Poll: How good was Primo Carnera?

He predicted Baer would ko Carnera and why he would do so .So maybe not so idiotic?

Tunney is always considered one of the most intellectual of the heavyweight champions.

 

He is also one of the least reliable in terms of his testimony.

Everything that he wrote was self-aggrandising, and often contained factual errors.

 

Why are you so fascinated about this? Not your first mention.

 

You seem to be very fond of this anecdote.

If you place so much stall by it, then why do you not place any weight on Louis's rankings of his opponents?

If Louis was one of the best that he fought, wouldn’t this count for something?

 

Because when i did a poll I was accused of dishonestly rigging it so that knowledgeable people were forced into overwhelmingly voting for Primo being world class. I angered a minority of people who wanted more options...presumably so they could vote that he was not world class....and when other threads came out with these options the same minority were still far too afraid to vote!

 

The reason your poll was rubbished because it was indeed rigged to the outhouse. Many didn't even bother voting for obvious reasons. Criticism of it didn't mean people were sweating to vote on other polls however.
Take note that Mac voted on Contro's poll. Why would he need to vote elsewhere when his vote is already cast?

 

The rest of the world?

 

We are talking 1930s heavyweight boxing here. If you check out the average height of humans during that time Europeans and Americans were about the only people in the world who grew big enough to become heavyweight sized fighters in those days.

Until living conditions improved among the working class populations around other parts of the world Europe and America (so far as heavyweight boxing went) was the world. Besides, the numbers involved in the sport world wide was still enough to provide a worlds worth of boxers from the participating nations of those times.

 

Tunney is certainly the one who postured most as intellectual.

The man wrote enough idiotic stuff for me to consider him an idiot, just my personal judgment really. It's not the final word on the matter. I'm not the final arbiter on who is or isn't idiot.
But Gorilla v Man is clearly idiotic, as are some of his claims about Dempsey's prowess, Firpo's "greatness", not to mention his horrendous racist drivel.

 

Similar numbers voted on the other polls about how to rate Primo.

In fact the findings are the same. It is still showing that only a tiny number believe Primo was less than good.

 

I would be interested in Tunneys thoughts on Firpos greatness.

 

I'm gonna second Gorilla v. Man being really stupid.

 

I'm not sure he put much thought into it but he called Firpo a "great fighter".
I believe it was in an article comparing Dempsey to Louis, or discussing who the greatest heavyweight was.
I don't think Firpo was a bad fighter, by the way, but Tunney's statement were alongside dismissals of several similar or better fighters if I remember rightly.

Tunney had some interesting things to say, not all of it was idiotic, not by any means. But he made some crazy claims at times, bad enough and often enough to discredit himself as a reliable 'expert' source.
And he dressed up all his most outlandish claims in "expert" garb, letting it be known that he being Gene Tunney was an absolute authority on these matters.

As late as 1970 or 1971 he was saying Muhammad Ali would lose to Jess Willard.

 

And barely a soul thought him to be "great".

 

What's interesting about that?

It was predicted by several posters, before the poll went up.