BoxRec

raylawpc wrote:

Jaclem wrote:..raylaw...one was jack sharkey....in the next few years i'll research and find four other...well..paul galico...now i'm down to three.

Can you tell us where those statements were published? Thanks!

Here's how Sharkey explained it to Peter Heller in June 1971 at Epping, New Hampshire:

“Then in ’33 I lost to Carnera. I had no trouble with him in the second bout but all of a sudden – and I can’t convince anybody of this, even my wife has her doubts, I think – I see [Ernie] Schaaf in front of me, the next thing I know I had lost the championship of the world. During the process of the fight I visualized Schaaf there, I saw him, and I stayed there long enough just to get knocked out. I saw Schaaf, a vision.

. . .

They figured, like most of his bouts had been more or less, well, I won't say what I should say. But skepitcal, in other words, dubious. Like I say, I can convince you, but I can't convince two hundred million people. What could I get doing what I did? The prestige, and the honor there is in the championship of the world. What could I get? Even my own manager accused me! What could I get?! I've got everything I want financially and all that, what good is anymore?”

Peter Heller, In This Corner . . . Forty Champions Tell Their Stories (New York: Simon and Schuster 1973) at pg. 159, 160.

Bingo.

..okay..let's say two million people instead of everybody. i knew sombody would pick up on the "everbody" anyway. heck ..none of all those chinese evan had radios at the time to pick up the fight.

I was too young at the time to count in the census, 'cause i was just three years old at the time of the fight, but even i knew the fight was tanked. my connections in the boxing fraternity tipped me off.



i think the ring magazine had no fighter of the year named when carnera won the title.....odd that in long string of kayoes leading up to the fight carnera, by winning the champion ship, should have been a shoo-in.

but for all of you who think the fight was on the level... i'm glad you are not letting me disillusion you.

and i read that pete heller interview years ago, so you can take of it what you will.

I have watched many fights throughout my lifetime and this one looks POSITIVELY LEGIT. Remember, as an ex strongman Carnera's only true punching power would come from UPPERCUTS and HOOKS. This is due mainly to the over development of muscles and tendons in the bicept area. What seperated Carnera from other "converted strongmen" is that he developed a very good jab which kept his opponents at a distance. In this fight he was very competative and actually leading the fight according to the anouncer at ringside. From watching the actual footage, he landed a perfectly thrown UPPERCUT that caught Sharkey flush under the chin. I believe that because very few of the public had access to the video footage ( including the writers) of the fight during the 30's it became fashionable for some sports writers to take literary liberties with there comments on the fight ie "Phantom Punch". I can only imagine what these same sports writers would have written about "Ali-Liston II, Duran-Leonard II, Tyson-Sheldon etc.
I am not saying Carnera was a great Heavy Weight Champion, but he was definitely an undisputed linear Champion fair and square.

..chuvalo.....welcome to the forum.
i don't know how many fights you've looked at in your lifetime, though i am curious just how long that lifetime is.

was going to say something else..but i can't think of it....can't recall..oh...i've got....sharkey tanked that one. see my earlier posts for details.

Still waiting for those other three names, Jaclem . . .

I've seen the films many times, everyone has an opinion.....mine is that the KO was legit....fist connects to head, man goes down. But I don't buy the fight itself.....Sharkey was not going to fake the fall and he didnt....so he presented a target.


But it's hard to go against Sharkey's statements..because we want to believe. But it was Carnera.....Carnera......the big guy with the great jab and mighty power punch......yeah right.

Mark me down as a cynic on this one. We've all got our fights that we think the fix was in.....this one's mine. But with the following set of weather patterns present.......that is, Carnera...Carnera......and big money....and a championship fight on the line.......to me it's the perfect storm.

IMHO.

ray...i'm waiting too. darn..they must be around somewere......

Well, take this for what it's worth. I used to think like the majority that Carnera was an out-and-out bum, a big clown who couldn't fight worth a damn. Then I saw his fight with Baer and was really surprised. He was outboxing Max Baer! He was winning rounds. Sure he went down, but he had an injured ankle didn't he? Some of those knockdowns weren't from legit punches as I recall. I have a feeling that Carnera was the Nicolai Valuev of his day. Sure Louis destroyed him. But he lasted longer than Baer, Sharkey, Galento, and Schmeling did against Louis. And these were supposedly superior fighters.

Was his knockout of Sharkey legit? Jack Sharkey was past his best by '33. He was never considered an all-time top ten fighter even at his best. Could Carnera have landed a punch hard enough to knock out a post-prime Sharkey? Yeah, he could.

Cap

....for years the damon-runyon -like guys who showed up at every fight said " i think he did a sharkey"
when when it looked like a guy went into the tank

a fourth name...dan parker..sports writer for a major n.y. paper..can't recall which one.... used the sharkey fight as an example of how corrupt boxing was..

re: rhe max baer fight...yeah..carnera won those rounds but only because max didn't do anything in them because , as usual, he wasn't in shape ..he seldom trained....because he could not fight a three minutes a round in a fifteen rounder and just had to rest through some rounds. i think he was surprised that carnera kept getting up, as i don't see how anyone wouldn't grant that primo had a heart almost as big as he was.

hey..this has been going on for years and no one here is going to settle it, but it's been fun.

you might , though, take boxbuzz's posts to heart, as he learns most of his stuff from me, including just how the knockout happened.

Can you point us to some specific references of when Damon Runyon wrote that "I think he did a Sharkey?" I don't recall Runyon ever using that particular phrase.

I do find it interesting that these folks allegedly said these things long after the fact. Can you point us to any specific contemporaneous articles in which the writer said Sharkey took a dive?

When did Dan Parker write the piece to which you allude? (BTW, Big Dan was a columnist with the Daily Mirror.)

