![](https://wbcboxing.com/wp-content/uploads/battling_Siki_WBC_Honor.jpg)
By James Blears
Next year will be the one hundredth anniversary of the murder of Battling Siki, the first African born world boxing champion, who beat all odds including vile racism to triumph, but he has yet to be fully recognized for his staggering achievements.
Journalist, story teller and film maker Ashley Morrison has created a brilliant documentary about this extraordinary man and called it: “Return to Your Corner.”
Ashley, who wrote a book about Azumah Nelson, learned about other African boxers who had won World Championships prior to this. often as not, they were wrongly referred to as subjects of Colonial Nations/powers. Siki, who was born on September 16th 1897 in Saint Louis, Senegal, was named Louis Mbarick Fall, and he was the very first. Ashley says: “I spoke to people in Africa, but no one knew who he was. It was a wrong that I wanted to right!”
Siki’s destiny was altered as a child in Senegal, when he was noticed by Dutch dancer Elaine Marie Holzmann Gross, possibly as he was diving for coins which were being tossed from the cruise ship in which she’d reached Senegal. She took him to Marseille, but then abandoned him and he had to fend for himself.
Ashley says: “She was possibly planning to use him in one of her shows. But perhaps he didn’t have the correct paperwork and no adoption papers.”
Still a child and all alone, Siki took any job available, suffering hard times. He found his way to the city of Nice and started work as a cleaner in a gym, and he himself became a sparring partner. World War One broke out and Siki volunteered for the Eighth Colonial Regiment. He gallantly fought at Gallipoli and the Battle of the Somme, where his lungs were scarred from the effects of mustard gas and he was wounded in the legs by shrapnel. Siki won the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille Militaire with seven bars for various acts of outstanding and conspicuous bravery!
Somehow he overcame these war wounds and injuries to resume his boxing career. Ashley comments: “It just shows the spirit of the guy and how physically resilient he was.”
The opportunity of a lifetime came on September 24th 1922 when he fought light heavyweight champion Georges Carpentier in Paris. Known as The Orchid Kid, it was bloom to bust for Georges. After going down twice during the early part of the fight, Siki leveled him with a huge right uppercut in round six.
Preposterously the Referee disqualified Siki for a so called foul and proclaimed the unconscious Georges was still champion. It provoked a riot and French Boxing Commissioners overturned the decision several hours later. Notably and memorably after Georges fell to the canvass in the fourth, Siki sportingly picked him up, only to receive a left hook to the face.
As Ashley says: “When you see that on the film you think WOW…who is the gentleman and who isn’t!” Ever the showman and bon Viivant, Siki celebrated to the full. He supped Champagne and decked out in a tuxedo and a top hat, he led a pet lion on a leash down the main boulevards of Paris. He’d earned his laurels the hard way. But his exuberance didn’t go down well with the petulant powers that be. They blanched white!
Not long afterwards, the French Boxing Commission accused Siki of wrong doing as a Cornerman and suspended his license. It was eventually reinstated, but with stringent conditions.
As defending champion Siki was enticed to Dublin at the height of the Civil war to fight “Bold” Mike McTigue on St Patrick’s Day 1923. The combatants of the conflict didn’t want the fight to happen and to indicate their displeasure, they blew up the nearby Post Office! Ashley says that most journalists ringside wrote, that as defending Champion, Siki did enough to retain his title. But the Referee who was the sole arbiter, raised Mike’s hand. Siki’s world title reign was over and he never got the chance to contest or regain it ever again.
He went to the UnIted States to fight in many cities on a train, but with no real opportunity to train. And he was subject to terrible racism, especially as his common law wife Lijntje Van Appelteer was white and they had a child Louis Jr. A taboo to the racists of that era.
Arrested for refusing to leave a so called whites only restaurant and hauled in front of a court, Siki would not bow to the color bar. Siki Biographer Peter Benson ruefully smiles, stating Siki had told the patrons he’d eaten in far swankier places. His protests fell on deaf ears. Paradoxically years later in 1946 Jack Johnson died after crashing his car. He’d left a diner in a rage, after he’d been denied a table due to his color.
Battling Siki was gunned down on Forty First Street, New York on the night of December 15th 1925. He’d been twice shot in the back at point blank range. A Cop had earlier seen him, a little the worse the wear from drink and advised him to go home, to which Siki readily agreed . An hour later his body was found. He’d never made it.
Over the years, his son Louis Jr has vanished without trace. There is no death certificate for him. The last that was heard of him, is that he was living on the streets.
Ashley thinks Siki’s refusal to throw fights earned him the enmity of local criminals who shot him from behind. The Mafia style, was to do the deed from the front in broad daylight.
He was buried in Flushing Cemetery with two other bodies in an unmarked grave. Gone, but not forgotten because years later with the help of James Mercante, a court order meant his body was exhumed and with the help of the World Boxing Council, Siki’s remains were returned to Saint Louis in 1993 and buried with full honors. The circle had finally been closed…or had it?
On May 1st 2022, Battling Siki was inducted into the New York Hall of Boxing Fame. It is a dear wish of the World Boxing Council and all of us who admire the life of Battling Siki, honoring his memory, that he will be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman says: “My Father always used to tell us that impossible doesn’t exist. Nothing is impossible. Some things take a little more time. So we will relentlessly work until Battling Siki is recognized as the Champion from Senegal and he is recognized in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.”
Ashley says: “I know that during this process, I really got to love the guy. The racism he suffered in that era is just beyond imagination. To have risen to the level he did and conquered the World, is truly amazing.
“He was clearly an intelligent man who spoke, Senegalese, French, English and Dutch. He was no slouch when it came to learning languages. In the ring he wouldn’t throw fights and if someone annoyed him he was going to put them down. I have the utmost respect for him. He was a champion in every sense of the word.”
The Ballad we’ve composed for Battling Siki reads:
He came from afar
Became a Star
Fought with all his might against the color bar
But the shame of his treatment, remains… a livid scar.
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