Deontay Wilder vs Primo Carnera

Usky fought at middleweight and light heavyweight in the amateurs.

I think he was 19 the last time he made middle, and 21 the last time he made light heavy.

I don't think that he would have been a lot bigger than Jack Sharkey in the 30s.

 

The interesting thing is that Wilder is a tad taller than Carnera, something big Primo would not be used to.
JT said it earlier, but it's worth reiterating and that is that Carnera would be better off using his superior mass and strength to maul Wilder into exhaustion.
But also as said, that was not the way he fought. (Which is a pity actually.)

No, I really struggle to see anything other than Wilder finding his range sooner or later and landing bazookas off Primo's chin.
Since Wilder would not be under pressure or forced to fight at an uncomfortable pace, he could play his game and wait for openings.
Primo would be trying to outbox Wilder, and not out muscle him or put him in stress situations. Wilder would have time to find his range and pick his shots.

Wilder doesn't seem to care if he loses a few rounds, because he has (had?) an unshakeable belief that he's gonna land the big shot sooner or later.
I've got to go with Wilder.

 

You'd have to be completely blind, not to see the enormous evolution in gymnastics from the 50s until today!

That's not to say a similar evolution has taken place in boxing... far from it! In fact, I don't really see any noticeable evolution/improvement at all, over the same period.

 

So lets stop being facetious, ok? This is what you wrote:

"I'm arguing that losing against Baer doesn't mean that you'd lose against Wilder. Outside of their power, sloppiness and lack of technical skills they are nothing alike."

You wrote that losing against Baer "doesn't" mean that you'd lose against Wilder. So you weren't saying Carnera would win, but you WERE arguing that he might not lose because of his loss to Baer. You are playing word games. I wouldn't have responded the way you did if you didn't write this.

And I didn't keep insisting or accusing you of believing Carnera wins, I dropped the issue after that and then you went on your tirade about Wilder's credentials as a fast finisher.

 

Wilder would not be "small" compared to Primo. He is 2 inches taller and his reach is pretty close. Also I just double checked the math and Wilder has consistently weighed over 220 and as high as 230 in some fights. Which means on average Carnera is 20 lbs heavier. Are you under some delusion that "size" is only about sheer weight? Do you think Tony Galento would "dwarf" Wilder?

My point in bringing up the size of Carnera's opposition is that he was essentially a weight bully. It would be like if Canelo were to fight a bunch of feather weights.

I never said Wilder was a taller version of Baer tho. I simply said that they DO in fact have several similarities and the fact that Baer landed at will on Carnera means that the lanky Wilder--who if nothing else is good at getting leverage with his long arms--would probably have an even easier time landing on Carnera. That's it. It's an incredibly simple and straight forward comparison that many other people have made and you made it way more convoluted than it needed to be.

Fury is a way more elusive target and more skilled than Carnera and he was dropped twice.

And yet you don't see Jack Dempsey, Tunney, Louis, or even Jack Sharkey with 20 losses. That is a lot by ANY era's standards, even for guys fighting multiple times a year over 15+ rounds.

Schaaf DID have a disadvantage by being 40 lbs lighter. Would you say that it helped...? Wilder isn't 6'2, has a completely different style, and hits way harder than Schaaf.

After watching Carnera on film and seeing his dubious record, I would say losing to him definitely doesn't do your own record any favors.

It isn't true for Wilder because he was rarely anywhere close to 40 lbs lighter than Carnera. You are taking a page out of Choklab's book of intellectual dishonesty skimming for the lowest weights for Wilder and then picking the heighest weights for the old school fighter. Wilder was freaking 231 in his very last match. But by all means, continue to explain to me how Carnera is going to "dwarf" a man who is taller than him with a similar reach.

It means he was pretty beatable if he had 12 losses. Not sure why you aren't grasping this basic concept.

Did I say Carnera's era was bad BECAUSE it was a long time ago?

The strength of eras ebbs and flows. 70's was amazing, early 80's was pretty iffy but then Tyson changed everything, then went to jail and the era was iffy again before guys like Bowe, Holyfield and Lewis gave us amazing fights. Then the late 90's was ass.

As for Carnera's era, it was one of those iffy "transitional" eras. When Dempsey retired ticket sales and excitement got much lower. When Louis exploded on the scene HW boxing picked up again. This is a historical fact, not sure why you're trying so hard to defend this time period when dozens of historians have written about it.

