The Best of the Rest: 175lbs Tier II Tournie - Round 2 - 8: Paul Berlenbach TKO 15 Battling Siki

What i've done is i've lifted top tiers out of my top fifty at the poundage, fiddled it a little bit to minimise guys with no footage and used the remaining 32 names plus some subs to develop a seeded tournament to uncover "the best of the rest" at the poundage, with you, the denizens of the world's greatest boxing history forum, casting the deciding vote.

Pick your man! Write however many details you like or don't in a post below. But maybe try to post, to keep things moving a little bit. You have three days.

And let's be nice. No reason for disagreeing over total fantasies after all!

15 Rounds, 1920s rules and ref. 10 points must. I'll only vote where there's a tie.

Round of Thirty-Two Fight 8: Paul Berlenbach vs Battling Siki

PAUL BERLENBACH (40-8-3; Newspaper Decisions 1-0-0)
Paul Berlenbach was one of light-heavyweight’s finest punchers, thirty-four of the forty-one victories he is credited with coming by way of knockout. He was a ring savage, easy to hit but almost impossible to dissuade, boasting a great chin and one of the most damaging body attacks of the era. A wonderful balance of strength and weakness raised him up onto the cross of great fights. These, Berlenbach delivered, and soon, beginning his terrible rivalry with Jack Delaney (already world class) in just his fifth month as a professional, losing in four rounds. “They practically ruined each other,” boxing correspondent Robert Edgreen would write in 1927, as Berlenbach’s career began to wind down. Practically, Berlenbach coming off the worse as Delaney’s stylistic approach proved the more sustainable, bringing him a clean victory in their desperate series. Berlenbach did have his moment though, successfully defending the world title he had ripped from Mike McTigue in May of 1925 against his nemesis in December of that same year. In the fourth, Delaney landed a “mule-kicking” right to Berlenbach’s jaw the effects of which rippled in the latter’s nervous system as late as the seventh when he seemed in immediate danger of losing his title, and would have in a more civilized era. Spared by the 1920s referee, Berlenbach battled back to drop Delaney in the twelfth and take the narrowest of decisions over the man who had already stopped him and who would stop him again; it was the most important win of his career.

Battling Siki (60-24-4)
Siki was a free-swinging, crude fighter with excellent power but poor defensive skills; He loved to fight and have fun but possessed an uncontrollable temper; He was known to lead lions around the streets of Paris and fire pistols into the air on occasion; He was awarded a Medal of Honor for bravery in World War I; Siki won the Light Heavyweight Championship of the World during his career. He defeated such men as Georges Carpentier, Rienus "Rene" DeVos, Willem Westbroek, Hans Breitenstraeter, Giuseppe Spalla, Harry Reeve and Ercole de Balzac.

 

Well it's happened brothers of the glove, we've got a fight that happened in the real. Anybody feel they can make a case for prime Siki doing the business? He was well past prime in 1925 when he absorbed that incredible beating against Paul, if it had been a few years earlier?

Anyone?

 

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The referee stepped in to end the brutal slaughter of Siki by Berlenbach a minute into the fifteenth and final round. Brutally punched around the ring in the thirteenth, his resistance seemingly completely broken, Siki actually staged a weird, mauling rally in the fourteenth only for Berlanbach to drop him for a nine count in the final seconds of the round. Siki clearly hadn't recovered by the beginning of the fifteenth and when the referee stepped in to end the contest it was only with a view to sparing Siki two minutes of misery.

QF draw this evening.