Why people hate Carnera...

"So it leaves it all up in the air with conflicting quotes."

"No it doesn't."

Yes, I agree it doesn't, as your quote has no provenance. Where does it come from? Who quoted Carnera? What is the context? What does the "all" in "It is all true." refer to? Without some information like that, this alleged quote is worthless as evidence. I don't think it even rises to the level of hearsay.

Now, in fairness, Ken Jones doesn't give any information about where his quote came from either, but his quote is at least consistent with Carnera's actions and apparent attitude. Why else would he sue?

The one quote with provenance is from Carnera's daughter. Giavanna Maria, which Ken Jones implies came from her biography of her father:

"Daddy told us he never knew that. He told us that he never knew and that the decision only depended on the boxing ability of his opponents."

If your quote is correct, he lied to his daughter.

Giavanna goes on--"He was too naive. We are sorry to say so, but it is like that. His relation to arranged bouts (a book, Le Mystere Carnera by Carnera's first manager, Leon See, lists numerous fixed fights between 1928 and 1931) is to be found in his naivity, which came from the goodness of his heart."

"He was sure of one thing: 'The world title match was not fixed. It was too important and could not be fixed.'"

Actually, Ken Jones' take on Carnera is close to how I would look at it:

"Carnera dwarfed his contemporaries in the heavyweight division, but, if technically limited, relying mainly on a stiff left jab and a right uppercut, he was no mere freak promoted as a legitimate contender purely on the basis of his physical enormity. As much as history suggests that Carnera was crude, with little semblance of boxing ability, he was probably a good deal better than Jess Willard, the other six foot, six inch plus heavyweight champion, who defeated Jack Johnson for the title in Havana, Cuba, in 1915, than lost it to Jack Dempsey."

 

As for acromegaly, it is plausible, but not certain, and seems to me to be guesswork. Without knowing more about how common certain features or conditions are outside of acromegaly, there is no way to evaluate this conclusion. Using diabetes as proof seems very weak off the statistics.

Bowe and Lewis were not actually as big as Primo, who after all often boxed at over 270 lbs. and was in good shape at that weight. Vitali's hands are clearly unusually small. His fist is smaller than those of the 185 lb. Marciano.

 

just an aside on Carnera. I was reading a profile of Carnera translated from the Italian and it mentioned something I don't remember reading anywhere else.

In late 1932, weary of fighting every couple of weeks and feeling he was not getting where he wanted to go, and also feeling he was being shorted from the purses, Carnera is described as leaving his American managers and:

"he joined the team of Luigi Soresi . . . Soresi brought him back to the U. S., organizing matches valid for the world title."

Does anyone know anything about this Luigi Soresi?

And his being Carnera's manager as champion?

 

Sorry, I was under the mistaken impression that you were familiar with Carnera's quote and its source.

Carnera made the statement in a substantial interview he gave to Sport magazine in February, 1948.

The article is entitled:
The Strange Case of Carnera
By Jack Sher

The full quotation is thus:

"

This content is protected

"

I don't doubt the quote from Ken Jones' article. It was as publicly known then, as it is now, that Carnera sued Columbia Studios for $1.5M - and lost.

He sued for invasion of privacy which, as I have previously suggested in this thread, was an odd charge to make, given that it was a fictional story. In other words, it was well known that the story was his, else why consider it an invasion of his privacy?

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion. It is as often portrayed than not that Carnera was unaware of the fixes at the time. The interview I cite makes that case.

I don't doubt this^ quote, either. But, as I said in my previous post, it adds credence to claims that many of Carnera's fights were fixed.

I have some regard for Ken Jones' writing, but I doubt Carnera would beat Willard. I'm not suggesting Willard was exceptional, by any stretch, but he wouldn't have needed to be against Carnera.

To say Carnera was a "good deal better" than Willard is really stretching it a bit, in my opinion.

 

Sorry, but it doesn't quite work that way!

Length (circumference) is proportional to height.
Area is proportional to height squared.
Volume (mass) is proportional to height cubed.

Carnera was 7.6% taller than Shavers (6'5½" to 6"). So if we enlarge Shavers to Carnera's height, he would weigh 210 x 1.247 (1.076 cubed) = 261.87 lbs.

His fist size would only increase by 7.6%, though - to 12.9" (12 x 1.076).

 

How does it work? Where do you get your mathematical formulas from? If they are averages of the general population, they are worthless. Like saying if an average black bear weighs 300 lbs., any black bear you stumble on in the woods must weigh 300 lbs.

Here are the heights and weights of some champions, with the fist sizes as given by The Long Count in an earlier post:

Joe Frazier (5-11, 205)--13"
Lennox Lewis (6-5, 240+)--12"
Mike Tyson (5-11, 215)--13"
Sonny Liston (6-1, 215)--15"
Vitali Klitschko (6-7, 240+)--11"

What is blatantly clear is that there is no connection between height or weight, and fist size. Your expansion of Shavers has him almost 6' 6" and over 260 lbs. but still with a smaller fist than Frazier.

My point, and I stick with it, is that there is no evidence that Carnera's hands were outsized for a man of his overall stature. He was a naturally big fellow. It is also a moot point in a boxing sense as even the professors who speculate on his being afflicted with acromegaly don't believe it effected his sports career.

 

Thanks for pointing out where your quote came from. I found the Jack Sher article online and read it. I can't say I found it convincing, as his descriptions of the Sharkey fights and the Baer fight clash with the films. Nor does Carnera look that bad in other filmed fights or ever as hopelessly out of his depth as Sher implies.

Now the quote you quote seems to me to be slippery and deceptive writing.

He starts with a paragraph about corruption in boxing, which "made this helpless giant the heavyweight champion of the world."

