CARNERA’S RECORD

Northern Advocate, 20 July 1935, Page 2

CARNERA’S RECORD

HAS RUNG BELL 50 TIMES. BUT ONLY AGAINST NONETITIES. Camera has never been much of a scrapper, but strange as it may seem, the massive Italian has more k.o. victories 4° his credit than any other heavyweight in the histoi'y of the ring (states a Southern writer)., In 81 fights he has rung the bell fifty times. But few of those who heard, or heard not, the dismal toll, are known to fame, or even remembered by the most encyclopaedic brain. The men he has knocked into oblivion, were, nearly all of them, set-ups. Camera would actually have genuine trouble in punching his way out of a tough paper bag. Following Camera comes Jack Dempsey with 58 knock-outs -in 70 bouts. ■ Jack could hit all right, and when he landed one, whether a left hook or a right cross, they usually stayed hit. The old Manassa Mauler actually polished off 24 men in one round, but it must be said that some, ■yvhom even he put in a horizontal position, could scarcely stand on their feet at any time. Next comes the bold bad Max Baer, with a string of thirty knockouts in 47 fights. And some of those Max bowled over could not, in popular parlance, lick a stamp.

Then follows Max Schmeling, exchampion, but still one of the very big threats in the heavyweight ranks, with 36 successes by the short route in 58 matches. Bob Fitzsimmons, perhaps the greatest hitter of them all, had 23 k.o.’s in 40 contests. When Ruby Robert used his famous right shift and drove them into the solar plexis it was usually all over but the shouting. And what great heavyweights Fitzsimmons, only a middle himself, 'put on the canvas. His era, it was the day of Corbett, Sharkey, and all the rest of them, was the golden one of the ring.

The great John L. Sullivan, regarded in most quarters as a great hitter, is well down the list. In thirty-seven starts, only twelve failed to go the distance with him. Sullivan, it is said, achieved his reputation as a knockout artist largely because of his success during one very famous barnstorming tour of the United States, during which he offered £250 to any man who could stay four rounds with him. History says that some 50 tried to relieve John of his money, but it does not record any successes. The lads came like lambs to the slaughter. Jack Johnson’s total of 31 knockouts in 90 contests may not be very impressive from a punching point of view, but Johnson, one of the greatest defensive boxers, was never very keen, despite his massacre of Tommy Burns, who brought it on himself, in Sydney in 1908, to see his opponents on the broad of their backs. But Lil Arthur could put them down where he wanted. And whose name should we find eleven below that of Camera, but that of the late Jim Corbett, who, with but 5 k.o.’s in 32 fights, could hardly appeal as having been a heavy puncher. And neither he was. He was a boxer and not a fighter, but how, one wonders, would the massive Primo have fared with him.

Camera would have knocked himself out with sheer exhaustion in trying to hit the man, who first brought real science to the modern ring. • No, the record book is reliable guide to comparative merit. On a percentage basis Dempsey actually heads the list of k.o. men, followed by Camera, Baer, Fitzsimmons, Willard, Jeffries, Tunney, Johnson, Sullivan, Sharkey and Corbett. Dempsey perhaps deserves his place; if he doesn’t, he must at least be ranked very near the top, but poor old Prime,

if ability was the only attribute of a fistic record, would never have got

within a stone’s throw of any book of records unless it be that of the greatest jokes i# ring history.