BOXING

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 May 1931, Page 6

BOXING

FLYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP [BY CABLE —PRESS ASSN. —COPYBIGHT.] LONDON, May 5. At Manchester, Jackie Brown, British flyweight champion, won the European Championship, out-pointing the Rumanian title holder, Lucien Popescu. Popescu was half a pound overweight but an official of the British Board of Control allowed him an hour wherein he rid himself of the overweight, but he refused to reweigh. He entered the ring only when Brown’s manager agreed to waive forfeit. The crowd was incensed at the delay. The fight started at ten o’clock, after heated discussions in the dressingroom.

CARNERA’S LIFE STORY. A WRESTLER IN A CIRCUS. “What you want?” Primo led off. “Well,” tactfully said I, “for a year or so I’ve been looking at you in the ring, and so forth, and I take you for a big, dumb cluck. So I thought I would take the trouble to find out i*. I have been right or wrong. Am I right?” “I am as I am; what you see, I am,” Primo said. “Ask me questions. Ask me where I am born. I am born in Sequal, Italy, near Venice. My father is in the war digging trenches and like that ”

“An engineer, a sapper,” chipped in a son of one of Primo’s several managers. Now we are embarked on an American journalist’s interview with Primo Camera. The journalist happened to meet the big Italian boxer in a New York restaurant./ “It had nevm occurred to me before this to inquire into Primo to see what made him tick,” explains the newspaper man, “but now I made an engagement and met him next day.”, > Primo was then in New York doing an act in vaudeville. “It’s a no-good act,” he said. “I punch a sort of punch-bag, but the fight ‘commission not let me box.” But to resume Primo’s own story. “When the war is over I am only 12 years old, but I am very huge, big for a boy and always hungry. I do not have enough bread; I do not have the shoes; my clothes are not good. So I go to France to work in mosaic. Sequal. where I am born, is a lot of mosaic around there. My father work in mosaic. My brother, Secundo, too, and my other brother, Savarino. “My name is not a name. It is a number. lam number one. Secundo is number two. Around where I live many people, instead of calling the children Angelo or Pietro—it is more simple to call them Primo, Secundo,, and so on un to 20.

“Often Italian families have 10, 15, even 20 children. mother is big, but mostly fat, not like me. My brothers are big, but not like me. Secundo works in London; mosaic work. Savarino did not get a number. He got a name. He works in Newark, New Jersey, in mosaic work. He is only 18. Nobody else is big like me. “In France I work three years in mosaic and carpenter work, always hungry; not enough money. Now I got 38 houses in California and my father and mother live in a big house I bought in Sequal. “After the carpenter work I joined a carnival to wrestle. Some days 1 wrestle 15, 20 times; more. I am a good wrestler. “Paul Journee, the old fighter, found me and told me to be a fighter, but when I am to sign the contract the circus manager says I am to sign a paper about something I do not understand. So I sign, this paper, and after a long time they tell me I am a Frenchman. I am not a Frenchman, but an Italian. I got the Italian consul to fix it up.

“The Italian law is so I do not have to do military duty if I do not stay three months in Italy. I stay two months and 28 days, and go. up to France one day. Then I stay two months and 28 days again. So forth. “Max Schmeling is my friend socially, but I can lick him. I can' lick Stribling. In London he fouled me. In Paris I knocked him out cold, but we were both punching after the bel.'. We do not hear the bell. When

knock him out they call it foul. But he is knocked out—both of us punch ing.

“To have money; ' it’s wonderful. Five years ago, not enough food, no shoes. To-day 38 houses in California and plenty money and shoes, but I don’t eat much now.

“America is a great place. I came here first on J£ew Year’s eve. Oh! Such drunk people! A crazy night! I thought they were al’ mad. I went to the Silver Slipper on Broadway. I take a glass of whisky. I spilPsome on my pants and it burns a hole in the cloth. Think what it does inside the people!” This was a faux pas. The Silver Slipper belongs to one of Primo’s managers, Bill Duffy, but the goods may have aged since then. “I do not mean to spread a harmful report,” adds the interviewer. Anyway, that’s Primo for you.