8) 
battling siki book?.... anyone got it yet?...
battling siki book?.... anyone got it yet?...
Just wondering if anyone here has got hold of 'Battling Siki' By Peter Benson... which I see is now available... also a biog on Johnny Tapia is now out... anyone read that yet?... 8)
8) I have got to get this book. Siki is a fascinating character (not a great fighter but a GREAT story) Im very interested in finding out about his war record as it has been rumored that instead of wiping out a machine gun nest as is the official story, he may have actually killed an unarmed column of german prisoners.
I have an excelent book by Nigel Collins one of the chapters is about Siki. I dont want to reveal some of the hijinks Collins details . It might take away some of the fun of the new book your reading. Collins writes that Siki after capturing nine German soldiers, got a little nervous that he was going to be charged and overwhelmed so he herded the nine Germans into a shell hole and lobbed a couple grenades in after them. That solved his problem.
Progress on the Greb book is as follows: Research is complete for the most part (a couple of gaps here and there but nothing major), 300 pages have been written and partially edited, of those 300 pages 200 have footnotes in place, the last 2 -300 pages have been outlined and are in the process of being written. Basically if I wanted to do the book in two parts (which Ive considered, but wont) The first part could be ready for printing tomorrow. It looks good though. The copyright is in place, everything is all set. It would be a lot easier if I had an editor but Im doing that (in addition to everything else) myself and as such I want to be careful as possible because Im not that good of an editor. Im lucky in that its a boxing book and not shakespeare, I think the fans of the sport will be a bit more forgiving of me than some of my old college professors.
While we are talking about boxing books, I just read Teddy Atlas' new book. Jeez, talk about gawd awful. This guy has the worst case of sour grapes Ive ever seen. All he ever does is bash Tyson. You would think he might have some praise for the guy who made him famous seeing as how hes been living off the fact that he trained Tyson as an amateur for a few years. The way he talks in his book Kevin Rooney was just some hack and Teddy Atlas was the guy who trained Tyson to a championship. I have every fight that exists on film of Tyson plus training and docs and anyone can clearly see that Tyson had a lot of work to be done on him long after Atlas was gone and that it was Rooney who polished that diamond. Atlas also acts like D'Amato and basically everyone else associated with boxing has stabbed him in the back at one point or another. This is a guy who is so volitile that hes gotten into physical altercations with EVERY high profile fighter hes trained (and some he didnt train). Maybe Teddy should start to understand that once or twice it might be a coincidence but your involved in that many altercations it might be HIM that is the single common denominator. mr. Intergrity needs to remember that it was him who tried to cheap shot foreman at the press conference for the Moore fight. It was him that cheap shot and attacked his former featherweight fighter at another press conference. It was him that while blasting supposedly unethical practices in boxing he was training a fighter who was managed by the mob via a front man (Muriqui) and Atlas KNEW IT! That lazy-eyed loudmouth is the biggest hypocrite in boxing. Ok Im done ranting, carry on.
I just got finished reading it also. much of it was already well documented I found very little of it to be news. I was a little surprised by his hatred of Lalonde .Didnt know he wanted to murder him. There was so much drama with him and Moorer that after while I got a little tired of reading about it. Parts of it were entertaining I guess.
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I'm probably going to order it myself through Amazon... Siki's always fascinated me...barry wrote:I've been very anxious for the Siki book to come out and now that it is out I'll try to pick up a copy this weekend. I'm also still looking forward to the Greb book...what’s the progress on that at this juncture?
Just picked up the Siki book. I havent read it yet but Ive thumbed through it and so far I must say Im impressed. Im usually pretty hard on books, particularly boxing books because often times they lack hands on research and simply rehash old myths that guys like Fleisher and Dan Daniel started at Ring. This book seems to have been fairly well researched, no small feet for a guy from africa who won a title in france, lost it in ireland, and fought all over europe and the united states.
