Controversial Opinions Update #1 Primo Carnera

On paper his best wins are:

Young Stribling
George Godfrey
King Levinsky I
King LevinskyII
Ernie Schaff
Jack Sharkey
Tommy Loughran
Walter Neusel

He was also arguably cheated out of a good win against Stanley Poreda.

There are other decent wins that merit a closer look, that I have omitted.

On paper this is pretty solid, but you can park a question mark against a couple of them.

Even if you do, this is not the resume of one of the worst heavyweight champions.

 

Wherever he rates, he was a very good man who never was corrupt, but was used up & abused by the mob.
Also it is said Willard was as big-slightly taller, but without the 85" wingspan, but lighter even with having more bodyfat.
Carnera was a former strongman who before steroids were even invented was the muscular size of the biggest boxers in modern times.

And never even ate much, + grew up very poor-this was all natural, & seemingly a part of his giganticism.

 

I rank him a bit higher than I did decades ago.

 

The Stribling fights were fixed .
Schaff was a "dead man walking".
Carnera seems to have deserved the win over Poreda.

 

Primo looks better on film than I gave him credit for. He looks more agile and light on his feet and he actually boxes ok. Small quick fighters troubled him. I do think he was a victim of an overly negative press, looking to make good copy on a negative depiction of Italians.
His resume is ok. If I had to guess his sheer size advantage posed some measure of difficulty for fellow heavyweights of the day.
If you believe his win over Sharkey was legit - and he made two successful defenses on the level against Uzcudon, and Loughren before losing bravely to Max Baer, then I would have to say he was an ok title holder.
Middle to lower end but clearly not the worst and not as bad as all the negative press heaped upon him.

 

I definitely put an asterisk against them.

 

There were plenty of Italian Americans in the ratings during Carnera's time, okay they were US born but did any of them suffer bad press?
Ettore
Perronni
Galento
Nova
Massara
Impellittiere
I'm more inclined to believe Primo's bad press came as a result of the mob behind him and some of his own fights.
Like Willard he was certainly courageous but that doesn't signify quality.

 

For those who think Primo was in fixed fights is there any proof that? Where can I read it and what fix did he take a dive in? The DQ fights can be viewed as fix so I agree that the Stibling fights were suspect. One is a DQ win, the other a DQ loss.

 

Not true.

Officially, traces of undetectable spinal meningitis were present, microscopic traces, And during a long fight, together with the the punches from Carnera aggravated the dormant virus, causing swelling in the brain. That was the real conclusion.

So Schaff entered the ring totally unknowing of a risk. it was just unfortunate that the dormant virus, left over from the influenza that he had recovered from weeks earlier, possibly even before another fight that schaff had won, was still present in the spinal cord and was aggravated during the fight with Carnera.

These were microscopic traces.Nobody is in a weakened state from microscopic traces. But he went into a fight where the dormant virus was then aggravated.

 

I never suggested Schaaf had any idea of his condition so thats completely irrelevant!
He was also recovering from a bad beating from Baer.
Then, as the 9th round started, Baer piled into Schaaf with a withering assault. Schaaf was a tired and bewildered fighter when the round ended. The 10th was the same, only more so. Two bruising rights landed on Schaaf's jaw and down he went just as the final bell sounded. Nearly five minutes of frantic work by Schaaf's handlers was required to bring him to and get him to his corner." -Associated Press

Now don't be trying to tell me he was okay to be boxing unless you have an MD after your name!
Schaaf went down from a jab!

I'm not replying to you further on this thread an excellent poster has made an unwise comment to AN OTHER in a debate and been banned.Frankly you aren't worth the risk of it happening to me.

 

"Nearly five minutes of frantic work by Schaaf's handlers was required to bring him to and get him to his corner."

How much does this differ from many other fights, for example Johansson in the second Patterson fight? Schaaf seems to have died from the effects of the flu, not from the Baer fight. He had several fights in between the Baer and Carnera bouts.

By the way, my take viewing the film of the Carnera-Schaaf fight is that the final punch was kind of a half jab-half hook delivered by Carnera moving forward with his weight behind it. It really snapped Schaaf's head back. Bottom line--it was a hard punch.

*no sense going around about how good or bad Carnera was. No minds are going to be changed. But on the issues of his personal life and finances, I think there is strong evidence he was never "down and out" and actually handled his money with reasonable shrewdness, as is proven by his estate up near Venice. He seems to have checkmated the mob by 1932 and put his finances in the hands of an international banker who looked after his interests. Even Paul Gallico referenced this. He was not the "simpleton" the negative legend has painted.

 

Can’t favor Carnera over Leon. I think you got it right with Burns and Hart. That’s it imo

 

I’d pick the Douglas of the Holyfield fight to beat Carnera let alone Tokyo Douglas.

 

https://www.thesunchronicle.com/req...cle_be833513-f860-5d38-9897-f14f8c4fa3e9.html

Decent article on Schaaf. I had found a better one years ago and posted somewhere on here but can no longer find it through Google. The link above is pretty good though

 

I’m only speculating, perhaps it was because he was native to Italy and not American born. Perhaps it was something to do politically with Mussolini. I’m also not ruling out that it could very well be what you imply and what the writers of the day stuck to him, his mob connections and fixed fights both real ones and alleged. Whatever it may be, I believe it exaggerated and the narrative stuck to sell papers. Strictly going by film, and looking at his resume if the fights were legit directly preceding his run to champion and defenses as champion, then I have to rate him better than I did years ago. Does this make him good? No but it would elevate him out of the basement of lineal champions.