CARNERA THE GREAT CAPTURES THE CROWD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19070, 15 May 1930, Page 4

CARNERA THE GREAT CAPTURES THE CROWD.

“ BALLYHOOED TO MAKE SLANGSTER’S HOLIDAY/’ A giant looking for Jack-of-the-Bean-stalk. A man so huge, according to one writer, that when he’s sick it's an epidemic, whose tailors “ don’t measure.” but “ survey him.” Such a figure, says the Xew York ” Literary Digest,” is Primo Camera, the huge Italian heavyweight, who has been adding 10 the gaiety of the winter fight season. Perhaps he’s the coming heavyweight champion, as his backers declare Perhaps he’s a “false alarm.” as foreign critics assure us. American sports ouslv before rendering a decision. You can't, they aver, judge a fighter’s chances on this side when his earliest American fights, against admittedly not verj* hefty opposition, are over in a round or two. But, fighter or no fighter, Primo is cne of the most picturesque ring figures in a long time, and as such ho has been the inspiration of some of the most entertaining sports writ ing in recent years. He has been ballyhoocd to make a slangster’s holiday. All the conventional sobriquets have been applied to him- killer, caveman, i abysmal brute,” “ Neanderthal type.” j “ reincarnated Roman gladiator.” “ Taran of the Apes.” The St Louis “ Post Dispatch ” recalls some of these. Rut the fact remains, despite all of these titles, that Prime hasn’t killed, or even injured, anyone yet, that he seems to

be an unusually good-natured young man of about twenty-three, and that m London the much smaller American fighter Young Stribiing knocked him down. But, on the other hand, there have been some more original appellations—“ltalian Alp.” “man mountain.” “ the man with the St Bernard ’ dogs,’ ” l “ the mammoth muscle merchant of Venice,” and “ Carnivorous Camera ” Such sports writers as Westbrook Pegler, James R. Harrison. George E. Phair and Don Skene have been busy inventing tags like these. “ Primitive Primo ” has gained a firm hold on the American fan’s imagination because he is an unusual combination of qualities. There are his height and weight, variously estimated. There is his appetite, which seems almost worthy to be mentioned in the samebreath with those of the fabled Pant.igruel. and the equally fabled Paul Bun van, legendary hero of the lumbermen. There Is his'artistic talent, too, his keen sense of humour, and his distinct rlair for caricature. There is the fact that he carries with him his drawing-

teacher, Louis Gerard Borings, a wellknown French artist, indeed, should be become champion, he will be a worthy successor, in cultural affairs at least, of Gene Tunnev, for lie is also credited with an ambition to form an opera company. To the New 1 or.-; “ World ” this aesthetic tendency is proof positive that he will become champion. . . But what does Primo look like.' How does he strike the beholder at first glance? Here is evidence of the effect he produced on Don Skene at the.ir first meeting. Mr Skene writes in the New York “ Herald Tribune ” of the fighter’s arrival in America.: . . “ Signor Camera and his St Bernard ‘ dogs,’ cr amazingly ponderous pedal extremities, reached here with the liner

Berengaria, or vice versa, after a voyage in which the huge vessel showed a menacing list to port, or Camera, side of the ship. “ But the boat landed, and its officers heaved huge sighs of relief as Camera stepped off at the Fourteenth Street dock a.s gingerly as a fair co-ed jumping out of a canoe on the banks of the Wabash, after paddling through the mandolin-tinkling moonlight. ” Followed closely by Camera himself, the biggest feet in the world, following the formula of the storied seven league boots, proceed to the Hotel Piccadilly, in the Times Square district. Hushed groups of men. women and children viewed the spectacle with hypnotised stares. In the parade uptown, !o Car nera’s feet led all the rest. To see them was to shove them, or be crowded against the wall.”