Dick Tiger

Boxer

  • Born: August 14, 1929
  • Birthplace: Amaigbo, Orlu, Nigeria
  • Died: December 14, 1971
  • Place of death: Aba, Nigeria

Sport: Boxing

Early Life

Richard Ihetu, later to gain fame as Dick Tiger, was born on August 14, 1929, in Amaigbo, Orlu, Nigeria. With his four brothers and two sisters, he helped his parents work the farmland that gave them their meager existence.

The family moved to the capital city of Lagos when Dick was a teenager. As a young boy, he was taught to be polite and respectful. He always avoided fighting of any kind, but the English soldiers stationed in Lagos promoted boxing. Soon they were teaching the strong, growing boy the basic skills of the sport. By the time he was eighteen, Dick had reached the physical size and weight he would be for the rest of his life. He stood 5 feet 8 inches and weighed a solid 160 pounds. He became a professional boxer in his early twenties and fought sixteen times in nearly four years in his homeland. Dick earned only two hundred dollars for all these bouts.

The Road to Excellence

In 1955, he was already mature as a fighter. At twenty-six years of age, he went to London, England, for a chance at gaining world recognition and to earn a better living. He had to work a ten-hour-a-day factory job to pay for his lodging and training expenses. Success was not immediate, as he lost four straight bouts in England. He was seriously considering giving up and going back home to Nigeria when, at last, he won a fight with a dramatic one-round knockout, and his spirits were lifted. Until this time, he had no manager to help guide his career. Hogan Kid Bassey, a fellow Nigerian and featherweight world champion, introduced him to Jersey Jones and Jimmy August. They wanted to manage a champion as much as Dick wanted to be one.

Just twenty-one months after his first victory in England, Dick became a champion for the first time. He scored a nine-round knockout over Pat McAtee to win the British Empire middleweight title. This victory encouraged Dick’s managers to take him to the United States in the summer of 1959. Dick’s managers had a policy of never selecting easy opponents. Over a period of nine months, Dick fought eight times and won five times. He made his first visit to Canada in June, 1959, and surprisingly lost his Empire title. Less than six months later, however, he won back the title.

The Emerging Champion

Dick had a chance to gain the biggest prize of all, a world championship. To achieve that meant fighting one of the most rugged champions of the past fifty years, Gene Fullmer. Fighting the best people available was not common boxing practice, but Dick always believed in giving his best against the best.

On October 23, 1962, in San Francisco, California, the thirty-three-year-old Nigerian became world middleweight champion after fifteen hard-fought rounds. A crowning point in Dick’s career came ten months later, when Dick returned to his native Nigeria to defend his title against Fullmer. Before his home folks, he won by stopping the American in seven rounds.

Eventually, Joey Giardello, a boxer from Philadelphia, took the title from Dick with a fifteen-round decision. Dick was thirty-four years of age, which is considered old for a fighter. Dick, however, was always well-conditioned, having led a life free from drinking and smoking. He surprised many people by winning the championship back from Giardello nearly two years later.

Just before turning thirty-seven, he lost his title for the last time by a decision to the legendary Emile Griffith. This seemed like a logical time to retire, but Dick had a wife and four children to support and needed to earn more money for the present as well as for the future.

Continuing the Story

A year after losing his middleweight championship, Dick added some extra weight to fight at the 175-pound light heavyweight level. Champion José Torres thought he would have an easy defense of his title against the aging Nigerian. On December 16, 1966, the fight was held in the famed Madison Square Garden in were chosen. Dick surprised both Torres and the world by winning a fifteen-round decision. To prove the win was not just a stroke of luck, he fought Torres a second time and won again.

Following a knockout victory over Roger Rouse in Las Vegas, Nevada, Dick defended his title against Bob Foster, one of the hardest punchers of any weight division. Dick was thirty-eight years old and long past the time when boxers have retired. In round four, a big left hook put Dick down and out.

Dick continued to fight for two more years. His last professional bout was against his old foe Griffith, when Dick was forty-one. When his ring battles were over, Dick returned to live in his native land, where, in the Nigerian-Biafra War, he lost much of the wealth he had earned in the ring.

Fate dealt Dick one last blow: He was diagnosed as having pancreatic cancer. The beloved hero of Nigeria died when he was only forty-two years of age.

Summary

Fans today may not remember the man who held two universally recognized championships. Dick Tiger was not a flamboyant athlete like many featured in the media today, but a quiet, unassuming man who was always gentle in manner. When he died, American writer and artist Ted Carroll summed him up in one simple sentence: “He was that rare individual whose abilities in his chosen profession matched his qualities as a man.”

Bibliography

Ifaturoti, Damola. Dick Tiger: The Life and Times of Africa’s Most Accomplished World Boxing Champion. Princeton, N.J.: Sungai Books, 2002.

Makinde, Adeyinka. Dick Tiger: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal. Tarentum, Pa.: Word Association, 2004.

Mee, Bob. Boxing: Heroes and Champions. Edison, N.J.: Chartwell Books, 1997.

Walsh, Peter. Men of Steel: The Lives and Times of Boxing’s Middleweight Champions. London: Robson, 1993.