Has boxer Battling Siki been deposed on racist grounds?

Right, Battling Siki -

• The story of Battling Siki, famous boxer crowned world champion in 1922 at the expense of Georges Carpentier, has gone viral on social networks.

• A Facebook post taken up by several Internet users relates in particular how the authorities of the time stripped the French boxer born in Senegal of his titles out of pure racism.

• Its success was indeed very badly received at the time by a deeply racist society, but the reality is a little more complex.

The story is a little dated but its (re) nascent virality on social networks, in a global context of the fight against racism, deserves our attention.

It is that of the French boxer born in Senegal Battling Siki and his victorious fight against the champion Georges Carpentier in 1922. A memorable game marked by a colonial context and uninhibited racism, as recounted by several similar Facebook posts that have gone viral in in recent days: “In France where he lives, some newspapers call him the 'championzé' by reference to the chimpanzee […].

In the transcripts of some interviews, he is made to speak approximate French, while he speaks and writes perfect French.

"

It hits well, too.

Enough, in any case, to overcome the legendary Carpentier in six rounds.

But he accuses Siki of having hit him with a croc-en-leg, earning him to be disqualified at first before the people, erected as a paragon of sports fairness, flies to the rescue of the boxer born in Senegal .

The post shared by several Facebook users in the last few days - Screenshot

"The 50,000 spectators start chanting:" Siki winner! Siki winner! ", Continues the viral publication.

The judges meet for about fifteen minutes, then the referee approaches Siki, brings him to the center of the ring and raises his arm in victory to the cheers of the public!

Battling Siki becomes champion of France, Europe and the world at the same time.

"

Short-lived joy, because, we learn, the latter will be "stripped of his titles and all his record under the shameful and racist pretext of" bad behavior, croc-en-leg, rebellion ".

As Paul Vaillant-Couturier said at the time in

, was Siki punished because "Carpentier could not be safely beaten by a [black]"?

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First, the story told on Facebook obscures a major detail, namely that the duel, as negotiated by the managers of the two men, was in fact only a mock fight, as recalled by the daily

and confirms it to

Jean-Marie Bretagne, author of a biography of Siki *.

The boxer - Louis Mbarick Fall for the French civil status - was to lie down on the fourth resumption of a multiple-aim fight.

The most obvious is that it was to serve to restore the reputation of a declining Carpentier by making him beat a boxer in full possession of his means.

Then, the Parisian public demanded it and it was advisable to meet their expectations, even if the French champion then prefers the London socialites to the Parisian life.

"You have to know that Carpentier at the time was Zidane", compares Jean-Marie Bretagne.

Not a fight, a movie

Charlie Hellers, the manager of Siki present at his side in the photo accompanying the Facebook post, receives 200,000 francs so that his foal - to whom he gives a few tickets - goes to bed without saying a word.

"If we look at the images of the fight, we see that Siki falls on non-hits, continues the biographer Jean-Marie Bretagne.

Siki agreed to lose.

If Carpentier didn't do more at first, it's also because he was embarrassed to see Siki fall too quickly and easily, and that annoyed him.

Because Carpentier wanted to face a good actor.

The word is not innocent: this fight was also to act as an image bank for an upcoming film on the illustrious champion and gone as it was, Siki was only going to deliver nanaresque scenes to him.

Brittany, always:

“The most likely hypothesis was that Siki shouldn't be hit because he himself couldn't defend himself, as he had to lose.

Carpentier would have betrayed this agreement by starting to type for real.

There, Siki would have asked him to stop before eventually retaliating.

There's another incredible scene, in the 4th or 5th round, that definitely turns the fight upside down.

Siki puts the champion KO and it is he himself who relieves his opponent because he does not quite know how to react to the deal.

But Carpentier takes the opportunity to try to give him a whim.

Furious, Siki finally makes the choice to sacrifice the deal.

And in two rounds, he folds the match by sending Carpentier two or three times to the mat.

"

The croc-en-leg exists.

A sort of broom to finish unbalancing a wobbly Carpentier.

The latter wins.

"It is the boxing federation, then a real den of bandits and follower of occult tricks, which first decided to influence the decision of the referee because this decision was an economic disaster", tells the biographer Jean- Marie Brittany.

The rest, you know it: the public rumbles to claim the victory Siki.

Colonialist surge

If popular pressure made the referee bend, media pressure soon did not spare the Senegalese boxer, whose victory over the boxing star finished opening the pandora's box of racist colonial paternalism.

“Some newspapers accepted Siki's success,” explains Jean-Marie Bretagne, “with this condescending benevolence in which it was said that it would be necessary to get used to it, that if blacks dominate in sport, it is also a sign of a French empire full of resources.

And on the other side, there was an aggressive speech from certain newspapers with abject remarks that said, in short, Where will the blacks stop? "" This is in substance what the chronicler of the

, Pierre Veber,

says.

whose words were unearthed by Slate:

“Think about the repercussion of this victory in our colonial empire!

The representative of the conquering race bit the dust in front of the anguished whole of Paris.

Boxing is therefore a dangerous, anti-colonial sport.

In a struggle of equal muscles, the black triumphs over the white.

"

A few weeks later, the federation attacks Siki, explicitly accusing him of "unsportsmanlike conduct", reports Jean-Marie Bretagne.

The incident concerns "a fight that was not his", during which he would have entered the ring to hit a manager.

The words of his manager Hellers, deeply racist, join the version of an incident.

"I did my best to instill in him some principles of childish and honest civility, to make him forget his state of" primitive ", but unfortunately the natural took over.

Nothing to do, ask me to make Siki a boxer, but not a gentleman!

"

However, has he been deprived of all of his titles and his record, as the Facebook post states?

In this case of forfeiture, it is advisable to speak in the conditional, for lack of concrete traces, explains Brittany.

“The boxing federation was not extremely rigorous at the time.

What is not clear is that we do not really know if he was deposed officially or informally, establishing that no one in France should dare to fight him again.

"

Battling Siki and Hell's Kitchen

This hypothesis seems to be confirmed by the rest of the story, that of a fighter sentenced to exile in Ireland to continue to exercise his profession.

He fell narrowly and consistently on March 17, 1923 against tough Mike McTigue.

Ostracized from France, Siki left to pursue his career in the United States and settled in Manhattan, in the famous and former Irish district of Hell's Kitchen.

There, he fought a memorable fight against Kid Norfolk, whom he was very close to beating, before sliding into an inexorable Stakhanovist decline (he fought 25 times between November 1923 and November 1925).

Outside the rings, violence will never really abandon him.

Siki does not support the racist injunctions of which he is continually the victim and fights regularly in the infamous clubs of New York.

Battling Siki was found dead in a pool of blood on December 15, 1925, two shots being shot in the back.

The most serious avenue is that of revenge after a fight.

But there is an alternate ending.

"It may also be the mafia, very established in boxing at the time," concludes the biographer.

Basically he would have beaten someone he shouldn't have beaten, a young boxer the mafia was trying to bring up, and what better way to bring up a young champion than to have him beat a purring name like Siki .

He did not win because this time the judges won the young champion.

But it was too big, the press didn't care and it ruined the guy's career.

It was hardly forgivable.

"

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* Battling Siki, by Jean-Marie Bretagne, Philippe Rey editions, February 2008, 192 pages, 25.99 euros.

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