So they controlled him when he was fighting for peanuts then let him go when he started headlining big events? The mob isn't interested in making money?

That wasn't even main point. The point was you kept acting like Carnera wasn't carefully strung along and he was. He was one of the earliest examples of the "Freak show" tall boxer used to draw in crowds.

 

He doesn't need to keep Carnera down for the count. Any sensible ref will stop it after 2 or more knockdowns. Carnera would suffer irreparable damage if Wilder lands flush multiple times.

Wilder's knockdown against Fury was primarily due to the behind the ear shot that completely messed up his equilibrium, rabbit punches, and body shots. If anything is suspicious it's how Fury, who has zero elite knockouts or stoppages, was pummeling Wilder despite being unable to put a dent in him in the 1st fight. Also weird that how tired Wilder was so early on when his stamina is otherwise great and he has multiple late round rallies.

I wasn't saying Carnera's opponents being smaller automatically makes the wins/losses bad. It's the fact so many of them had tons of mileage with as many as 15-20+ losses combined with the fact they were giving up a huge amount of weight that makes Carnera's record look iffy.

Look, Carnera had tons of heart and took on many good fighters in his era. I am not denying either of these things. But he was rather limited and his record shows it. When he stepped up he lost many times and was brutally stopped against the very best he faced.

Wilder stepped up against Ortiz whom everyone was blatantly ducking and knocked him out. He stepped up against Fury and dropped him twice. This was in spite of him supposedly having "no skill" and a 1 trick pony. His career isn't over, but if he's as bad as people say he isn't doing too bad for a skinny former basketball player with not a lot of amateur experience and apparently lacking ability and technique according to almost everyone.

 

Lol Jacko never disappoints when you're in for a laugh

 

I have acknowledged that this is one plausible scenario.

Somewhere in their first fight, Fury obviously figured out that Wilder could not fight on the back foot.

Once he figured that out, he had the blueprint for nullifying Wilder.

It will be interesting to see where Wilder goes from here.

I suspect that he probably won't come back from his loss well mentally.

Also Fury has given people the blueprint for beating him.

Also without a belt, he will definitely fall into the high risk low reward category.

On top of that he is not exactly short of a bob or two, and unlikely to age particularly well.

 

Oh, goody. We're playing make-believe again!

Usyk is now 4 inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter.

 

I think Fury gave us the blueprint for beating almost everybody. Be 6-9, 275, move like a middleweight, be able to fight right handed and southpaw, be raised by a family that has been involved in boxing for generations, be immersed in boxing from the time you're a child, have arms that hang to your knees, be more relaxed in the boxing ring in front of a crowd fighting than you are anywhere else in the world. Yea, any fighter that follows that "blueprint" might beat Wilder.

 

What the hell are you talking about Usyk at heavyweight is 215-217 pounds and he's 6'3. He wouldn't be a giant in the old eras but he'd definitely be bigger than average. And he can move incredibly well similar to Holmes although im not saying he's as good as Holmes. Yeah he might've been smaller if he was born in the past but he wasn't, we're using current Usyk

 

Carnera lacks the durability and come forward aggressive IQ to use that blue print. It is not as simple as just plodding forward throwing punches, otherwise even Oscar Bonavena could do what Fury did.

The kronk style/swarming/forcing someone on the back foot is a skill in and of itself. Carnera was never a fighter of that mold, unless you want to point to a fight where he imposed his will on the front foot against a hard punching opponent?

 

Actually he seems to be holding up surprisingly well mentally and is determined to get a 3rd fight with Fury despite such a bad loss. Most would use that as an excuse to have a long layoff, get a bunch of "tune ups", retire, etc. Of course if he loses again Willder will be mentally shot.

I do agree he will be high risk low reward and will have a hard time getting another major fight if he cannot bounce back and gain another belt.

As for his style, he isn't your typical slugger wearing himself out with non stop aggression and tons of sparring/bag work, he actually seems to pace himself well both in fights and in training. Does a lot of swimming and gets frequent massages.

 

I think this is just more of certain posters using their typical facetious mentality pretending like it was purely a "stylistic" game plan that earned Fury the win over Wilder while ignoring all those factors you brought up. As if someone the size of Gene Tunney could simply copy the game plan and beat a modern sized murderous puncher.

