Was Primo Carnera the worst heavyweight champ of all time?

How many common opponents did Braddock share with Carnera? He certainly did better against Baer and Louis...

 

Styles make fights and when discussing how great or poor a champion was I look at their reign Braddok didn't want to fight anyone avoided Schmeling.

 

I think that Braddock had the best single win of the two, but Carnera ultimately takes it on depth of resume, and consistency.

I don't see much overlap in opposition, apart from Loughran, Baer, and Louis.

 

Baer certainly didn't tear into Braddock like he tore into Carnera.

Braddock lost to Louis. Carnera lost to Louis.
Braddock beat Baer. Carnera lost to Baer.
Braddock lost to Loughran. Carnera beat Loughran.
Braddock lost to Schaaf. Carnera beat Schaaf.
Braddock beat Lasky. Carnera beat Lasky.
Braddock lost to Birkie. Carnera beat Birkie.

 

Boom

Can't believe the bit about Hype Ingoe.
Goes to show the lengths people went to discredit this fighter.

 

The quote is verified, Igoe was a very well respected boxing writer and manager of Greb in partnership with Wilson Mizner personally I think it demonstrates how sceptical the more learned of the boxing fraternity were about Carnera's abilities.
Can you think of one reason why Igoe would wish to discredit Carnera? Or are you just giving us you usual kneejerk, "get the wagons in a circle we are being attacked",yet again?

 

Spin on a boxing fatality? Its reminiscent of the Mob's callous and cynical exploitation of the death at the time.imo

 

This. Carnera was very active and beat plenty of contenders and beat the world champ and wasn't just a strap holder, so even the idea of him being one of the worst champs of all time is laughable.

I also don't put much stock into what Hype Ingoe wrote, since it wasn't uncommon for writers to discredit and sometimes outright slander fighters and often times they were paid to do so. Writers did the same thing with Schmeling.

 

I don't put much stock in the opinion of someone who, judging by his spelling of the name doesn't appear to even know who Igoe was! Perhaps this will be instructive?

Igoe passed away on February 11, 1945. The Times reported that he had a heart ailment for over a year. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 12, 1945, published the Associated Press story which said: “…A confidante of champions from the days of James J. Corbett down to Joe Louis, Igoe had ‘covered’ all the championships heavyweight bouts for the last 40 years and was famous for his ‘inside’ stories. He illustrated his own yarns and was called the dean of fight writers. With the exception of Gene Tunney he predicted correctly the rise of each heavyweight champion….Damon Runyon, one of his oldest friends, declared Igoe was ‘probably the best informed writer on boxing that ever lived.’...” The Long Island Star-Journal, February 15, 1945, said he was buried in St. John’s Cemetery, Glendale, New York. He was a subject in a cartoon of the week’s news which appeared in the Fresno Bee Republican (California), February 17, 1945 (below). A selection of cartoons was provided by Igoe’s grandson, Kevin Igoe, at Yesterday’s Papers.

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http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/2009/05/hype-igoe-ii.html

 

His nickname was "hype" for God's sake. And if you read his stuff, a lot of it is exactly that.

He was known for being a "mythmaker." He could write stories that made people out to be great heroes (who weren't) and he was equally adept at painting people as "phonies" (in the case of Carnera) who weren't. And when instances like the Schaaf fight contradicted the picture he was trying to paint, he just blamed it on Baer. With nothing to back it up.

 

So he didn't predict Tunney. And clearly he didn't predict Carnera. Did he predict Jim Braddock was going to beat Baer? Or the "rise" of Marvin Hart? I highly doubt that.

There were only like 10 heavyweight champions between 1905 and 1945. So he "maybe" predicted the rise of "maybe" five or six of the 10? Is that a big deal?

Again, his specialty was "hype." That's how he got his name.

