Carnera was ponderous but deceptively powerful. After the Carnera-Schaaf fight, Bill Corum wrote a feature article published in the next day's newspaper that the fight was fixed. He had to retract it the next day when he learned Schaaf was in a coma. In light of this, I really think a person has to be pretty bold to say with any certainty that the second Sharkey-Carnera fight was fixed. There were three punches landed. I don't think the camera shows for certain which did the most damage. The first and the third look glancing and the uppercut looks like a forearm smash, but you can't really see Sharkey's chin.The glove may have landed on the chin. And who's to say that a guy as strong as Carnera couldn't knock a guy out with a legitimate forearm smash. This wasn't professional wrestling, but boxing, so the basic underlying assumption in the absence of other compelling evidence has to be that Carnera put everything he had into the blow. If it had been a wrestling match, the basic assumption would have been that he threw the blow for show. Sharkey says he was knocked out. I accepted his answer a long time ago and have gone on to other more pressing pursuits. One of the many things we can never know for sure.
Fair enough. There seemed a bit of correlation as Weaver was the quoted topic. The highlighted is a no brainer for sure. I'd say now that smartly used weights along with the boxing training would certainly lose nothing. The training the guys followed back in the 40's etc was plenty effective.
I agree, the hatred of weightlifting by some circles in boxing is downright irrational That being said, it certainly isn't necessary either, there are other ways to build explosiveness and strength (ex. Calisthenics, Medicine ball, Band tension, etc)
Let me ask you this Rez.... Do you see it as possible he hit/pushed him upwards with his forearm? Do you feel like you can clearly see a punch landed?
I think it opens up further speculation that if Sharkey was going to dive he might have thought ,"that's near enough,I'll go down ." I also think some of Sharkey's missed swipes look ponderous and telegraphed. Sharkey was a very good boxer ,but you wouldn't know it from this fight!
A rather big one. In your living room, try and pretend like hit something with an uppercut with your fist, and then try the same movement with your forearm. In one instance you can clearly generate more power, and at the end of your arm(fist), where you've generate all your force and leverage. Then imagine trying to generate that type of force with a forearm, and take that same type of swing. One will clearly generate more force and do more damage than the other. Then, if we extrapolate further, if it was a forearm, there is no way Sharkey should react like he was hit cannon firing upwards. His reaction to a forearm punch, would to me, seem to indicate he took a dive. I think his reaction was a little exaggerated even for a fist landing, but a forearm, no way imo
Which wouldn't necessarily favour either argument. Yes Corum had to retract his accusation,but later, when the full facts of Schaaf's condition came out ,no one in their right mind would attribute Schaaf's ko and subsequent death to Carnera's power.
Yes, it's true that a lot of people attributed Schaaf's death to the Baer fight and maybe other prior damage he had received, largely because they had convinced themselves that Carnera was a powder-puff puncher. Obviously, the accumulated damage a fighter absorbs during the course of his career affects the outcome of his health in later life, but I don't buy the argument that the Baer fight was the main cause of Schaaf's demise. When I reviewed the most complete version of the Carnera-Schaaf film some years ago, I saw Carnera's continuous drubbing of Schaaf with his left jab throughout the 13 rounds as a tremendous cumulative beating. Carnera's punches didn't seem to have a lot of snap, but they were clubbing punches by an extremely powerful man. And Schaaf was helpless when it came to blocking or avoiding them, or impeding their trajectory. Carnera was allowed to deliver each punch with maximum effect.
