VintageMeld

It’s been awhile since I’ve done a boxing birthday over here, but tonight when I was on the IMDb of all places, taking a look at which movie stars celebrated a birthday on October 26, I was surprised to find not one, but two, classic Heavyweight champions born on this date just 4 years apart. All the more interesting, the Heavyweight crown changed hands when they fought each other, though not in late October but June 29, 1933.

The gigantic Primo Carnera, born October 26, 1906, wrested the crown from Jack Sharkey, born the same date, 1902, in Sharkey’s first defense of the title at the Long Island City Bowl. James P. Dawson of the New York Times reported in the July 30 edition:

Jack Sharkey’s first defense of the world’s heavyweight championship was his last. The Boston ex-sailor was knocked out in the sixth round of what was to have been a fifteen-round struggle last night in the Long Island City Bowl, by Primo Carnera, Italian giant. As a result, for the first time in ring history, the crown which has come down from Sullivan, Corbett, Fitzsimmons and the rest of that illustrious line to Dempsey and Tunney, is worn by a son of Italy. A terrific right hand uppercut to the chin which almost decapitated Sharkey brought Carnera the title in a bout held by the Madison Square Garden Corporation.

Here’s the action from the 3rd round on:

Complete fight by fight records of the fighters can be found on the Cyber Boxing Zone where of Sharkey they say, “When he was good, he was very good but when he was bad, he was awful,” while of the equally flawed Carnera, the CBZ writes that he “was quite mobile for such a large man; However, his chin was vulnerable to the type of power punch that the top heavyweight fighters were able to deliver.”

Boxing was still huge during this period and so there were many card sets produced featuring great fighters, past and at the time present. A couple of excellent sites I bumped into tonight on the subject were Boxing Card Digest and America’s Great Boxing Cards, whose owner, Adam S. Warshaw, has published what appears to be the book to own for boxing card collectors, America’s Great Boxing Cards.

Beyond the cards boxing offers many opportunities to collect from autographs to fight specific collectibles such as boxing posters, programs, tickets and ticket stubs.

Search all of eBay for Jack Sharkey and Primo Carnera cards and collectibles.

Time Magazine October 5, 1931