An opinion on Primo Carnera from 1993

On this, I'd agree.

 

We each view this from two different angles. I can't see how Carnera's management were not hellbent on lifting the championship. If they were not, then they did a great impression of pretending they were; promoting Primo to the hilt and ensuring, as far as was possible, no unfortunate results befell him - at least, none that would set their ambition of hitting the rankings back too far.

If Carnera's team were doing all they could to elevate their guy into the heavyweight top-ten ratings then I can't see what other end game could have been in mind, than for them to own a World Champion. That they, along with Sharkey and Buckley tried to bypass Schmeling and the NBA, by arranging with the NYSAC to put on their version of a World Title bout, against Sharkey, is a strong indicator of that ambition.

Even though this attempt was thwarted, we still see what kind of a setback might have been suffered by Carnera against Schmeling when, only a few months after the Schmeling/Carnera bout was cancelled, Carnera would be thoroughly outclassed by Sharkey. To all intents and purposes, Carnera had been entirely exposed at the world level, anyway - yet he maintained a top-5 ranking.

So nothing, it seemed, was going to deter Team Carnera in their goal for the championship. Carnera's losses to Gains and Poreda had no impact on his path, either.

Respective views on the circumstances and events, including and beyond the whiff of the Sharkey/Schmeling (II) verdict, is where you and I differ. That Sharkey managed Schaaf and allowed his ward to enter a ring with Carnera, in his condition, knowing that the winner would have the shot at his title, will always perplex me. That the eventual championship bout drew the amount of suspicion it did (although there were also those, who were happy to accept it as a legitimate bout) is in itself noteworthy. And, given what I have read and seen of the fight, I remain undecided as to the extent to which those suspicions were justified.

At best, it was a freak result, neither seen before, nor to be repeated. His subsequent wins over Uzcudun and Loughran were a reversion to the pallid performances that audiences had grown used to, prior to Schaaf and Sharkey (II) (his noted ‘improvement’ notwithstanding); his getting beaten by Baer in humiliating fashion, sealing the perspective of him as a limited boxer, who had previously benefitted from an unnatural level of protection.

Carnera’s downfall, post-Mob-support, is difficult to ignore.

 

I did skim through Gallico's "Pity The Poor Giant" piece earlier, and I'm not sure at all that he was accurate. When discussing the bad elements in the Sharkey and Carnera camps prior to their 1933 fight, he seems to place "Duffy, Madden et Cie." in Carnera's camp.
But from everything I've read Madden seems to have been in Sing Sing for almost 12 months up to a release sometime around the 1st July 1933, a couple of days after the fight.

An Owney Madden "biography" by a Graham Nown even had Madden and Frenchy DeMange at ringside at Carnera's corner, even though the author himself seems to more or less accurately record Madden as being in prison at the time !

It is best, of course, to go to the newspapers of the time.

 

What would they sue and blacklist Sharkey for?

 

They would sue him for whatever they could. Or they might, they could. Get someone to do it. They had the power and means to, and would cripple him financially.

He'd be blacklisted for refusing to take a dive. Every manager or promoter worth a dime would be instructed to stay away from him.

I'm saying these are the things that MIGHT be used to persuade him. Very bad things. Pulling strings to ruin his career and tie up his money.

But "I'll harm your family" is more of a cartoon villain fictional thing. It's completely unnecessary, we're talking about sophisticated racketeers here, not desperadoes.

 

In the NBA ratings released September 15, 1931, a month before the first Sharkey-Carnera fight, Carnera was rated #12. Watching the film, Carnera decisively lost but put up a decent performance against a man considered the best American heavyweight and by many the best in the world. He bounced back with a UD over King Levinsky and an impressive KO of Victorio Campolo. That got him into the top five Ring Magazine ratings at the end of the year.

In the NBA ratings released September 20, 1932, after the losses to Larry Gains and Stanley Poreda, Carnera was not rated in the top ten. Sharkey was the champion, followed by Schmeling, Baer, and Poreda, with Schaaf at #7. Carnera would bounce back again with another winning streak including another decision over Levinsky.

On the loss to Stanley Poreda, the mob wasn't doing a good job of protecting Carnera off boxrec:

"Commissioner George E Keenen, who was ringside, suspended Referee Joe Mangold indefinitely for what was termed an 'unpardonable decision' . . . 'the decision given by Mangold was the worst I have ever seen," said Keenen.

