Comments - The St. Patrick's Day Champ: Clare's 'Bold Mike' McTigue - The Wild Geese2024-03-29T08:17:14Zhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profiles/comment/feed?attachedTo=6442157%3ABlogPost%3A216814&xn_auth=noWilliam "Young" Stribling Jr.…tag:thewildgeese.irish,2017-05-11:6442157:Comment:2168452017-05-11T03:39:32.187ZThe Wild Geesehttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/TheWildGeese
<p><a href="http://boxrec.com/boxer/12052" target="_blank">William "Young" Stribling Jr.'s boxing record.</a> Below, Stribling (left) in a staged photo with Jack Dempey, whom he never fought.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440779?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440779?profile=original" width="650" class="align-center"/></a></p>
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<p><a href="http://boxrec.com/boxer/12052" target="_blank">William "Young" Stribling Jr.'s boxing record.</a> Below, Stribling (left) in a staged photo with Jack Dempey, whom he never fought.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440779?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440779?profile=original" width="650" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p></p> Tommy Loughran's boxing recor…tag:thewildgeese.irish,2017-05-11:6442157:Comment:2166912017-05-11T03:26:15.140ZThe Wild Geesehttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/TheWildGeese
<p><a href="http://boxrec.com/boxer/11326" target="_blank">Tommy Loughran's boxing record.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440821?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440821?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p><a href="http://boxrec.com/boxer/11326" target="_blank">Tommy Loughran's boxing record.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440821?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440821?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p> Paul Berlenbach's boxing reco…tag:thewildgeese.irish,2017-05-11:6442157:Comment:2168432017-05-11T03:24:00.787ZThe Wild Geesehttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/TheWildGeese
<p><a href="http://boxrec.com/boxer/13685" target="_blank">Paul Berlenbach's boxing record.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440852?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440852?profile=original" width="654" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p><a href="http://boxrec.com/boxer/13685" target="_blank">Paul Berlenbach's boxing record.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440852?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440852?profile=original" width="654" class="align-center"/></a></p> Mike and his wife, Cecilia, w…tag:thewildgeese.irish,2017-05-10:6442157:Comment:2168322017-05-10T17:58:38.790ZJoe Gannonhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JoeGannon
<p>Mike and his wife, Cecilia, with their daughters. Left to right: Peggy, Cecilia, and Rosaleen. This was probably taken in 1924 or 1925.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440860?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440860?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p>Mike and his wife, Cecilia, with their daughters. Left to right: Peggy, Cecilia, and Rosaleen. This was probably taken in 1924 or 1925.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440860?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440860?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p> Siki with his first wife and…tag:thewildgeese.irish,2017-05-10:6442157:Comment:2168282017-05-10T03:29:32.655ZJoe Gannonhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JoeGannon
<p>Siki with his first wife and their child, <span>Louis Jr</span>.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440856?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440856?profile=original" width="373" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p>Siki with his first wife and their child, <span>Louis Jr</span>.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440856?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440856?profile=original" width="373" class="align-center"/></a></p> A newspaper story about the a…tag:thewildgeese.irish,2017-05-10:6442157:Comment:2167492017-05-10T03:20:24.308ZJoe Gannonhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JoeGannon
<p>A newspaper story about the arrest of Siki and his American wife for eating in a "white" restaurant.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440787?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440787?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p>
<p>A newspaper story about the arrest of Siki and his American wife for eating in a "white" restaurant.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440787?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440787?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"/></a></p> “Battling” Siki
Louis Fall, M…tag:thewildgeese.irish,2017-05-10:6442157:Comment:2167462017-05-10T03:04:03.334ZJoe Gannonhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JoeGannon
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440750?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-right" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440750?profile=RESIZE_320x320" style="padding: 10px;" width="265"></img></a> <strong>“Battling” Siki</strong></p>
<p>Louis Fall, Mike McTigue’s opponent in his championship in Dublin, known to the boxing world as, “Battling Siki,” had a very short and unhappy life following his loss to Mike that St. Patrick’s Day. Boxing was one of the first sports where blacks were “allowed” to compete with whites, but it was unquestionably not a level playing field…</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440750?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="265" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440750?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="265" class="align-right" style="padding: 10px;"/></a><strong>“Battling” Siki</strong></p>
