A Boxing Memory: Battling Siki
By Garry White
There are probably two words that best sum up the life of Louis M’Barick Fall, known forever to the boxing world by his chosen ring name of Battling Siki (60-24-4, 31KOs). The first of these would have to be: fearless. An attribute adequately characterised by his travelling as a callow 15-year-old from French colonial Senegal to metropolitan France, where life for a young immigrant was typically destined to be anything but comfortable.
Upon arrival, he launched a boxing career whose mediocrity was interrupted only by the outbreak of the 1st World War. It was a theatre where Siki proved able to further evidence his innate fearlessness by being awarded the Medaille Militaire and the Croix de Guirre, for his unwavering courage in battle.
Honourably discharged, he returned to boxing, where his natural power and aggression, allied with his take on all-comers attitude, led him to the world light-heavyweight title via a knockout victory over the great French hero Georges Carpentier. But the newly won fortune, fame and respect that the son of Senegal acquired was never destined to be more than fleeting. His brand of fearlessness came wrapped in a thick blanket of recklessness and it was always destined to unravel all those manly virtues and strengths, sending them spilling towards the gutter.
‘Recklessness’ must of course be the second word linked inextricably to Siki. He was uncompromisingly reckless in the way he fought, and approached his dealings with both authority and criminality, not to mention the way he lived and ultimately died alone on a New York Street, ten days before Christmas 1925, at the age of just 28.
Siki’s career can be readily compartmentalised into three phases. The first, where as a teenager, he fought unsuccessfully for two years in the small clubs of Marseille and Toulouse. And whereupon the outbreak of war the 17-year-old had amassed an unprepossessing record of six wins from sixteen contests against strictly limited local opposition. If you had wandered into the Comoedia-Cinema or the Salle du Jardin Royal then the figure before you, flailing and mauling, would have looked anything but a future champion.
When peace finally ensued and Siki returned from the French Army, he resumed his boxing career with a couple of wins and a loss against familiar low-level competition. However, as the new decade opened, Siki was suddenly transformed. Between January 1920 and his title fight with Carpentier almost three years later he recorded a near faultless 42 wins from 44 contests, including just a solitary defeat against Englishman Tom Berry in Rotterdam.
Through a modern lens, this level of activity feels faintly ridiculous. But this was a world before MRI scans and other fighter health considerations. In fact, many of Siki’s fights were less than a week apart and with a substantial number of them being over the unrelenting 15-round distance.
All at once it seemed that this once skinny teenager had been transformed into an imposing physical specimen, one that is confirmed by the ring and publicity photos from this time. Siki’s muscular build stood often in stark contrast to so many fighters of this early era. Equipped with only primitive training methods, and little understanding of nutrition and other supplements -both legal or not- they mostly lacked the physical definition of today’s superstars. And this was despite it being suggested that the only roadwork Siki ever undertook was on the dance floors of Paris nightclubs.
In the long-ago sepia-tinted roaring 20s boxing still only had eight weight divisions and a solitary world champion in each. With titles so scarce they were usually jealously guarded by their holders and thus the risk of defending them was often an infrequent exercise.
When Siki met Carpantier at the newly re-opened Stade Buffalo in Paris, it marked Carpentier’s first defence of his light-heavyweight title in three years. ‘The Orchid Man’ as he was known, was nearing the end of a glittering career following a battering at the hands of Jack Dempsey for the heavyweight title a year earlier. His failure to land the richest prize in sport though was still followed up by a win over an increasingly jaded Ted “Kid” Lewis, in his last bout. The debonair former pilot and war hero continued to retain his place as the unassailable darling of the French public.
There are so many overlapping legends surrounding their meeting at the Stade Buffalo on 24 September 1922, that it is almost impossible to isolate the truth from this distance of more than 100 years. The prevailing myth is that the fight was intended to be a fix, with Siki on point to collect a handsome number of Francs to lay down quietly. The alleged deal was only accepted by Siki on condition that the champion wasn’t allowed to hurt him. The Senegalese was fully prepared to lose but was not willing to sanction being beaten up in the process. Whether Carpentier was aware of this deal is a matter of permanent conjecture and may help explain some of his subsequent actions in the ring.
The early rounds went to script with the challenger dropping to a knee in the first and falling theatrically to the canvass from light punches in the third. As Carpentier’s attack continued to intensify, legend has it that Siki politely reminded the champion that “you aren’t supposed to hit me.” As the Frenchman continued his assault, Siki grew more and more incandescent with rage. When the bell for the fourth round sounded, he came out blazing and dropped the Frenchman with a fast-handed combination. The fifth round had the crowd in even greater rapture as they witnessed both fighters standing toe to toe and trading punches in a classic phone booth dust-up.
As Carpentier became increasingly aware of Siki’s ability to overpower him, he resorted to a series of blatant fouls, even at one point dropping him with a crudely delivered headbutt. Yet the end was to quickly arrive in the challenger’s favour in the next round as he scored the knockout with a hard shot to the body. However, of equal validity is the alternate truth that Siki actually ended Carpentier’s reign with a carefully placed knee to the midriff. This was a view that was perhaps, given Carpentier’s prominence in French sporting and national life, unsurprisingly endorsed by the referee. Regrettably, the grainy old fight footage makes it impossible to confidently speculate either way. In any event, the referee awarded the fight to a prostrate Carpentier on a foul, but amid near rioting from the 50,000 crowd, the decision was swiftly overturned.
This marked the high watermark of Battling Siki’s career. In the months after his victory, he returned to the night clubs and took to dressing in a top hat and tails whilst incongruously walking a pet lion cub up the Champ Elysees. Caring little for convention he would happily transport a pet monkey on his shoulders whilst visiting upmarket restaurants. He always spent liberally and after several bottles of his favoured champagne, he was apt to indiscriminately discharge his revolver into the Parisian night sky. In the manner of Jack Johnson, his dalliances and enduring relationships with white woman also caused him some scandal at the time, and his lion-taming excesses could be perceived as a precursor to the unrestrained days of Mike Tyson.
Siki travelled to Dublin the following year to defend his title against the unfancied Irishman Mike McTigue. With all his training having been confined to the cocktail lounge he lost a heavily disputed 20-round decision on St. Patrick’s Day 1923.
Later that year, Siki sought to reignite his career in the US and opted to base himself out of New York’s tough Hell’s Kitchen. In a country at least theoretically locked down with prohibition he still sated his thirst among the city’s plentiful array of speakeasies. Having long since given up on even his limited training schedule Siki’s ring performances deteriorated to an extent that he lost considerably more fights than he won.
By the time that he fought for the last time, losing a 12-round decision to the unfancied Lee Anderson in Baltimore, any hope of another shot at the title had long since vanished. A little more than a month later he was dead. They found the former champion face down on New York’s 42nd Street with two bullet holes in his back. The murder remains unsolved and the last sightings of Siki report that he was staggering and heavily under the influence of alcohol.
By that time the money had long since run out but Siki still liked to drink his fill in the speakeasies. Unable or unwilling to pay the bills he came to a novel solution. The fearless and reckless ex-champ would merely fight his way out of the bar and into the night. Yet it seems that at some point these debts did eventually have to be paid and ultimately they were on that cold New York street.
At its conclusion, life provided Battling Siki with not one but two bullets in the back. It is likely that for the impoverished boy from Senegal, who lived fast, ignored convention, and laughed at mortality, that was the way it was always destined to end.
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