Jack Sharkey Vs. Primo Carnera June 29, 1933

Jack Sharkey fought Primo Carnera at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn in 1931. His left hook decked the Italian giant and he won the bout comfortably. Several years later the two boxers met again, this time at the Garden Bowl in Long Island City. Many things had changed between the two fights. Carnera was fighting to take the heavyweight boxing title from the Boston fighter of Lithuanian descent in the second bout. Perhaps most importantly the big second fight almost never came off. Primo fought Ernie Schaaf, another Boston-based boxer in February 1933. Injuries Schaaf sustained while fighting Carnera resulted in his death several days later. Schaaf, a friend of Sharkey's from their U.S. Navy days, went down in a heap in Round 13. Stretchered to Polyclinic Hospital in NYC, he came out of a coma only briefly before he died from an intracranial hemorrhage.