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PITY THE POOR GIANT
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There is probably no more scandalous, pitiful, incredible story
in all the record of these last mad sports years than the tale
of the living giant, a creature out of the legends of antiquity,
who was made into a prize fighter. He was taught and trained by
a wise, scheming little French boxing manager who had an Oxford
University degree, and he was later acquired and developed into
a heavyweight champion of the world by a group of American
gangsters and mob men; then finally, when his usefulness as a
meal ticket was outlived, he was discarded in the most shameful
chapter in all boxing.
This unfortunate pituitary case, who might have been
Angoulaffre, or Balan, or Fierabras, Gogmagog, or Gargantua
himself, was a poor simple-minded peasant by the name of Primo
Carnera, the first son of a stonecutter of Sequals, Italy. He
stood six feet seven inches in height, and weighed two hundred
and sixty-eight pounds. He became the heavyweight champion, yet
never in all his life was he ever anything more than a
fourth-rater at prize fighting. He must have grossed more than
two million dollars during the years that he was being
exhibited, and he hasn't a cent to show for it today.
There is no room here for more than a brief hasty glance back
over the implications of the tragedy of Primo Carnera. And yet I
could not seem to take my leave from sports without it. The
scene and the story still fascinate me, the sheer impudence of
the men who handled the giant, their conscienceless cruelty,
their complete depravity toward another human being, the sure,
cool manner in which they hoaxed hundreds of thousands of
people. Poor Primo! A giant in stature and strength, a terrible
figure of a man, with the might of ten men, he was a helpless
lamb among wolves who used him until there was nothing more left
to use, until the last possible penny had been squeezed from his
big carcass, and then abandoned him. His last days in the United
States were spent alone in a hospital. One leg was paralyzed,
the result of beatings taken around the head. None of the
carrion birds who had picked him clean ever came back to see him
or to help him. |
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Paul Gallico - The book Of Boxing
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