Sport: Camera v. Rioux

In Chicago, 18,000 people paid $59,625 to see gargantuan Primo Camera fight a French-Canadian slugnut named Elzear Rioux. Because Rioux, 63¼ Ibs. the lighter, only lasted 47 seconds, taking six knockdowns in that time and never landing a punch, the Illinois State Athletic Commission withheld the purse. The Commission felt that Rioux had been too consistently horizontal for the fight to be honest. Carnera’s friends insisted he was being penalized merely because, in a profession full of chicanery, the prowess of an honest monster taxed credulity.