Please watch this documentary if your interested in boxing history

[stephenmc]

This documentary covers everything that was happing in boxing in the early 1900s and 1920s.

now at first, I taught this was brilliant as it covers an irish boxer mike McTigue, but then realized how this fight and then his career both before and after was historic.

he was a late boxer, who only started at the age of 27.
it covers everything from his roots, to how he became world champion and after.

its not just about him,but boxing as a whole in that era.

the night he won the title, was the historic boxing event at the time and probably ever.

i could go on and on here but just watch this and i promise you won't be disappointed.

it covers everything, from the last ever 20 round world title fight, to the racism of Europe and the US, the first ever African born world champion, the ku klux clan and the mob involved in boxing fights, this was before judges were introduced, and has some very very rare clips of fights from that era,
it shows how Ireland was the only country willing to welcome battling siki for a fight, and how the Irish civel war nearly stopped the fight, but despite bombs going off that day the fight went ahead for the last ever 20 round world title fight.

i read this book, "a bloody canvas" and just found this now.

if your a real boxing history fan you will love this.

[The Old LefHook]

I watched it and enjoyed.

[stephenmc]

I watched it and enjoyed.

What did you think?
Really shows the history of boxing, the racism, the hard graft, the crookeness, the rise and fall, the journeyman.

I, as an Irishman, had a certain feeling of pride as the civil war stopped for a moment to cheer a world champion.

The book a bloody canvas goes into so much more details.

It's about how mctiuge became the first pro boxer to use defence as a way to win as you seen in the documentary.
And the rare footage of the fights is great to see

[The Old LefHook]

For those who did not watch, McTigue, who was already good at defense, became a defensive master while working at a gym in NYC. Employees could not strike the rich gentlemen they instructed, though the rich gentlemen went all out and were not above a sneak punch when your guard was down, which they seem to have made a sport of.

The documentary has real footage of some of Mike's encounters cleaned up real nicely, as well as some reenactment footage. Amazingly, Mike McTigue fights a lot like Floyd Mayweather. Many of Floyd's moves are right there plain to see.

Really hard to hit, almost purely defensive, McTigue, known to all boxing writers of the day as a stinker, suddenly became a big puncher and a KO artist in his last years as a pro, and a crowd favorite. He said during his early years fighting he had an overpowering fear of the humiliation of beind KO'd. Once he had finally been KO'd he remarked that it wasn't so bad, and became a KO artist himself.

The doc notes that the Abbey Theater remained open right through the revolutionary trouble. That is the theatre Madam Gregory supported and where many of Yeats' plays were staged. Yeats was a towering figure in modern poetry by that time, fiercely Irish, and many big events of the Irish revolution found their way into his work.

Mike, a middleweight who almost always fought bigger men, won the light heavyweight title from Battling Siki that fateful day with bombs going off in the distance. The decision was highly biased, it is said, the fight being held in Ireland on St Patrick's day before a mad throng of howling Irishmen supporting their boy. McTigue may have been a globetrotter living in New York, but he was born in Ireland.

Mike's last fight was with the Duran of his day, Mickey Walker, who slaughtered him.

McTigue seems to have had a problem all his life with being mugged and beaten up. I can only figure he must have been a contentious old devil. I have seen old boxers get this way.

Three guys offered to buy him drinks and show him a good time. They took him down the street and shot him in the back, then shot him twice more. But McTigue would not die.

Hell, I may have gotten that mixed up. It could have been Siki who was shot. Anyway, attackers were always victimizing McTigue, too, and he was finally killed by an angry chair in a rest home where he was being care for. Presumably, it was another resident.