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When Mike McTigue was an elderly man, being shuttled from one New York hospital to another, he always could count on a visit from a sportswriter when St. Patrick’s Day rolled around. For it was on St. Patrick’s Day, 1923, in a bout colored by controversy, that McTigue won the light heavyweight championship from Battling Siki.
The story generally has been written from Siki’s standpoint — of the duped Senegalese warrior arriving in Dublin only to lose his title on a disputed decision — while McTigue usually has been depicted as a willing accomplice in a grand hoax.
What’s been forgotten is that McTigue was a colorful character. He had a career any fighter would envy, cramming over 170 fights into a 16-year campaign. The fight with Siki overshadows everything else he did, which is a bit unfair.
It’s a wonder that the Dublin bout happened at all. The Irish Civil War had been raging for nine months and Eamon de Valera, Ireland’s president at the time, had deemed the event inappropriate.
When thugs threatened to bomb the La Scala Opera House where the fight would take place, Siki and McTigue began traveling with guards; death threats were slid under the doors of their hotel rooms.

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