Simply implying that sportswriters, for a period 6 years or so were too unreliable for us in the 21st Century to trust, is no case against this view, at all.

 

I might add to this the crucial point that the Press hated Carnera from the way they felt Damon Runyon was publicly humiliated by Primos affair with Damon’s young wife even though it hardly gets mentioned. Press men stick together over this kind of thing, and I can’t help believing a lot of it started here.

 

Carnera was being lambasted by the press, long before 'Primo's affair' occurred.

 

"Carnera had unusually large hands."

You missed my point entirely. Carnera didn't have particularly large hands for his size and weight.

For example, Earnie Shavers' fist size is 12". Carnera's is 14 3/4". Shavers weighed about 210 lbs. Carnera 260 lbs. So Carnera is 1.238 times heavier than Shavers. Multiplying 12" by 1.238 gives us a fist size of 14.86" very close to Carnera's fist size (actually a bit larger), so proportionally Shavers and Carnera have about the same sized fists for their total body size. Carnera at 260 lbs. is 1.3 times heavier than Joe Louis at 200 lbs. Louis' fist size of 11 3/4" times 1.3 comes to 15 1/4", so Louis had proportionally bigger hands. I noted Liston because Liston is the outlier here. At about 210 he is close to the same height and weight as Shavers, but his fist is 3" or 20% larger. The other outlier is Vitali with unusually small hands. My point is given his overall stature, Carnera's hands don't seem to have been unusually large.

As for the acromegaly, I found the scholarly article in The Journal of Endocrinological Investigation, apparently translated from the Italian., written by professors Cannavo and Trimarchi of the University of Messina. They judge off photos, and oddly off a painting, that Carnera had, or might have had, the disease. This article, in my reading, points to their having no evidence he was ever so diagnosed, writing this:

"No information concerning the management of the disease can be retrieved."

They seem to conclude that Carnera suffering diabetes is strong evidence he had acromegaly. 52% of those with acromegaly are diagnosed with diabetes versus a bit more than 13% of the general population. But how many have acromegaly. About 11 out of every million are diagnosed with it, but there might be a lot of undiagnosed patients, and estimates run as high as 137 out of every million. But this is still a rare disease. Not so diabetes. More than 130,000 out of every million are diagnosed with diabetes. I am one, and I am certainly not unusually tall.

What they also write is that he has features that are consistent with acromegaly--a lantern jaw and gaps between his teeth. (They use technical medical terms). Okay. What I would ask the professors is how exclusive these features are to acromegaly. I think this conclusion by them, though, is important:

"His long career as a professional boxer and wrestler lasted to 57 years of age and was not substantially influenced by acromegaly and associated co-morbidities."

So I guess the bottom line is medical specialists without examining him think he had, or at least may have had, acromegaly, but also think it didn't effect his career. This seems to me to make this discussion largely moot as I don't know what is proven in a boxing sense.

So your point is well taken and I stand corrected. But what does this say about Carnera as a boxer?

 

All I’m saying is if you look at pictures of Primo’s hands - to me they look gigantic.
Maybe they are normal for a man his height and weight. I don’t know. But they’re still measurably bigger than the K brothers, Bowe and Lewis. Who are all in the ballpark height and weight wise with Primo.

I’m glad you took the effort to find and read the medical opinion on Primo. Like I said I don’t have conclusive proof but I think it’s plausible maybe even likely he did suffer from it.

what does it say of his as boxer? I’m not sure - I would of thought going in , having this disease would be a major handicap - making his accomplishments more impressive. But again the doctors feel it didn’t hinder him, so I just don’t know enough about the disease to formulate a fully formed opinion.