COLOURFUL CARNERA

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 827, 22 November 1929, Page 7

COLOURFUL CARNERA

JLYI JEFFRIES and Jess Willard were two tremendously big men who were fast enough as boxers to become world’s champions. And Jack Johnson was the cleverest big man who ever won the title. But Primo Camera is an outsize in heavyweights. Signor Camera has been likened to a human elephant, but his unexpected victory over a touring American, ranked in the first flight of Die world’s heavy-weight contenders, provides him with an opportunity that might easily lead to a satisfying accumulation of lira before somebody demolishes this gigantic freak of the prize-ring. A shrewd manager, willing to take a chance, would be setting out hot-foot, for America as soon as the necessary arrangements could be made to ship his colossal human freight. It might mean converting a couple of cabins into suitable quarters for the giant, but it would be worth it. Signor Camera is obviously a colourful personality. American sporting fans have a peculiar weakness for freak performers. Even apart from the man who attained fame by pushing a peanut up Pike’s Peak (where is Pike’s Peak, by the way?), the meteoric career of Luis Angel Firpo provides a vivid example. Firpo looked so much like an angel that a humorous American pressman christened him the Wild Bull of the Pampas. It made a fortune for Firpo. Firpo became world-famous by knocking Dempsey clean through the ropes with a murderous right swing: Camera might be lucky enough to fall on Phil Scott in a clinch and secure a knock-out!