Max Baer - Primo Carnera

"going into the 11th I had it pretty close in terms of rounds"

Carnera supposedly suffered a broken ankle when Baer fell on him in the first round. He was limping noticably. If this is true, his performance was not nearly as bad as his critics imply, with the knockdowns partially due to the injury. On the other hand, as you pointed out, he could be reached with crude haymakers and for such a big and muscular man, he did not seem to have that much of a punch.

I do think that Carnera certainly beats the Valuev who fought Holyfield.

 

I beleive Carnera's ankle injury happened after the last knockdown,and he indicated to the referee that he could not continue,it was not broken by the way.

 

Interesting viewpoint.

Baer knocked Carnera down about 10 or 11 times during that bout. Outside of Dempsey vs Willard I've never seen so many knockdowns in a single bout*.

These days you'd accumulate extra points in rounds where a knockdown or knockdowns occured.

*Admittedly there's not a lot of film from those old days when such large numbers of knockdowns occured.

 

Carnera beats any Valuev.

 

The notion that this was a one-sided fight is an inaccurate one, just like the notion that Baer's fight with Schmeling was one-sided. It comes from the fact that people described Baer as dealing out a lot of punishment to Carnera (which he did), and people have confused that with dominating the fight.

The fight essentially showed the best and worst of both fighters. Baer had a lot of success in the early and late rounds, but Carnera appeared to outbox/outwork him in between. Carnera showed that his chin and defense were questionable, but Baer showed his vulnerability to boxers and that his attack was fairly limited outside of his big right hand swings.

 

Watching the film, I don't think it was broken either, but comparing this fight with the Sharkey fight of 1933 it is clear that Carnera has trouble moving backward after the second round or so and fights flat-footed. He has a noticable limp from the second round on and a couple of times almost loses his balance even though Baer is not hitting him. I think the story that he had some sort of ankle injury is true.

Despite all the knockdowns, Carnera did not appear badly hurt in the early rounds. One reason he went down so often is that Baer and the referee did not really give him a chance to get set. Carnera was clearly badly hurt in the 10th and 11th and was now going down hard.

 

The second paragraph is an excellent observation.

 

I taped it and have rewatched it a few times ... Carnera has a huge heart and excellent recooperative powers. Baer looks like a very strong, hard hitting amateur ... in addition, he clearly loses interest during a fight, costs, wakes up and fights again. He did the same thing v.s. Schmeling, by far his biggest win ... Primo shows slow hands (Baer looks fast in comparison) , zero power and impossible to miss with a telegraphed right hand ... basically two of the worst heavyweight champions in history in a match up for the title ...

 

Baer's trainers told him to coast during the middle rounds because they were well aware that because of his lack of serious training for the fight, he would get easily winded.

NY Boxing Commissioner Brown, after observing Baer at his 3-ring circus of a training camp, actually tried to get the fight cancelled because he said Baer was in no shape to fight.

Cat
www.maxbaer.org

 

Correct it as a sprain but he did end up in the hospital because of all his other injuries. I have an original press photo of Max visiting him.

As I recall it was during the 5th or 6th round that the sprain ocurred.

How the hell are ya McVey ?

Cat
www.maxbaer.org

 

Yahhhhhhhhhhh, he was nuts in a good way. Check out a couple of the newsreels I have of his training camps, he's worse than you thought !

http://www.youtube.com/user/MaxiesGal

Cat
www.maxbaer.org

 

Actually the sports writers observed that Carnera never took his full 9 count before getting up, he popped up like a jack in the box. If he was smart he would've taken his rest where he could, but did not.

Cat
www.maxbaer.org

 

Well Cat, it is all relative when it comes to Maxie training for fights. I believe that Maxie trained hard for this fight compared to others from the reading and watching newsreels. Jack Dempsey was also training him and he did a lot of road work with his brother Buddy. Jack Dempsey made sure Max could go 15 rounds because he was invested in Baer.

The rounds that you say Max coasted? He was involved in long exchanges with Carnera where Carnera just kept landing 3 or 4 more punches than Max. Not saying Carnera really hurt Max, but Carnera really legitimately won those rounds and was surprisingly active. I have to say that the fact that Carnera really wasn't able to move on the ankle affected his performance, mostly because he couldn't get out of the way of the right hand.

On the point system it is a complete Baer slaughter, but with the rounds system in place it is interesting to think what would have happened if Carnera didn't have the bad ankle? The fight was very close on the rounds system.... I don't think 99.9% of the world knows this fact but it is fun for boxing enthusiasts like myself.