We then have Carnera commenting on the novel The Harder They Fall. "that book, yes, I have read it. It is all true." So we are left with the impression that Carnera agrees that he was "helpless" but this clashes with his statement to his daughter that the championship fight with Sharkey was definitely on the level. My interpretation is that Carnera agreed that widespread boxing corruption was real, not with the extreme position he was a total oaf with a glass jaw. And by the way, the glass jaw bit is one of the more extreme distortions. Did Carnera ever take a full count? There have been champions who seem to me to have had weaker jaws than Carnera.

As for what I think of Carnera, he wasn't very good for a champion. I think a fight between Carnera and Willard would have been a toss up, and with his size Carnera could probably have beaten a few of of the other bottom tier champions. Whatever one thinks of Sharkey at his best, he was on the cusp of a severe decline when Carnera got him. Primo was a guy in the right ring at the right time.

 

It has nothing to do with strange formulas or population averages. It's just how things work.

Imagine you have two cubes - one is twice as tall as the other. The length of the sides on the big cube is double the length of the sides on the small cube. Same with the circumference. Now the area (surface) is obviously 4 (2 x 2) times as big - and the volume (mass) is, equally obviously, 8 (2 x 2 x 2) times as big.

So if you enlarge a 6', 210, fist size 12, Shavers to Carnera's height (looking exactly the same of course, just bigger) he would be 262 lbs with a fist size just under 13".

Pretty simple - you don't have to be a math professor to get it.

 

"So if you enlarge 6', 210, fist size 12, Shavers to Carnera's height (looking exactly the same of course, just bigger) he would be 262 lbs with a fist size just under 13".

And the point? Even if I accept you are correct. So the 6' 6" and 260 lb. Shavers has a fist size smaller than the 5' 11" and 205 lb Frazier and much smaller than the 6' 1" and 215 lb. Liston. It would seem to only prove that Shavers has very small hands proportionally (accepting you are correct) to Frazier and Liston. Carnera has smaller hands proportionally to Liston.

That the physical attribute of living flesh and blood creatures can be reduced to cubes is your belief, not mine, but I feel it pointless to dispute any of this.

 

The point is, that you at first claimed: "Proportionally Shavers and Carnera have about the same sized fists for their total body size". You came to this conclution by noting, that Carnera was 1.238 times heavier than Shavers... which you then multiplied with Shavers' 12" fist, resulting in a 260 lbs Shavers with a fist size almost identical to Carnera's.

I simply pointed out, that this was the wrong way to go about it - and tried to explain the correct way. And it has nothing to do with flesh and blood being reduced to cubes. It's common sense - 5th grade stuff, that shouldn't be too hard to understand!

 

So we got our answer to what would happen if Paulie hit Carnera.

 

Carnera had gigantism. It's quite obvious in his look.

 

It depends how deep one wants to run their analysis of a situation. Questioning the legitimacy of a published article, subsequently referred to in endless other articles, across the national sports press, needs some evidence to support that doubt and any conclusion drawn, I would imagine. Else, it's just a rabbit hole without end.

Added to that, is the article presents a multitude of libel case opportunities for all the people Sher references by name, throughout. Still - I am yet to be made aware of any such legal action, taken by anyone, at the time, who could have taken issue with the piece or any of the papers, which referenced it later, had it not been on the level.


I think the general view, which has stood for decades and is rooted in the widespread writings of the time, passes the 'Duck Test' (as previously referred to).

I have been convinced for some years now that Carnera was carried to a gross extent. So much so that his legacy is inescapably tarnished. So, I completely understand and relate to why people doubt the legitimacy of his career, including his championship.

And, I do not rule out the possibility that the Sharkey II bout was rigged.

At the same time, I bear no particular bias against Carnera. He was a solid, humble chap, by all accounts and I am glad that, after boxing, he was able to move on and make a good life for himself and his family. If people want to consider him a 'good' heavyweight, in his own time (albeit, not a great champion) then so be it. I might not necessarily agree with that take, but I'm not going to argue too hard against it. Carnera was what he was - still won the world title (even if under a cloud of suspicion) and will always be a part of boxing history.

However, I do not accept some of the drivel I have read on this forum, over recent years, which attempts to reinvent Carnera, as some kind of SHW archetype, who could have competed handily in the modern era and be considered a better all-round boxer than the likes of Riddick Bowe, etc. etc.

By the way - I'm not suggesting that you subscribe to the more outlandish views. Your last paragraph is a fair enough summary of your outlook.

 

I admit my argument about Shavers and Carnera is glib and so I accept it is in error. As someone in his 80's, I have made more errors than you young guys could possibly have made so far. But as there is not, and never will be, a 6' 6" Earnie Shavers, how can you prove you are correct?

Also you duck the issue of why for example Frazier or especially Liston have such relatively large hands for their height and weight and if Carnera's are really outsize for his stature.

And also, what is the direct connection between height and/or weight and hand size? I don't think there is one.

 

I completely agree... there's obviously no direct correlation between height and/or weight and hand size. Some have large hands for their size (like, for example, Liston), while others have smaller hands. It's of course a very individual thing.

But that's not my point. I'm talking about how a single person's tale-of-the-tape will change, if we enlarge him. The measurements will change, according to what I've already explained.

Let's imagine, that we make 6', 210 lbs Shavers twice as tall. Of course his body composition remains the same (otherwise the exercise would be pointless!) - in other words, the 12' Shavers looks identical to the 6' Shavers, only twice as tall. So how much would this giant Shavers weigh? The answer is 1680 lbs (210 x 2 x 2 x 2). It doesn't matter, that such a Shavers doesn't exist - that is what he would weigh, if he did!

You might want to take a look at this thread (post 62 - 64), where I try to explain how to make these calculations:
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