Primo Carnera's fixed fights.

Young Stribling fights. He also fought numerous tomato cans that put up little to no effort against him, but I'm not sure if those can be called fixed. In that case we would have to call a lot of fights today fixed.

The fights I've seen on film were all "level", although the ending to Carnera-Godfrey was odd. Godfrey hit him below the belt and Carnera went down as if shot. Godfrey had a history of getting himself disqualified. He did seem to try to knock Carnera's head off with overhand rights up to that point though.

 

Most of it is myth. There was a thread on this already a while back, a pretty long one, too.

 

How do you prove a fight is fixed?
The following Carnera fights were viewed with" suspicion,"
Big Boy Peterson x2 [hit the floor from grazing punches]
Roy Ace Clark [ beleived to be a dive]
Elzier Rioux ,[fined for lack of effort]
Seal Harris [fight in Brazil, Harris was in Carnera's entourage]
Chuck Wiggins [known to do business]
George Godfrey [ditto]
Walter Neusel [retired with a cut eye that was described as a graze]
Leon Bombo Chevalier, [ beleived to be an out and out dive]
Young Stribling [ x2 2 dsq's one each, beleived to be fixes]
Bud Gorman [ a poor effort from Gorman, who was not adverse to "arrangements" ]
Jack Sharkey?[ Sharkey denied it all his life but said, even his wife had doubts.]
No proof , no crime.

 

promotional fights with jobbers that want a paycheck ..not "fixed"; why battling a relative green giant for all rounds with the risk to getting smashed ? Carnera was pretty strong and only elite fighters can deal with him.
Those guys simple put a sufficent effort, no more.
Godfry, frustrated, get disqualified for a low blow.

I read that Neusel, when he was losting to Primo, suffering an eye injury at an already badly damaged eye and give up avoiding a permanent injury.

 

The thing is, lots of fighters bought into the early “Primo the monster” hype and did not perform. With the hindsight of bud schulbergs film its easy to assume now that carnera wasn’t too scary a task for top heavyweights. but at the time the giant was hyped as a killer. Call it intimidation.

If I underperformed against a guy 100lb heavier Id love the excuse that the fight was fixed and that “I could have beat him if I wanted to”. Those fighters were not getting paid enough for it to be worth them risking injury against a guy being hyped as a superhuman colossus.

Even if primo was only half as good as the hype it was still too much for most heavyweights to give it a real go.

There is a lot of evidence that the gangsters who really owned primo were not taking any chances; there are too many fix stories out there for them all not to be true. Primos backers wanted it all in their favour. There is no doubt about that what so ever. They wanted to sell tickets and build a sure thing. The purpose of Primos knockout tour was to get as many fans to see him on the road to universally demand a title shot.

The truth is carnera was at best good enough to be a champion and at worst hard to beat. At the end of the day getting “exposed” by a peak max Baer and peak Joe Louis should never have made him a laughing stock any more than Lewis being taken out by McCall.

 

Carnera's former manager published a record which had notations on which of his fights had been fixed while under that manager. It was reprinted in the book "Man Mountain"

 

yes that was the guy who was pushed out by the mob. he'd invested a lot of money in primo taking him around the world and hadnt yet broke even. He wasnt happy that others were making money out of him, what beter way to ruin their meal ticket than to say "primo only ever won if I fixed his fights for him". he had one hell of a motive to rubish carnera....

 

I don't think that Leon See is a particularly reliable observer.

 

Trust your own eyes, disregard half the fix stories and carnera is still a worthy champion. He fought as manny as 25 times a year, How bad would Primo have to be to have a 100lb advantage over a no name fighter and still need a fight fixed? The public never would have stood for it.

 

The fix was definately in on a lot of his fights. You may not believe it was in on as many as See said but it was definately in. Take Chuck Wiggins for instance. He was shot when he fought Carnera and was a former MW/LHW. Before his fight with Carnera he told all of his friends in Indianapolis not to come and not to bet on him because he was only going to make a dive. If you have to fix a fight against a shot ex MW journeyman in Wiggins its a safe bet you are fixing your bigger ones. Dont get me wrong. I think Carnera learned his craft and developed but I think while he was developing they were fixing his fights to keep him built up as an attraction. I definately think his KO of Sharkey was legit, which many will disagree with.

 

I imagine most of his stoppage wins over lesser opposition looked like this:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P-IlT1Or0A[/ame]


Just too big and strong for most of the 200 lbers to handle.

 

As shot as Wiggins was when he fought Carnera Id still rate him ahead of Meen.