Michael Spinks V Primo Carnera ?

Poor ol' Primo....gets no respect.

 

Carnera has size, but Spinks is technically better. Primo had a ton of heart though, I like Spinks by UD. Spinks wins every round, Carnera lasts all the way, though, never giving up.

 

Two serious problems there.

1. Sharkey a pre prime version of Carnera.
2. Sharkey was a natural 200 pounder, not a bulked up supermidleweight.

 

I don't think that it necessarily follows.

Even if we assume that Holmes was still better than a prime Carnera at this stage, the size disparity was a lot more manageable from Spinks's standpoint.

He would probably have had a much better chance against Max Baer, than he would against Carnera!

 

Spinks was a light heavy, when did he ever fight at super middle? The second point, I think would be an irrelevancy here. At HW, Spinks was as larger or slightly larger than Sharkey and hit at least as hard. One wouldn't be saying something so far fetched if they were to pick Spinks to beat Sharkey at heavy.

 

I respect his courage ,just not his ability.

 

Spinks weighed 170lbs just seven months before he lifted the title from Holmes!

This makes him one of the smaller fighters ever to hold the lineal heavyweight title.

If you take a 170lb fighter and bulk them out to 200, you don't get a 200lb fighter, you just get a bulked up light heavyweight.

Now Spinks might have a good chance against the 200lbs Sharkey as you say, but at 260lbs Carnera is just going to be too big for him.

History tends to show that even the greatest light heavyweights, do not do well against elite super heavyweights.

 

This is patent nonsense.Carnera had 51 fights under his belt when he fought Sharkey the first time and that was just 18 months earlier than when he won the title! How much do you think he improved after 51fights!


Sharkey was 6' and 202lbs when he beat Carnera, flooring him along the way.Spinks was a quarter of a pound below 200lbs and 6'2.5" So just 2.5lbs lighter than Sharkey.

 

Significantly.

He got a new trainer, and improved his technique considerably.

Yes but a few months previously Spinks was 170lbs!

Do you think that Tommy Loughran would have beaten Carnera, if he had just lifted weights?

 

Why are we acting like Primo never lost to smaller fighters before?

 

He could be beaten by a quality cruiser weight at his best, but not a quality light heavyweight it seems.

 

The skill level has something to do with it as well. I think Spinks gets a bad rap for his blowout loss to Mike Tyson, so the thinking goes he'd never do well against any heavyweight. Sharkey beat Carnera once, even flooring him. But put a prime Sharkey in place of Spinks on June 27, 1988 and he likely does as well as Spinks did against Tyson. And even still, it wouldn't mean that Sharkey would suck against any heavy, ever.

As I've stated before, you can make a list of all heavyweight contenders between say 1900-1970 and randomly pick names from the list and odds are, they'd have done no better against a young Tyson than Spinks did.

Personally, I think Spinks loss to Tyson tells us little about how he'd do against most other heavies.

 

Exactly.