Even a modern giant like David Price would get steamrolled if he tried to do what Fury did in the 2nd Wilder fight.

 

Thanks for the response. Good to understand why you hold your views. Okay, there is quite a lot to unpack I'll have to split this across two posts.

Part 1 of 2:

1. Fury wasn't regarded as the #1 heavyweight when he immediately came back. A lot of people regarded him as lineal champion, but that doesn't make him #1, I agree. But when he drew with Wilder on the road (in a fight with some extremely controversial scoring), people started recognizing that Fury wasn't actually finished and might still be the man to beat in the division. But unfortunately for Fury, Joshua had collected all of Fury's old belts in the interim so even The Ring couldn't justify putting him back at #1 just yet.

2. I never made the argument that Joshua was #1 between 2015-2017:

• Before Nov 2015: Klitschko #1.
• Nov 2015: Fury beats Klitschko: Fury #1; Klitschko #2
• June 2016: Fury postpones rematch with Ankle sprain.
• October 2016: Fury relinquishes his WBA and WBO belts in October 2016 (and effectively retired). Klitschko didn't retire. So many saw Klitschko as the defacto #1 again.
  • Note: Stiverne was at most seen as the #3 guy in the division behind Klitschko and Povetkin, and #4 when Fury won. So when Wilder beat him on points, Wilder became #4. By the end of 2016, Wilder had done enough to become #3 behind Fury and Klitschko, but he had fought nobody to elevate himself above Klitschko by the time of 'Klitschko v Joshua' in early 2017.
• April 2017 Joshua stops Klitschko to replace him as the #1 guy in the division and become unified WBA-IBF champion. Wilder was seen as #2, and by the end of 2017 Parker the WBO champion was seen as #3.

3. You say Povetkin failed "2, maybe even 3 drug tests". But that was Ortiz's 2nd failed drug test in 3 years! So again, why are you giving Wilder a pass on Povetkin, but you want to hold Joshua accountable for Ortiz's wrong doing?

4. Okay, as I said, I have no problem with Ruiz not being #1. But again, that didn't elevate Wilder to #1, at best you could make an argument that Wilder was alongside Fury at #1. But it's not controversial to say the boxing media and the majority of fans had Fury at #1 and Wilder at #2 following the controversial draw. Fury was back, and was the man who beat the man.

5. Sorry, but that is not what happened. I'm going to give you sources, as I don't expect anyone to just take my word for it:

• Whyte had already fought a heavyweight title eliminator for WBC belt against Chisora in December 2016. That needs to be addressed first:

https://www.bbc.com/sport/boxing/38278399

• Breazeale fought Molina in a title eliminator in November 2017. Not a final eliminator:

https://nyfights.com/worldwide/breazeale-face-molina-brooklyn/

• you said, Whyte refused to fight Breazeale in a final eliminator. Now, I don't know where you heard that, but sorry I have to call BS on that claim.

I can't find any evidence of this. Please can you tell me where you heard this?

• Regarding refusing to fight Ortiz in a "final eliminator." It was not. It was to make the winner second mandatory behind Breazeale. Whyte would be an idiot to go along with that nonsense. The WBC didn't have a leg to stand on with that, and were making up and breaking rules as they went along:

https://www.skysports.com/boxing/ne...red-to-fight-luis-ortiz-before-deontay-wilder

• In February 2019, the WBC realizing they had fvcked up, and coming under intense pressure from the boxing community and main stream media ordered Brezeale v Whyte for the interim title. Whyte was #1 challenger.

https://www.espn.com/boxing/story/_...illian-whyte-interim-world-title-bout-ordered

• You say that Breazeale earned his shot. How exactly? By beating Molina? Not only was Breazeale ranked at #6, Molina ranked #12, both below Whyte # 3,
  This content is protected
  You literally couldn't make this **** up. It's hilarious how corrupt the WBC are.

http://wbcboxing.com/ratings/WBC-RATINGS-BAKU-CONVENTION-2017.pdf

This content is protected

So, I think it is fair to say, Whyte was screwed by the WBC, and Breazeale should never have been Wilder's mandatory. It's pretty shameful that a couple of boxing "news" sites still peddle a false narrative.