Primo Carnera was as legitimate a champion as any there has ever been.

I never suggested the fight was a fix ,but I have read a report that Neusel was somewhat reluctant .Poor old Primo contracted cirrhosis and was a wheel chair bound shell of himself when he arrived back in Sequals ,waiting to die .

 

On Carnera and top five rated fighters.

But how many fighters rated in the top five on the day they fought them did other champions defeat. Certainly some fought fewer than Carnera.

Liston--I think only Folley, Machen, and Patterson.

Johansson--only Machen and Patterson.

Carnera--Levinsky, Schaaf, Sharkey, and Loughran were top five at the time he fought them. This is not outstanding, but no where close to the worst resume either. One could argue and I think fairly, that Schaaf simply should not have been in the ring the night he fought Carnera, and Sharkey and Loughran were on the cusp of severe career declines. Carnera was certainly to a great extent the right man at the right place, but I think he was the honest champion, if a somewhat lucky one.

 

My point wasn't what happened to him in the 1960's. He had severe physical problems in the late 1930's and lost a kidney in 1938. Certainly this somewhat clouds the issue of his decline starting in 1936.

 

How many other Champs met top 5 contenders during their march to the tit is irrelevant,we are talking about Carnera.Throw out the Schaaf fight ,he was walking dead.Levinsky? he had lost 5 of the last 9 of his fights when he met Carnera in 1932.Loughran was a L H in his 30,s slightly on the slide. THe 30's was probably the worst era in terms of calibre of heavyweights,the fact that no one could hold on to the title proves that.Carnera certainly was the right man in the right place ,and it was Owney Madden,Broadway Billy Duff ,and Big Frenchy DEmange who put him there,two of these Gentle men were named as Public Enemy NO 1.

 

Not only was Carnera known to be managed by the mob, so was Sharkey. And journalists reported that both men's training camps were swamped with reputed mobsters as they trained for their controversial title fight.

I think McVey says it right. There are a lot of unresolved questions, and that's basically where the matter stands.

The Carnera-Sharkey KO was almost universally derided as a "fix" in its own time, much like the Ali-Liston KO. I've seen the film of the KO several times, and it's always looked fishy to me... and that's really all I can say on the matter.

Of course, Carnera finished off Schaaf with a punch you'd never expect to KO a guy either, and everyone screamed "fake!" then too... until it turned out he was dying. So maybe Carnera had some kind of deceptive power beind his punches, if he caught you just right?

Even regardless of the legitimacy of these wins, there's no question he was a protected fighter. He swapped controversial DQs with HOFer Young Stribling, who was another protected fighter, and had several other bizarre/controversial/unimpressive wins to get him to a title shot. After he won the title, his people put him in with Uzcudon, in what was more of a freakshow attraction than an actual fight, and then an aging Loughran, who he outweighed by 80 pounds and just managed to scrape by by using every last ounce of his weight advantage. But they could only milk him for so long, before they had to agree to a legitimate dangerous challenge like Baer, and that was the end of Carnera. And if I'm not mistaken, Baer came in as the favorite in that fight, and if that's true that says a lot about the unimpressiveness of Carnera's title reign.

Perhaps the best way to describe Carnera is as his era's Valuev. He had some positive traits (his size mainly, and he was an OK boxer), but he was also a protected and manipulated freak show, whose limitations were exposed badly in his losses.

 

1. The point with the other champions is that Carnera defeated as many or more highly rated fighters as other champions did. I think that is relevant. You mention Owney Madden and the like. Are they really more notorious than the men who controlled Liston? No one gets to be champion without connections. Have you proof that Madden fixed fights other than insinuations.

2. Several champions in different eras made it to the top because they were the right man at the right time and without luck wouldn't have been champions--Hart, Burns, Willard, Braddock, Leon Spinks, Maskaev. I think Carnera could have held his own with this group and would favor him against all of them except perhaps Maskaev.

3. You are right that the top level heavyweights of the early thirties are not an impressive bunch and there are question marks hanging over the best men Carnera defeated. Schaaf was sick. Sharkey and Loughran were aging although both were still rated near the top of the division. But no one is claiming Carnera was an outstanding champion on par with an ATG. Some of us just don't agree that he was a total stumblebum who clearly was incapable of winning a back door championship in a down era.

4. Carnera's basic career was from 1928 to 1936. Looking at the Ring ratings for that period, one finds Carnera victims Jim Maloney, Knute Hanson, King Levinsky (2), Victorio Campolo (2), Paulino Uzcudun (2), Don McCorkindale, Art Lasky, Ernie Schaaf, Jack Sharkey, Tommy Loughran, Ray Impellitierre, Walter Neusel, and Ford Smith, rated in those years--Maloney, Hanson, Levinsky, Uzcudun, McCorkindale, Lasky, Schaaf, Sharkey, and Loughran at one time or another in the top five. Carnera clearly could handle second-tier contenders, but only Sharkey and Loughran, each perhaps past his best, were top men when Carnera defeated them. On balance, Carnera has good quantity but is lacking in quality. Johansson, in contrast, beat far fewer contenders but his best wins over Patterson and Machen were at their peaks and also impressive knockouts.

 

"There is no question he was a protected fighter"

Who didn't he fight from his era? Actually, Carnera basically met them all, white and black. The only top man he didn't fight was Schmeling.

"Loughran, who he outweighed by 80 lbs"

It is not legitimate to criticize Carnera, or Valuev, for being big. This is not p4p. If size wins fights for them, so what.

You use the Baer odds to disparage Carnera, but the odds on the Sharkey fight were only 5-4, indicatiing that betters thought Carnera was a very live underdog. Looking at it from the point of view of the odds going into the fight, Carnera ko'ing Sharkey was no bigger an upset than Dempsey ko'ing Willard.

 

Neither Lasky,Campolo,Uzcudon,Campolo,Maloney,Smith ,Neusel, Impellitiere were rated WHEN they met Carnera.Maloney was rated no 6 in 1928 but he fought Carnera in 1930 and 31.He was considered damaged goods when he met Carnera ,notoriously fragile aropund the chin,he was kod by Leo Gates in 4 rds,Godfrey in 1 rd ,[ he was out for 10 minutes].Heeney 1 rd,Risko 2 rds Schaaf 1 rd and3 rds,Sharkey 5rds,and Griffin ,5 rds. Neither Sharkey,Heeney, or Risko were punchers in fact Risko and Heeney NEVER kod a class fighter.Yet Carnera who lost the 1 st fight and won the 2nd NEVER came close to dropping Maloney.Strange that? At Sharkey's training camp for Carnera, were several members of the Detroit Purple Gang ,some report that the odds shifted just before fight time I don't know if that is true, but it would explain the 5/4 odds The analogy of Carnera and Valuev looks good on paper ,but on closer inspection ,we find no shadow over the Russians victories,and he can certainly take a punch, as he relies allmost soley on his jab similarities can be seen ,with Primo ,we shall see what happens when he meets his" Baer ",in the person of Klitschko.

 

No shadow over Valuev´s victories? He should have lost to Donald and Rui the first time around. So he never would have been champ at all.

 

Were they Fixed? YES OR NO?