On this day: Joe Louis stops Primo Carnera

Proxy battles are disputed in the boxing ring just as much as they are in any other major sport, from soccer to rugby to ice hockey and beyond.

The greatest one that the world has probably witnessed, however, was the 1938 rematch between Joe Louis and former heavyweight champ Max Schmeling. As Adolf Hitler psyched Germany up for a devastating war that would bring unimaginable pain and destruction to most of the planet, Louis received the unenviable task of carrying on his shoulders the honor of the free world in a fight against a representative of the self-appointed “superior race.” Even though Schmeling never took it upon himself (publicly, at least) to represent such reprehensible ideas, and even though he denounced them later in life though both words and actions, the confrontation of those two ethos was all too real for millions of observers around the world. And Joe delivered in demolishing fashion, crushing Schmeling in a brutal display of boxing ability and sheer power to defend his heavyweight championship barely two years after losing his unbeaten status to Schmeling in their first bout.

The win elevated Louis to the category of national hero in the US, and cemented his place in history. But that crowning achievement was an accumulation of other previous wins that progressively earned Louis the admiration and the support of his people, first as an icon for his African American community, and then to the entire country.

His fight against Primo Carnera was probably the biggest single leap that Louis took towards his now legendary status.

Carnera was a towering 6’6’’ former heavyweight champion born in Italy and aptly nicknamed as “The Ambling Alp.” Slow, flatfooted and unskilled as a fighter, Carnera did carry a wallop in his right hand that was decent enough for him to mow down the lower ranks of the heavyweight division of his day with relative ease, aided by wise matchmaking from his even wiser advisors. Several of those punches accumulated on the humanity of one Ernie Schaaf with enough power to render him unconscious first and dead a few days later. In his next fight in 1933 after Schaaf’s death, Carnera stopped Ring champion Jack Sharkey to lift the coveted heavyweight belt that he would go on to defend two times before surrendering it to Max Baer one year after he earned it.

Joe Louis (right) and Primo Carnera (left) square off for the cameras as then-welterweight champion Ray Robinson (center) hosts the meeting – Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images

With a 82-7 record and an impressive number of stoppage wins to his credit, however, Carnera was still considered a valuable asset in the heavyweight circuit.  And Louis, with a 20-0 record and having already scored seven wins in six months during 1935, was ready for his first serious test.

But just as the fight was being drummed up by press and promoters alike, the drums of war were already sounding in Africa, where Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was engulfed in a campaign to expand the country’s colonies in the continent, which already included Lybia, Somalia and Eritrea. His next target was Ethiopia, a land-locked realm ruled by the now mythical Emperor Haile Selassie I. As the troops of the infamous ‘Duce’ geared up for a ruthless invasion of one of the last remaining free territories in the heavily colonized continent, the impending fight between Louis and Carnera was seen as a proxy battle between a destroying invading force going against the embattled people of Ethiopia in particular and Africa as a whole.

With the announcement of the fight, the African American community began coalescing around Louis after initially expressing a cautious admiration for the Alabama-born knockout artist who had made Detroit his home as a youngster. As talented as he was, the odds were stacked against Louis in his quest to become the next African American heavyweight champion after the infamous Jack Johnson, a man who had inflamed resentments and passions on both sides of the racial divide with his extravagant antics. In trying to cultivate an image that could appeal to the mainstream, Louis’ handlers kept him under a tight control, avoiding at all cost any confrontational instances such as being photographed with white women and other situations that could have triggered resentments during what was still the height of the Jim Crow era. Some of his fellow black admirers, as committed as they may have been, oftentimes balked at these and other tactics designed to whitewash their man and make it more palatable to an otherwise hostile society.

The mainstream press added fuel to the fire by typecasting Louis as a dark-skinned brute, testing several different nicknames, some more derogative than others, that depicted him as such. “The Mahogany Maimer,” “The Chocolate Chopper,” “The Safari Sandman,” “The Harlem Hammer,” “The Tan Torpedo,” “The Panting Panther,” “The Oscillating Ocelot,” “The Ebony Elephant” and dozens of other equally ridiculous and cacophonic monikers piled up on Louis as the colorful writers of the day looked for the perfect combination that would finally appeal to their readers.

With these ingredients at play, the stage was set for the heavyweight contest between Louis and Carnera to take place simultaneously in the boxing ring and the geopolitical arena.

Scheduled for June 25 at Yankee Stadium, the 15-round fight received the same attention that a heavyweight championship bout could elicit, with two elite fighters putting it all on the line in a crossroads bout for the ages.

Joe Louis stands next to Primo Carnera after scoring a knockdown in their bout at Yankee Stadium, New York City in 1935- Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images

Giving away almost five inches in height and no less than 65 pounds to his European foe, a still boyish-looking 21-year-old Louis would have looked completely out of his element for the untrained eye, just as much as tiny helpless Ethiopia could look when facing the mighty army of Italian king Victor Emmanuel III.

Easily dodging Carnera’s slow and unidimensional onslaughts, Louis countered with precision and power with his vaunted right hand since the very beginning of the fight, peppering the former titlist with jabs and hooks and then retreating away from harm’s way.

The recipe worked, and Louis repeated the dose round after round. As the bell rang to usher in the sixth round, it was clear that Carnera would not go the distance. A crushing right hand bomb landed on Carnera’s jaw less than two minutes into the round and sent him down in a heap. Only a few seconds later, a similar punch deposited him once again on the mat, this time on his knees. Sensing opportunity, Louis launched a ruthless all-out assault on the already bloodied and broken Carnera until the Italian giant succumbed once again, only to spring back up on rubbery legs. Without even bothering to start a count, referee Arthur Donovan halted the carnage at the 2.32 mark of the sixth round to award Louis the win.

Along with Carnera’s humanity, the hopes of white supremacists worldwide succumbed as well on that ring in the Bronx. Their will to conquer and destroy, however, would not subside so easily. Mussolini’s troops did finally conquer Ethiopia in a murderous invasion that sent Selassie into exile and turned Africa’s last remaining free country into a colony for a few short years.  The Second World War broke out soon after that, when Louis was already the heavyweight champion of the world after defeating Jimmy Braddock on June 22, 1937. For that particular bout, both fighters weighed 197 pounds and had roughly the same height and reach. Similar degrees of equality in society at large, however, would still have to wait for quite a few more years.

As the red glare of the rockets fired by the Allies rained over Europe in the most consequential war in history, Louis’ explosive deliveries against the proxies of tyranny and evil kept bursting in the air to inspire his fellow men as they charged to battle.

And only then did Louis earn the only possible nickname that he should have ever had.

Through his inspiring performances in the ring, “The Brown Bomber” gave proof to the world that the hope of freedom was still there. Now, the son of sharecroppers who was unable to speak with his own voice until he was six years old was etching his name in history with the thunder of his fists.

A feat that no nickname, however imaginative, could possibly illustrate.

Diego M. Morilla has written for The Ring since 2013. He has also written for HBO.com, ESPN.com and many other magazines, websites, newspapers and outlets since 1993. He is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and an elector for the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He has won two first-place awards in the BWAA’s annual writing contest, and he is the moderator of The Ring’s Women’s Ratings Panel. He served as copy editor for the second era of The Ring en Español (2018-2020) and is currently a writer and editor for RingTV.com.

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