Primo Carnera was born #OnThisDay in 1906 in Sequals, a village in northeast Italy. Never had a world heavyweight champion been manipulated or controlled like he was by criminal elements. The surface story most commonly recited about Carnera is that he was a freakishly big and unbelievably naive Italian circus performer discovered and exploited by New York mobsters who fixed fights for him and protected him into the heavyweight championship. He proved to be a thrilling curiosity for the public who set attendance records just to see him. His huge 6 foot 6 frame and massive fists punched their way through Jack Sharkey for the title and earned the Ambling Alp more than a million dollars in prize money. Barely a year after he won the championship, he was not only an ex-champion but he was a broke one. “I don’t pay attention to money and those things,” he famously and naively would say.
