Loading player
In Italy, the news of the first Italian heavyweight boxer was published three days late, on July 1, 1933. for me, but for the Duce and for Italy’» he wrote The Gazzetta dello Sport. On the evening of June 28, at Madison Square Garden in New York, Primo Carnera, a 27-year-old boxer from Friuli, had beaten the reigning world champion, the American Jack Sharkey, and had taken the most coveted and significant title of world boxing, that of the heavyweights. No Italian had ever succeeded and after him there was just one more (but with a minor world title).
From that day Carnera became a character famous throughout the industrialized world. Boxing was still the most followed sport, together with cycling, and Carnera’s career, which had begun in Europe years earlier, still lasted a long time. He remained world champion for only one year but remained such an attraction as to be engaged in a total of over one hundred fights, unlike the other champions of the time who hardly exceeded sixty career matches.
Carnera was not just a champion: he had unique and unmistakable characteristics. Suffering from a probable case of acromegaly, i.e. an excessive production of growth hormones, he had already exceeded 2 meters in height as a teenager, in years where similar heights were extremely rare, particularly in Italy, a country historically of short stature where in the early twentieth century the average height of the population was about 1.60 meters (today it is about 1.71 meters). At the height of his career he weighed almost 120 kilos, with a chest circumference of over 110 centimeters and 52 of shoes.
He came from Sequals, a small village in the Friulian pre-Alps in the province of Pordenone. He was born into a poor family in an already very poor area of Italy which, following the events of the First World War, had become even more so. In that situation Carnera emigrated to France while still a teenager. Due to his already enormously developed tonnage, he easily came into contact with the circus world, became a so-called “freak show” and was noticed by an impresario, a former French boxing champion, who trained him to start a real career.
At that size, and having no background in boxing, he didn’t become a technical boxer. It was enough for him to model an imposing physique, which already at the sight of him could inspire fear, and he especially refined a sequence of punches that became his strong point.
For the public Carnera was above all “the walking mountain”, as he was nicknamed, even if after his death his daughter Giovanna Maria was keen to make known as much as possible who he really was, behind the tonnage, the successes and the propaganda. He recovered and had photos published, video clips and writings that his father had produced in his lifetime, and among other things he said: «The fascist regime made him an icon, but the truth is that the regime used my father as it used every sportsman of those times. Dad was never a fascist and he didn’t belong to any party. He loved classical literature, art and opera. He always tried to improve himself and it was he who wanted my brother and I to study as much as possible ».
In Italy, however, its worldwide affirmation coincided not only with the apex of the twenty years of Fascism, but with a society which in certain areas, and already since the nineteenth century, “been focusing on body care and physical exercise to overturn the image of the effeminate and enervated Italian in a champion of virility, a masculine figure of a fighter ready to march and defend the homeland, with conviction and without saving, against the oppressors and enemies», as written by Massimo Arcangeli in his book Itabolario – United Italy in 150 words.
(Keystone/Getty Images)
Boxing was also considered the “noble art” which combined technique, athletic prowess and dedication, all aspects by which the fascist regime wanted to be represented and therefore wanted to pass on. Precisely in the year in which Carnera became world champion, Benito Mussolini said that «the young fascists should have constituted the breeding ground for future boxers» because he smiled «the idea of seeing a generation of such powerful punchers smashing the connotations of the champions of the other countries”.
While continuing to concentrate his life and professional activities in the United States, after his title Carnera returned to Italy to receive the homage of his country and to become a full member of the propaganda fascist. On October 22, the regime organized a meeting for him in Piazza di Siena in Rome, inside Villa Borghese, which became a sort of manifesto for the time. A stadium was set up to hold over 60,000 spectators. There Carnera defended the title and also won the European one by beating the Basque Paulino Uzcudun on points, known above all for his tenacity.
Carnera had become world champion in his 82nd fight. In previous years he had fought everywhere: in Europe at the Royal Albert Hall in London, at San Siro, at the Sportpalast in Berlin, but above all in the United States, at Madison Square Garden but also at Yankee Stadium in New York. However, it is believed that most of the meetings in which he took part in America were actually organized at the table by impresarios linked to the Italian-American mafia, who had identified in Carnera a great opportunity for profit.
He was often made to fight against strangers in every corner of the country: from New Jersey to Oregon, also passing through Nebraska, Ohio and Colorado. He was sold as an attraction and only his presence aroused curiosity and interest everywhere: a bit like what happened decades later to another European wrestler suffering from acromegaly, André the Giant, the first world-famous wrestler.
But Carnera was above all a true boxer and he proved it not only with the world title, but also with an overall record of 84 victories and 14 defeats (which however arrived in the last years of his career): he measured himself against all the best of the time, such as George Godfrey and Jack Sharkey (stage name of Joseph Paul Zukauskas). He ended the careers of many athletes, sometimes in a tragic way. This happened for example in 1933 to the German Ernie Schaaf, who was knocked out, he never got up again and died three days later. Only later did it become known that Schaaf had already suffered severe brain damage in his previous encounter.
At the height of his career he was defeated in particular by more technical and quick boxers, such as Max Baer and especially Joe Louis, eight years younger, who on June 25, 1935 at Yankee Stadium knocked him down three times, winning by technical knockout. From there his career came to an end, also due to the years of pause for the Second World War, at the end of which he was captured by the partisans for the role he had played during the twenty years, only to be released without consequences.
After the war he remained in the world of wrestling and became a wrestler by participating in entertainment events in North America, so much so that he is still remembered today in the WWE hall of fame, the current reference company for world wrestling. In those years he also obtained US citizenship and starred in about twenty films. When he fell ill with cirrhosis of the liver he returned to Sequals, where in 1967 he died on June 29, the same day in which he had become world champion 34 years earlier.
– Read also: The short life and the myth of André the Giant