I just watched
The Harder They Fall, a 1956 film that happened to be Humphrey Bogart's last. The film tells the story of Toro Moreno, a fighter the mob fixes all the way to a shot at the heavyweight championship where he is clobbered by Buddy Brennan (Max Baer in a real stretch of casting). Moreno's story parallels the career of Primo Carnera, who won a few fixed fights on his way to actually winning the world heavyweight championship.
I was always under the impression that Baer utterly outclassed Carnera. Ten knockdowns seems to indicate an utter slaughter. There is actually some disagreement about how many times Carnera went down which seems implausible. Spurred by the accounts and the film, I watched the fight for myself.
Random pre-fight observation: that's the worst ring announcer I've ever seen for a major fight. "Quiet please!" Nothing like hyping up your crowd.
Baer catches Carnera in the first round. Then you see kind of the rules you would see in an early Dempsey fight. Carnera gets driven into the ropes and rather than a count and a standing eight it's right back to fighting. Ditto in round two. Carnera could have been ruled down twice (saved by the ropes) before he takes a knee but it's all one sequence. Round two has two sloppy knockdowns with Baer going down after Carnera. But as soon as Carnera is up the fighting continues.
I think the film is sped up which makes it harder to judge as well. Besides skipping rounds I timed one round at about two minutes, so there's a little editorial trickery to make the action seem more exciting. What is apparent though is Carnera finds his footing and did take at least three rounds unofficially. Then Baer scores more knockdowns in the tenth and eleventh before the referee actually stops it with Carnera still able to get to his feet. Probably a good stoppage but an unusual one for a heavyweight title fight in that era.