<p>Louis Fall, Mike McTigue’s opponent in his championship in Dublin, known to the boxing world as, “Battling Siki,” had a very short and unhappy life following his loss to Mike that St. Patrick’s Day. Boxing was one of the first sports where blacks were “allowed” to compete with whites, but it was unquestionably not a level playing field for them. Those that managed to fight their way to top were usually subjected to a level of bigotry that seems incredible to us today.</p>
<p>Louis was born in Senegal, in the port city of St. Louis in 1897. St. Louis was a fairly modern city, but the stories written about him inevitably had him growing up “in the jungle,” as people of the time expected of any African. His family allowed him to be adopted by a German woman thinking he would have a better life in Europe when he was seven. Unfortunately, because she had no written consent from his parents, he was taken from her in Marseilles, France. As a result, he grew up as the ward of a woman’s charity group.</p>
<p>He enlisted in the French army at the start of WWI, and was put into a Senegalese unit, though he had little in common with them anymore. Louis was wounded three times, won the Croix de Guerre, the Medaille Miltaire and seven other citations from bravery. By any measure, the man was a war hero. Yet, while the idol of France whom he beat for the title, Georges Carpentier, was hailed as a hero everywhere in France, Louis got little or no mention for his heroic service to that same country. The question, “why,” essentially answers itself by merely looking at a photo of the two men.</p>
<p>American soldiers in France first helped get him into boxing. “To gain favor with white people, one merely had to fight,” he later said. It’s a statement that gives us an insight into what life was like for a black man in a white man’s world at the time. He was a raw talent who made a name for himself with a string of knockouts against mediocre fighters. He was a boxer Carpentier’s management merely saw as someone who could make them few dollars before moving on to bigger name opponents. Carpentier’s loss was a great shock to the French public.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440789?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/57440789?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left"/></a>Siki was a colorful character around Paris; sometimes he walked a pet lion cub on a leash. He caused a huge controversy by claiming after the fight that he had been paid to take a dive against Carpentier, but changed his mind during the fight.</p>
<p>When Siki came to the U.S. in the fall of 1923, his career went into a fatal tailspin. He had claimed he was the only man in the world who could train on “brandy and champagne,” but alcohol brought him down, as it has so many men before and since. New York gave the young man unlimited outlets for his love of drinking and nightlife, in spite of prohibition.</p>
<p>Reports of Siki’s fights would be full of racist descriptions of his fighting style like “monkeylike crouches” and “tigerlike springs.” He also incensed some bigots by marring two white women in his life, without a divorce in between, one Dutch woman in Europe and one later in the U.S. He had a child with the Dutch woman. It was very unusual at the time, to say the least. It was legal in New York, but in all the western states it was not legal until 1948, and in the south not until 1967. In the U.S. newspapers said his wife was not white, in spite of her skin color. In those days when terms like quadroon and octoroon were still widely used in the south, one could look very white and still be considered “colored.” The couple was arrested in Tennessee for trying to eat in a “white restaurant.” (See photos below.)</p>
<p>His last fight of any consequence was a TKO loss to Paul Berlenbach in March 1925. He lost four of six fights against much lesser opponents the rest of that year, and his drinking problems worsened.</p>
<p>On December 15<sup>th</sup> a police officer, John J. Meehan, stopped Siki as he drunkenly staggered down 9<sup>th</sup> Ave. in New York. Later that night his lifeless body was found in the gutter with two bullet wounds in the back. His killers were never found. Some thought it was done over $20 debt. Siki, the young black boy once abandoned in the white world, the first African-born boxing world champion, had been chewed up and spit out by that racist world that would never accept him.</p>
<p>Siki gave away his money as quickly as he made it during his boxing career, perhaps trying to buy the affection of the fans that he could never seem to obtain in the ring. Who could blame a man who got no love from a family that allowed a white woman to take him away as a child; who got no love from the French people for his heroism in WWI, and no love from the boxing world for winning a world championship, for trying to buy some? A quote from him late in his life demonstrates his sensitive nature beneath the rough prizefighter: “A lot of newspaper people have written that I have a jungle-style of fighting, that I am a chimpanzee, who has been taught to wear gloves. That kind of thing hurts me. I was never anywhere, but in a big city, in my life. I have never even seen a jungle.”</p>
<p>Siki was buried <span>Flushing Cemetery in Queens. In 1993 his body was disinterred and sent back to his native Senegal to be <span>reburied in Saint-Louis, where he was born.</span></span></p>
<p><a href="http://boxrec.com/boxer/32085" target="_blank">Battling Siki's boxing record.</a></p>