BoxRec

Boxing: Battling Siki lost so much even in victory!


By Jack Magowan

21 October 2006
Battling Siki died as violently as he had lived.

This coffee-coloured 'child of the jungle' was gunned down in a back-street murder some say the New York police never tried to solve.

Sadly, nobody liked the big guy from whom a punch-shy Irishman, Mike McTigue, took the World light-heavyweight crown amid civil war, and bitter controversy, over 80 years ago.

To say that McTigue was a lucky winner is probably a crude understatement.

In what was the last championship fight ever staged over 20 rounds, bad-boy Siki suffered a cruel injustice, a view even shared by partisan Irish on a night Dublin's old La Scala theatre was turned into a fort.

The story of 'Battling Siki' is an intriguing tale of fixed fights, racism, murder, and a St Patrick's Day contest no other city wanted.

It was from the over-rated French idol and sporting icon, Georges Carpentier, that Siki won his title six months before, but in revenge for not getting paid for this Paris job, a new and angry champion suddenly announced that the French promoter wanted him to take a dive against Carpentier.

What an inflammatory and spurious allegation. Imagine the mood of those close to this War hero and celebrity!

Naturally, they crucified the liquorice-legged man from Senegal, calling him everything from a born liar and drug-pusher to wife-beater and drunken bum.

"This is a permanent blot on the sport of boxing," fumed irate Parisian officials who only weeks before had stripped Siki of his licence and National titles.

"It's a scandalous thing to say, and the fellow is a public disgrace."

There's no smoke without fire, however. White sensibilities had been hit for six, and got big play around the world.

If Siki, now flat broke and unwanted at home, was to earn any money as champion, he had no choice but to box in Dublin, a high-risk fight for sure, yet one that McTigue's cigar-chewing manager, Yussel the Muscle Jacobs, never thought for one minute he might win.

While Mike could be skilfully elusive, "a prize-ring Houdini," the Press called him, his punches carried about as much venom as a schoolgirl's slap, as a career record of 36 no-decision contests would suggest.

He'll need help from a regiment of marines to beat Siki, wrote one critic of the day, clearly unaware that a reluctant champion had been in a drunken stupor, and kicking like a mule, before waking up on a tramp-steamer halfway down the English Channel.

Siki had been locked in his cabin, and seemed convinced on arrival in Dublin, we're told, that everybody was out to get him.

"I'm not weighing in," he snapped - and neither he did - demanding that he be paid for the fight in advance. He trusted nobody, and had a fistful of banknotes sewn into a money-belt worn both during, and after, the contest.

A platoon of military, bayonets drawn, were on guard outside the stadium; then, as the action began, a bomb ripped through a nearby tenement, raining glass everywhere.

A wonderfully proportioned athlete, Siki fought with bestial fury at times, but here he was boxing an Irishman in an Irish ring on St Patrick's night.

He would need a miracle to win, and didn't get it.

McTigue, all defence behind a pawing, stiff-armed jab, never seriously threatened until the late rounds, by which stage, legend goes, a sweating out-of-puff champion was a mile in front.

Mike's punches were stereotyped and wouldn't have hurt a flea, and with four rounds to go, wrote the New York Times, he needed a knock-out to win.

How the referee, an Englishman, judged McTigue the winner, nobody knows. Only that his scorecard went missing afterwards, and was never seen again. David had outwitted Goliath, they said, but nobody was really convinced he did.

It would be two weeks before Siki and his long-suffering Dutch wife could leave Ireland to return to France after being outlawed from entering Britain.

Again, a hostile Press couldn't resist laughing up its sleeve. This battling West African had won the Croix de Guerre for gallantry in World War 1, but that was of no importance, and soon forgotten.

He was the guy who knocked out 'Orchid Man' Carpentier, remember, then tried to destroy his squeaky-clean reputation, and all France never forgave him!