Owney Madden and Primo Carnera

We talked in our first episode on the Irish mob about Owney Madden getting into promoting and managing and gambling on professional boxing. Like professional criminal activities, for young Irish and Italian guys, professional boxing was a manly way out of their crushing poverty.  Many people during this time observed that Madden became a different person at a boxing match. He would jump up and scream advice, shadow box and generally become just like any other crazed fan at any athletic match.   We talked in our first episode on the Irish mob about Owney Madden getting into promoting and managing and gambling on professional boxing. Many people during this time observed that Madden became a different person at a boxing match. He would jump up and scream advice, shadow box and generally become just like any other crazed fan at any athletic match. Owney Madden purchased the contract of a boxer named Primo Carnera. He was born in 1906 in Venice Italy, he weighed 15 to 20 lbs at birth. The Carnera family soon realized the potential of their broad-shouldered son. The Carnera family were poor peasants and they did their best to ensure that their son earned good money. As a teenager, Primo had moved to France and got a job as a strongman in a circus. He went into professional boxing and fought many fights in Europe. From his earliest matches, many were rumored to be fixed fights. Primo was a simple gentle young man who was easily manipulated by his handlers. He was ill-equipped for the limelight of the boxing world. He grew to be 6 feet 6 inches tall and weighing in at 275 lbs, an imposingly large man by any standards. He became a celebrity in Europe and in 1929 he came to the US on a well-publicized series of fights against American boxers.  Primo was an instant media attraction. He was like the Andre the Giant of boxing. His language struggles caused him to be unintentionally funny and he was once asked how old he was and he replied with his weight, 275. During the 1920s and 1930s New York gangster Owney Madden financed several Hells Kitchen amateur boxing clubs and was credited with keeping many young men out of problems with the law. He bought out Carnera’s contract and started setting up fights. He and his partner in crime, Frenchy LeMange became corner men at Carnera’s fights and could be seen giving fight advice during the breaks in the rounds. Carnera was the unwitting participant in a series of fixed fights. This corruption in professional boxing was continually investigated by the New York State Boxing commission. But during this time, a lot of control over the fight game was given to gamblers like Owney Madden. After Carnera arrived in the U.S., he triumphed by KO in 89 of 103 professional fights. Madden and his gang bribed, physically intimidated, or used other dirty tricks to ensure that Carnera won each fight. They had to because Primo Carnera had a glass jaw, he could be knocked out by even the lightest tap to the chin. In his defense, Carnera’s size became his key defensive trait. It never made him a popular fighter and he always drew crowds—even when it seemed obvious that his fights were fixed. he had the reputation of a dumb oaf and the newspapers nicknamed him the ‘Ambling Alp’ for the way he staggered around the ring. An interesting note, Primo Carnera’s story has been told a few times in the movies. His early life as a circus strongman was told by the famous Italian Director Frederico Fellinni in La Strada, released in 1954.  In 1947, Bud Schulberg, a boxing columnist and Hollywood screenwriter published a slim novel about prizefight corruption entitled The Harder They Fall. This was loosely based on the career of Primo Carnera. He wrote the screenplay by the same title and it depicted a giant immigrant who spoke broken English who is taken advantage of by hustling fight promoters and gangsters. In the plot the gangsters sent him, unknowingly,