Let's try and improve Primo Carnera

He beat bums and set-ups and dive-artists.
Bit like Tony Tucker (47 KOs in 57 wins)

 

Or Alex Stewart. Or Lamar Clark.

 

Primo Carnera needed to keep his left hand up. At least try to block that overhand right.
And jab with maximum force.

I believe his KO of Schaaf shows the ability to throw a VERY HARD jab. I guess it might have been that tragedy that put an end to him developing that jab further.
People 'credit' the death of Schaaf to a previous loss at the hands of Max Baer, but there's no denying that the final punch from Carnera looks pretty devastating on film.

 

It didnt appear very devastating to the ringside audience who booed vociferously . Hype Igoe turned to a fellow reporter and prophetically said "the only way I'll believe this is if he dies."

 

One conclusion that we could draw from this incident, is that people were starting to see malpractice where there was none.

That Carnera’s accusers in the press, had created such a climate of suspicion, that people went to his fights expecting them to be fixed.

If Earnie Schaff had lived, then people would solemnly trot this quote out as evidence that this fight was fixed.

With the Sharkey fight as well, there is a considerable disconnect between what the ringsiders thought they saw, and what we actually see on the film.

 

The conclusion that most objective observers will draw is that Carnera and his management had such odious reputations due to numerous belly flops into the water by less than ambitious opponents, some who had their purses withdrawn ,some having their licences revoked, that all his fights became suspect.
You are on your own on this but I've already told you what I think in earlier posts.

This thread cost you your credibility with me , not that you care, just a fact.

 

Well, he did die.

 

The Schaaf fight might well have been fixed.
Just because the poor guy died doesn't mean he wasn't tanking it up until the 15th round. No one's ever accused Carnera of being in on the fixes.

The main problem with the press - and more so with the many modern Carnera critics - is the SINGLING OUT of Carnera.
Every other heavyweight champ of that era seems to get a free pass for being mobbed-up.
And, yes, Carnera's case is very possibly exaggerated while others are glossed over.
I do believe he was built up on set-ups and fixes though.

 

I don't single him out I think he was too thick to know his fights were pre-arranged. His management should have been strung up.

 

Not from that punch he didn't.
Though his handlers cynically exploited it as though that was the cause.

 

Not a dive.

But let's not forget that the suspicion surrounding Carnera-Schaaf had less to do with the suspicions hanging over Carnera, and more to do with the fact that champion Jack Sharkey was friend and a manager of Schaaf.

It was thought that a Sharkey-Schaaf fight would never draw, would not have been approved by the commission due to blatant conflicts of interest, and wasn't desired by either party, and that Schaaf was perhaps being given a payday and an assignment to build up Carnera for the a bonanza against Sharkey.

 

It's impossible to say whether he would have died anyway.

 

Sharkey and his manager Johnny Buckley held Schaaf's contract Buckleys reputation was pretty bad .Schaaf was talked of as Sharkey's police man