Battling Siki: A Tale of Ring Fixes, Race, and Murder in the 1920s (review)

Peter Benson provides the first full-length biography of the once famous, but now mostly forgotten Senegalese boxer named Battling Siki. Both renowned and reviled for wresting the World Light-Heavyweight Championship from French boxing idol Georges Carpentier in 1922, Siki has remained an enigma, his life story shrouded in exotic myth and unsolved mystery. Benson's meticulous primary research in over 80 newspapers and periodicals from a variety of countries enables him to begin the process of separating truth from fiction.

Challenging the typical portrayal of Siki as a primitive child of the jungle who lacked intelligence, self-control, and pugilistic skill, Benson paints a more nuanced portrait of the Senegalese prizefighter as a formidable opponent in the ring and a proud, resourceful, and self-aware man outside the ring. In 1898, Battling Siki was born Amadou M'barick Fall in Saint-Louis du Sénégal, the administrative center of French West Africa. At ten years of age, Fall sailed to France under the supervision of a white European patron; however, he was soon left to fend for himself. At fifteen, Fall began his professional fight career, donning the ring moniker of "Battling Siki." Yet, World War I intervened, and Siki became a Private in the Eighth Colonial Regiment. A decorated war hero, he left the military in 1919 and made his way back into the boxing ring.

Much like his African American predecessor Jack Johnson (the first-ever black World Heavyweight Champion, 1908-1915), Siki was audacious in his public defiance of the racial status quo as he toured throughout Europe and the United States. He enjoyed big city excitement, conspicuous consumption, exotic pets, and white women. Not surprisingly, Siki faced concerted white efforts to not only strip him of his championship titles and ban him from boxing, but also to cast him as a savage, unprepared for the complexities of the modern world. In 1925, with his tumultuous career in decline, Siki was found murdered (most likely by the mob) in the New York City neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen.

Although Benson writes with obvious passion and panache, capturing the vibrant, underground culture of 1920s boxing, Battling Siki is still, for the most part, a conventional sports biography. Lighter on cultural analysis and historical framing, it reveals less about Siki's significance for the racial and imperial politics that stretched beyond the ring. For example, Siki was undoubtedly a popular hero of the African diaspora, and yet, his symbolic importance as a transnational figure of black resistance remains underexplored. It does not help that Benson tells Siki's story in a series of vignettes that jump forward and backward in time. Consequently, the book's narrative flow is somewhat choppy and confusing.

Nevertheless, Battling Siki is full of fresh insights. Benson carefully reconstructs Siki's childhood in Senegal. In turn, the author refuses to pull any punches in his descriptions of the racism Siki faced in France. Finally, Benson scours U.S. newspapers for information on Siki's difficulties in the United States, an often overlooked part of the Senegalese boxer's life. Overall, Battling Siki does an admirable job of uncovering the many layers of this important African sports figure.