The Giant Actor Built Like Two Shaqs

The Giant Actor Built Like Two Shaqs Before Hollywood ever put Primo Carnera on a movie screen, crowds were already paying just to see how enormous he was. Born in Sequals, Italy in 1906, Carnera went from circus strongman to heavyweight champion of the world, fighting at well over 250 pounds in an era when a man his size looked almost unnatural beside ordinary heavyweights. His career was surrounded by accusations of fixed fights and mob-controlled promoters, but the strange part of Carnera's story is that the spectacle didn't end when boxing did. He became a major professional wrestling attraction and eventually found his way onto movie sets, appearing in films like The Prizefighter and the Lady, Mighty Joe Young and Prince Valiant. Old photographs don't always communicate just how imposing Carnera must have seemed in person. He had the frame of a modern super-heavyweight decades before athletes that large became common, and promoters understood exactly what they had: a man whose appearance could sell tickets before he threw a punch. Behind that size, though, was a much stranger story about boxing, Hollywood, wrestling and one of the most controversial heavyweight careers of the twentieth century. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primo_C... https://boxrec.com/wiki/index.php/Pri... https://archives.starkcenter.org/omek... https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/Perso...