The knockout always looked fishy to me. That's really all I can say.

raylawpc wrote: "Everybody" is a big word. Can you please name five "everybodys" from the 1930s who knew Sharkey tanked it?

I suppose nobody could exactly know, in a literal sense, whether or not Sharkey tanked it other than Sharkey and those who were "in" on the fix (if there was a fix).

But consider this:

Everyone today knows that Don King is an evil, corrupt, fight-fixing sunnuva b*tch.

But 50 years or so from now, people unfamiliar with boxing today might look back and say, "Look at how great Don King was for boxing! He promoted so many top fighters! He made so many big matchups! He's in the Boxing Hall of Fame!" etc., etc.

You might then respond by saying he's a corrupt, fight-fixing sunnuva b*tch.

To which the person will respond, "How do you know? What proof is there that Don King ever fixed a decision?"

You might then say, "There's no proof, but everyone just knows he fixed decisions and was bad for boxing".


The issue of the Sharkey-Carnera fight might be the same thing. Something that can't exactly be proven to future generations, but something that everyone present and familiar with the situation at the time would know and understand.

..look at my post again, ray...i did not say damon runyon ever used the words in any story....i wrote about the "damon runyon like characters."..an entirely different statement. I could get snide here and "explain" what that means...but i respect your opinions l too much to inject my nasty needle.

thanks for telling me which paper dan parker wrote for. hey..no way can i provide and specific references at this date, so many years later.

i did point out in an earlier post on this thread that nat fleischer, who would rather have his teeth pulled without a pain reliever than admit a fight was fixed, made his statement by not naming a fighter of the year when carnera won the title. all those "wins" including winning the title and still no reward. The most fleischer would ever do was to write about the "suspicious characters " in the game or those around a specific fighter.

we have to remember too that there were libel laws so writers had to be careful about naming names.

i'm sure carnera thought all of his fights were on the level. once when he was on hiswrestling tour he walked into a newspaper to talk to the sports writer he held up his hands and said, "With these hands i killed a man" and it was obvious that he was saddened by it.

ray - you win on ther calling for specifics which is the best way to ask for proof of a statement....when i spoke before high school groups i always complimented the first kid who asked "where did you get your information?"

so..i don't have any thing else to add on this one...except to repeat that sharkey tanked it.

From reading the literature on this fight, I have noticed two major flaws with the books:

1) Most of the books say Sharkey was totally dominating the fight. From watching the footage I would personally say Carnera was leading the fight and physically dominating Sharkey.

2) The majority of the books say that nobody saw the punch land. From watching the video, the uppercut looks like it landed solid to me.

Personally, I changed my opinion from what I read after watching the fight footage. The fight looks to be on the level from my point of view. Also, I was impressed with Carnera's jab and the amount of punches he threw. Hey, everybody has their opinions and seems like 30`s fight fans had respect for Carnera as many bet on him to beat Joe Louis.

chuvalo_rules wrote:From reading the literature on this fight, I have noticed two major flaws with the books:

1) Most of the books say Sharkey was totally dominating the fight. From watching the footage I would personally say Carnera was leading the fight and physically dominating Sharkey.

2) The majority of the books say that nobody saw the punch land. From watching the video, the uppercut looks like it landed solid to me.

Personally, I changed my opinion from what I read after watching the fight footage. The fight looks to be on the level from my point of view. Also, I was impressed with Carnera's jab and the amount of punches he threw. Hey, everybody has their opinions and seems like 30`s fight fans had respect for Carnera as many bet on him to beat Joe Louis.

fans and those that bet, vs the true observers. Like any other sport there is often a bit of a gap between the two.

Interesting that this can never be truly solved, You and I see the same fight and we come to different conclusions....You see Carnera dominating the action... I see Sharkey offering up some "unSharkeylike" opportunities.
But we both agree that the KO is a KO and Sharkey is affected. Which is at the end of the day the name of the game....and why I think Sharkey was at peace with it. But like he says...."he saw a vision" and his eyes were not where they should have been, which would be watching for his opponent's next move. You have to ask yourself "Why"?

Carnera, big money, championship fight, shady characters, explanations that stretch credibility......... Ever read "The Perfect Storm"? No trace has ever been found of the ship, It's possible that the ship was abducted by aliens, or those guys are still out there surviving somehow. Occam's razor begs you to consider the simplest answer. (Second simplest answer to me is Carnera Dominates and KO's Sharkey on the level).

Unlike the other great famous "KO mystery" Carnera did not go forward and dominate the HW scene for the next 15 years. ....I know I know....Sharkey was no Liston.......and this debate will never end.

[quote="chuvalo_rules"]From reading the literature on this fight, I have noticed two major flaws with the books:

1) Most of the books say Sharkey was totally dominating the fight. From watching the footage I would personally say Carnera was leading the fight and physically dominating Sharkey.

2) The majority of the books say that nobody saw the punch land. From watching the video, the uppercut looks like it landed solid to me.

/quote]

And you know what....I get this with a great many 'contrversial' fights...so called
boxing writers and historians write whatever they think stirs up interest or
something shadey....that always sells more books and movie scripts.

I have found that I have actually spent the time myself and watched some of
these fights and sat there thinking what the hell was Bert Sugar or whatever
great boxing author wrote.

I have not watched this whole fight, but I have seen some highlights on a
doco...the commentary was saying how Sharkey threw the fight after he
put in a dominating performance yet the 45 second clip they did show had
Carnera working of a nice long jab....

My2Sense wrote:

raylawpc wrote: "Everybody" is a big word. Can you please name five "everybodys" from the 1930s who knew Sharkey tanked it?

I suppose nobody could exactly know, in a literal sense, whether or not Sharkey tanked it other than Sharkey and those who were "in" on the fix (if there was a fix).

My point exactly.