Going into 1933, these were The Ring Magazine year end ratings:

Champion-----Jack Sharkey
1----Max Schmeling
2----Max Baer
3----Stanley Poreda
4----Primo Carnera
5----Ernie Schaaf
6----Johnny Risko
7----King Levinsky
8----Walter Neusel
9----Larry Gains
10---Unknown Winston

Schaaf was coming off a KO of Winston, and would fight Poreda on January 6. Schaaf stopped Poreda impressively in 6 rounds, and was matched with Carnera on February 10, the winner to get Sharkey. Patrick Coleman states that Schaaf's contract with Buckley and Sharkey would expire on March 1, leaving Schaaf free to negotiate a title shot with Sharkey if he beat Carnera. Schaaf caught the flu, and Buckley wanted to delay the Carnera fight, but Schaaf refused. (I don't recall Sharkey's opinion on this being mentioned by Coleman)

Carnera's KO of Sharkey as a "freak" result? Boxing history is full of this sort of freak result. I just watched a Bobby Dykes fight posted by William Walker, and noticed looking at his record that Dykes was stopped only twice in 151 bouts, with one of them by the light punching Tiger Jones. William informed me that Jones was trailing going into the 10th round and so went for a KO and got it. I can hardly imagine finding a more freaky result.

As for the Loughran fight being unimpressive, okay. Depends on how it is judged. A decade earlier Dempsey went 15 rounds with Tommy Gibbons to a decision, the same as Carnera did with Loughran. Gibbons was smaller and older and had nothing like the resume at heavyweight that Loughran had. Didn't prove that Dempsey couldn't punch.

 

I agree with your description "cartoon villain fictional thing" for the threatening kids argument,

but blacklisting the world champion? They didn't have that power. Madden and Duffy couldn't even keep themselves out of prison. What is to stop Sharkey from fighting Schmeling in Germany? Baer and his management would pass up a title shot at a champion Sharkey?

I don't think this makes any sense, and I also don't see any evidence anyone did or would try this.

as for the Carnera KO of Sharkey, it is on film, and looks legit to me. This is what boxrec has to say:

"Officials of the New York State Athletic Commission said they saw no reason to doubt the genuineness of the outcome. Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, and Max Baer were ringside for the fight, and they all stated their belief that Carnera won legitimately. Of all the sportswriters at ringside--including Damon Runyan, Westbrook Pegler, and Frank Wallace--the only one who expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the fight was Bill Cunningham of the Boston Post. 'It looked questionable to me,' he said."

I really hope that Adam Pollack does one of his well-researched books on Carnera.

 

Gallico was aware that Madden was in prison. His reference to Madden and Duffy is not literal, but identifies the wider mob element involved with both the Sharkey and Carnera camps. Hence the use of the term et Cie (and Company) - Not really an inaccuracy, in my book.

 

Yes, I did consider that. It's possible that was his meaning, yes. I'm not sure.

 

It's not just the likes of Madden, Duffy, etc. and the others who were controlling Carnera. That's just half of the equation.
It's Sharkey's management, and/or people he relies on and is indebted too. It's the whole network of shady power brokers inside boxing. On all sides.

I'm sure world champions have been blacklisted before and since. Tied up in courts, suspended on spurious grounds by boxing commissions. These are the types of things well-connected racketeers can infiltrate and influence. Of course, he retains a great deal of leverage as champion, and someone somewhere would promote his fight. But at the cost of a lot of aggravation, financial ruin perhaps. Or even having to go to Germany for a lesser purse in a fight he'd more or less be guaranteed to lose anyway !
Throwing the championship for extra dough, especially for a champion who is in decline and over-ripe, is a viable proposition.
It's straightforward business.

I'm not saying it happened that way. I'm just saying that's the kind of thing that could happen when you have big-time racketeers corrupting boxing, as they were.

 

No doubt Carnera's management wanted to win the title, but unless they genuinely did fix it, they would have known that the odds were against it happening.

Therefore it would not have been indispensable to their plans.

Their original plan was probably just to cash out with a title fight.

This was obviously the best outcome that they could be certain of.

 

For what it's worth, there is at least one Gallico article I've read (from August '32, I think), in which he refers to Madden as having gone back to "the clink",

 

this is a couple of quotes from Paul Gallico.

on Carnera:

"Poor Primo. A giant in stature and strength, a terrible figure of a man, with the might of ten men, he was a helpless lamb among wolves who used him until there was nothing more left to use, until the last possible penny had been squeezed from his big carcass, and then abandoned him. His last days in the United States were spent alone in a hospital. One leg was paralyzed, the result of beatings taken around the head. None of the carrion birds who had picked him clean came back to see him or help him."

on Joe Louis, after watching a training session

"I had the feeling that I was in the room with a wild animal . . . He lives like an animal, has fights like an animal, has all the cruelty and ferocity of a wild thing . . . I see in this colored man something so wild, so hard, so cruel that I wonder as to his bravery. Courage in the animal is desperation."

This is not exactly the calm, measured tone of an historian.

 

This is a myth. He didn't record the most KO's of any heavyweight not being able to punch. Sharkey said his jab was stronger than most's crosses and that his punch that KO'd him was worse than Louis' and Dempsey's. The fixed fight thing is something that was exaggerated by his critics. Fixed fights is something that in general was exaggerated by the masses, but historians have been finding they didn't occur as much as stated.

 

You can't find a better ESB combo than alt accounts and bumping Primo threads.