Irishman Won World Boxing Title On St. Patrick's Day

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 262, 4 November 1944, Page 5 (Supplement)

Irishman Won World Boxing Title On St. Patrick's Day

Bold Michael McTigue, a broth of a boy from County Clare, deserves more th'an an off-hand mention in boxing circles because he was involved in two of the most extraordinary ring battles in the long history of the sport. Exhibit A was his winning of the light-heavy-weight championship of the world under unusual circumstances and exhibit B was his holding fast to that crown under equally unusual circumstances. Truth was to prove stranger than fiction in each giddy instance. In the first of these he was matched for the title with Battling Siki, the Singular Senegalese. And where do you suppose this unlettered negro fought Bold Michael? In none other than Dublin. And the date merely was St. Patrick's Day, 1923. It need not be added that the Irishman won the championship on points at the end of 20 rounds.

McTIGUE may. nave used a vast amount of judgment and discernment in picking his spot for capturing the crown, but he was woefully remiss when he permitted himself to be inveigled into defending it at Columbus, Ga., against the idol of the' South, Young Stribling. The Ku Klux Klan ruled the roost in those days, and the innocent Irishman arrived in Georgia, having in tow as his manager Joe Jacobs, who positively was no Hibernian, nor even

slightly eligible 'for Klan membership. " The bout was a close one, ana referee Harry Ertle called it a draw. Instantly the ring was filled with scowling citizenry. None of thShi wore white robes nor brandished flaming crosses. But they were mighty persuasive. Ertle got the idea 'rapidly. He declared Stribling the winner and the new champion. Three Hours later, safe in his hotel room, he reversed himself once more and stated emphatically that his original decision went. The fight was a draw and McTigue still champion. Then he wisely fled the town.

Perhaps it is doing Bold Michael an injustice to imply that he won the title from Battling Siki only because he was an Irishman fighting in Dublin on St. Patrick's Day. Oi course, all historians gleefully pounce on the remarkable coincidences until it has come to grow as an accepted fact. Training in Vain Too few realise that McTigue was av'polished boxer, Siki a crude and relatively inexperienced workman. The eniire chain of circumstances leading up to the bout are a bit out of the ordinary themselves. In. September of 1922 Bold Michael was training industriously on . the deck of an ocean liner, en route to France and a match with Georges Carpentier for the light-heavy-weight crown. One day the Irishman was jogging around the deck when the captain called him aside. "Mike," he said, "if I were you I wouldn't train so hard." The puzzled McTigue asked why. "Because Siki knocked out Carpentier last night," he answered, "and we got word by radio that your bout with Carpentier is off." A match which had been supposed to be a light. work-out for the Frenchman - had ended disastrously. The word double-cross has been bandied about in connection with it, but that is beside the point of the present dis- . cussion.

the celebrated English sports writer, was one who ran for cover. He jumped into a cellar in the dark and landed on a prostrate figure. He lit a match and looked. It was Joe Beckett, the horizontal heavyweight from Britain, who was reclining in his usual horizontal pose. Mike McTigue will never rank as the greatest light - heavy - weight champion of all time, but those two extraordinary fights will not permit him to be forgotten easily.—(By Arthur Daley in the New York Times.)

I Instead of continuing to France, McTigue decided to drop off at Ireland for a visit with his folks. It was' in Dublin months later that the idka of the match with the new champion first was broached. Emissaries were dispatched to France, but Siki was reluctant, even when plied freelv with copious draughts of the cup that cheers. When he awakened the next morning—at least that is one story—he found himself on a boat to Ireland. Not until then did he bow to the inevitable, only with a proviso, however, that Jack Smith, an English referee of indisputable honesty, would be the third man in the ring. That was agreed.

But Bold Michael still was not out of the;woods. The Irish refer to the period of two decades ago as ''the time of the Trouble." The Black and Tans 'overran the country and they flatly told Mike that they'd shoot him if he went through with the match. To make things even more embarrassing, the rabid Sinn Feiners told him the same thing.

He went through with It, however, even though every spectator was searched for weapons before he was allowed in. Despite the tense atmosphere the fight was anything but tense. In fact, it was a slow waltz, with Mike too clever to be hit ancl the Singular Senegalese too ignorant of his trade to do anything about it. Most ringsiders agreed that the decision was just.

The biggest excitement of the evening came when a bomb planted by Irish irreconcilables exploded outside the arena. Tom Webster,