Boxers aren’t really known for their discretion, a fact that isn’t at all surprising for a group of athletes able to unironically write “eye socket assassin” on their tax return. While many boxers have lived flamboyant lives filled with partying and excess, it’s arguable that no boxer in history lived life quite as hard as the Senegalese boxer, Battling Siki.
Born in the then French controlled city of Saint-Louis in West Africa in the late 19th century, Battling Siki lived a relatively inauspicious life, mostly spent watching the boats at a nearby port. Siki’s life changed forever in 1905 when a French dancer offered the then 8 year old future champion the chance to travel to France and live with them, which Siki agreed to, without the knowledge of his family. Something only Madonna would get away with today.
When he arrived in France, Siki began training as a boxer and by the time he was a teenager, he was beating the piss out of men twice his age. When WW1 rolled around, Siki happily joined the French army to kick some ass, earning a medal for bravery and a killer body in the process.
After WW1, the French Army discharged Siki with honors, allowing him to continue to pursue his burgeoning boxing career. Over the next 3 years, Siki fought in 46 boxing matches, winning all but three of them. Siki was particularly well known for during this time for his cripplingly powerful punches. In a move that was depressingly unsurprising, other boxers and even Battling Siki’s own fucking manager, credited his boxing prowess solely to the fact he was black, insultingly suggesting that his strength and boxing ability were thanks to nothing more than his innate “gorilla skill”. Siki, showing remarkable amounts of restraint for someone who could shatter a human jawbone by writing his name on gum, stoically refused to show that he was affected by the horrific amounts of racism he was subjected to. We’re guessing that Siki being legally allowed to beat the piss out of racists once a week, for money, played an instrumental role in him coming to terms with letting racial slurs roll off his back.
In 1922, Siki was offered the chance to fight the current light heavyweight champion of the world, Frenchman, Georges Carpentier, an offer Siki took because of the massive amounts of money he stood to make just by turning up. Sometime prior to the fight, Carpentier’s managers offered Siki a briberto throw the fight because they didn’t want Carpentier to be injured by one of Siki’s kidney seeking right hooks. Siki realising that both the referee and crowd would be against him (mostly because the fight was due to be held in France where Carpentier was a firm crowd favourite), agreed on the singular condition Carpentier not hurt him.
When the fight began, Siki, true to his word, danced around the Frenchman throwing lazy, show-offy punches while leaving airport sized gaps in his defence for Carpentier to take advantage of. Carpentier responded by rocketing punch after punch into Siki’s gut. When Siki reminded Carpentier that he was supposed to be pulling his punches midway through the third round, Carpentier ignored him and instead punched Siki as hard as he could in the back of the head.
Shaking off the hit, Siki who apparently at the exact moment suffently thought to himself “You know what? Fuck this guy!” launched into a ferocious assault of terminal velocity uppercuts and orbital crushing hooks. In the fourth round, Siki continued showing Carpentier exactly how hard he’d fucked up by crushing the Frenchman’s defence with a barrage of lightning quick body blows.
At the start of the sixth round, Siki exploded out of his corner and, in the middle of a combo that would make Heihachi Mishima proud, crippled Carpentier with a wildly illegal, but so, so justified knee to the gut. The referee, who didn’t see the knee, only the aftermath of Carpentier falling to the canvas like a sack of shit, awarded Carpentier the win while he was still lying on the ground unconscious because he assumed Siki had tripped him.
The crowd, who’d been won over by Siki’s earlier showmanship and obvious talent, booed the decision and, fearing a riot, the decision was revered by the judges, making Siki the light heavyweight champion.
Finding himself suddenly flushed with cash, Siki embarked on a decadent spending spree, spending his mornings strutting around Paris wearing a top hat while walking his recently purchased lion cub and his evenings drinking champagne with dozens of women. When Siki moved to the states, he traded in his lion and instead bought himself two giant great danes, which he trained to do tricks whenever he fired a revolver into the air.
Siki basically spent the rest of his life partying and as a result eventually ended up losing his title due to lack of training. While Tiki was never able to compete at a professional level after that, he reportedly never lost his edge and would often spend his nights getting shit-faced (during prohibition) and would beating the living shit out of everyone in the bar to avoid paying his tab. Something that presumably had nothing to do with him being shot in the back at age 28.
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