As a side not, we were talking about the Teddy Atlas book in this thread as well and I just noticed over at fight news where Donnie Lalonde blasts the book and Atlas as full of shit. He basically refutes everything Atlas had to say about him including the looney story about Atlas going to kill him and I must say Lalondes story rings much more true than Atlas' basically backs up everything Ive always thought of Atlas as a hypocritical windbag who preaches honor and morality yet constantly gets into fist fights with fighters and trainers, back stabs people, lies, etc etc. Basically a pathetic little man living off a couple of years he worked as a co-trainer with Mike Tyson when Tyson was barely into his teens.
As a side not, we were talking about the Teddy Atlas book in this thread as well and I just noticed over at fight news where Donnie Lalonde blasts the book and Atlas as full of shit. He basically refutes everything Atlas had to say about him including the looney story about Atlas going to kill him and I must say Lalondes story rings much more true than Atlas' basically backs up everything Ive always thought of Atlas as a hypocritical windbag who preaches honor and morality yet constantly gets into fist fights with fighters and trainers, back stabs people, lies, etc etc. Basically a pathetic little man living off a couple of years he worked as a co-trainer with Mike Tyson when Tyson was barely into his teens.
For a trainer to get into fights with his own boxers is extremely unproffessional... I remember that I was less than impressed with Atlas' handling of Moorer during the Foreman fight..... insulting your fighter doesnt seem to be a constructive way of getting him to do what you want him to do.... it certainly didnt work that night...
I may have spoken too soon about the Siki book. The author is starting to show small cracks in the first chapter: He insists Jack Johnson never defended against a black fighter (Battling Jim Johnson HELLLOOOO, in Paris of all places, a fight the author should have been well acquinted with if he studied some of the excellent french sources of the day such as La Boxe, Les Boxeurs), he paints Mike McTigue as a defensive genius. I beg to differ. Ive done a lot of research on McTigue and while he was fairly talented defensively he was primarily a club fighter who spent most of his No-Decision career trying to finish fights on his feet and providing little action or offense, or even willingness to actually win. Reports of him doing nothing but absorbing punishment and trying to make it to the final bell are legion. He is in my opinion little better than Al McCoy. The author already discounts several eye-witness accounts of Siki's outrageous behavior without offering any rebuttal or reason not believe the accounts. I strongly disagree with this. Its one thing to formulate an opinion about a guy, but dont disregard facts simply because they dont conform to your story. If he has good sources which provide reason not to believe the stories of Siki's behavior (in this case his behavior aboard the ship bound for Ireland and his date with McTigue) then he needs to quote or cite those sources. He doesnt and as such this part of the story suffers.
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I haven't bought the book yet, but from the sound it is going to be nothing but a praising of Siki without giving account to all of his flaws, which were many. I'm immediately turned off if he thinks Johnson never defended against a colored fighter as the bout with Battling Jim is not one that is obscure...in fact, if that bout were to happen today Battling Jim would have won by TKO.
So far its a mixed bag. He definately illustrates that Siki has flaws, on the other hand so far he has minimized every single anti-social stunt Siki was involved in (about 6 or 7 in the first two chapters alone) as being blown out of proportion or misunderstandings. For the McTigue fight which he feels Siki deserved to win (and I agree) instead of laying his case out intelligently, he literally goes to the extreme of making a convoluted scorecard based on four seperate newspaper accounts of the fight, prints the scorecard in the book, and uses that to illustrate that Siki deserved to win. I dont think Ive ever seen anything so sophomoric used to illustrate a bad decision in a boxing book. Even the Irish newspaper felt Siki deserved to win, so the guy really didnt need to the lengths of creating some fictitious scorecard based on the round by round accounts of the battle from a concensus of four different papers, he could have merely illustrated in a more traditional sense that the decision was a bogus one. Its not like it would have taken that much trouble to convince us seeing as how it was against a irish man, in ireland, on st patricks day, during an uprising. After all of that criticism I must say its still interesting because when you weed through the stuff you dont like about it its still great to read about the era from the perspective of a fighter who rarely had his story told from his point of view.