There's a bit in a Jack Dempsey bio I have of Doc Kearns leaving Shelby on a private train car he paid for to get out of town with the money before fans tore him apart. He saw a totally wasted Igoe on the train platform staggering around playing a ukelele (which he apparently always carried) and yelled for Igoe to hop on as the train started to pull out of the station. And drunk off his butt Igoe fell down trying to run to catch the train.

He was a guy with a talent for writing. HE wasn't all knowing. Clearly. He thought Schaaf was faking even as the dying boxer was stretched out only a few feet away from him.

Don't believe the "hype" ... as they say.

 

Last comment from me to an **** ,he got his nick name from his thinness and resemblance to a hypodermic needle.

 

And he picked all the heavyweight champs before they became champs. Yeah. Got it. And Schaaf took a dive.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xnqEPYIkX4Y/UPWugBVEsvI/AAAAAAAANec/vI53JCA5JxU/s1600/Hype+Igoe+1931.jpg
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0257/3165/products/RSE77575_grande.jpeg?v=1464125754

 

The best that you could argue for Schaff, is that he might have ended up with a better record than Carnera, if Carnera hadn't killed him when he did.

In the end he did as an unfinished work, and the rest is history.

 

From a Newsweek article by John Laudner.

Hype Igoe was Ketchel’s closest crony in the final months that followed. To Hype, the supreme mythmaker, whatever Steve did was bigger than life. He used to tell and write of Ketchel’s hand being swollen after a fight “to FIVE TIMES normal size!” He wrote of a visit Ketchel made, incognito, to a boxing booth at a carnival one time, when he called himself Kid Glutz and “knocked out SIX HEAVYWEIGHTS IN A ROW!” He told a story about a palooka who sobbed in Ketchel’s arms in the clinches in a fight one night. “What’s the matter, kid?” asked Ketchel. Between sobs and short jolts to the body, his opponent explained that he was being paid $10 a round, and feared he would not last long enough to make the $60 he needed to buy a pawnshop violin for his musical child. Ketchel carried him six rounds, and they went to the pawnshop together, in tears, with the money. The next time Hype wrote it, the fiddle cost $200. Ketchel made up the difference out of his pocket, and he and the musician’s father bailed out the Stradivarius, got drunk on champagne, and went home singing together.

There was a grimmer, wilder side of Ketchel’s mind that affected the faithful little sportswriter deeply. Ketchel used to tell Hype — he told many people — that he was sure he would die young. The prediction made a special impression on Igoe on nights when the two went driving together in the Lozier, with Ketchel at the wheel. As the car whipped around curves on two tires and Igoe yelped with fear, Ketchel would say, “It’s got to happen, Hype. I’ll die before I’m thirty. And I’ll die in a fast car.” Luckily for Hype and other friends, it happened in a different way when it happened, and Ketchel took nobody with him. The world was shocked by the Michigan Tiger’s death, but on second thought found it natural that he should pass into the great purple valley by violence. To Igoe’s mind it was the “blue gun” that Steve romantically took with him everywhere that was responsible.

Ketchel had knocked out a heavyweight, Jim Smith, in what proved to be the last fight of his life, in June 1910. Though he could fight, he was in bad shape, like a fine engine abused and over-driven. To get back his health he went to live on a ranch in Conway, Missouri, in the Ozarks, not far from Springfield. His host, Colonel R.P. Dickerson, was an old friend who had taken a fatherly interest in Ketchel for two or three years. Ketchel ate some of his meals at the ranch’s cookhouse — he took an unfatherly interest in Goldie, the cook. Goldie was not much to look at. She was plain and dumpy. But because she was the only woman on the premises, Ketchel ignored this, as well as the fact that Walter Dipley, a new hand on the ranch, was thought to be her husband.

On the morning of October 16, as Ketchel sat at the breakfast table, Dipley shot him in the back with a .38 revolver. Ketchel was hit in the lung. He lived for only a few hours afterward.

Igoe used to say that it was because Ketchel had his own .44 in his lap, as always at meals, that he was shot from behind, and that he was shot at all.