Hi Bucket:

I mentioned a few things about myself and also referred you to my website: http://hometown.aol.com/adeyinkamakinde/page6.html

However if I may recapitulate, I am a 34 year old lawyer who has had a great interest in boxing for most of my life. My father attended the same secondary school with Hogan "Kid" Bassey (Bassey was world featherweight champion 1957-59 ed.), in Lagos and was an amateur flyweight champion of Lagos state. It was difficult as a child not to be aware of the Muhammad Ali phenomena and I remember all the TV adverts, I heard stories of Dick Tiger as a child in Nigeria and of how he had 'fought' for the Biafran side in our civil war. But I knew very little. Hogan Bassey was familiar because he was alive and coached Nigeria's amateur boxer's.

I started reading seriously about boxing in my late teens and I was so impressed with the way American fight magazines remembered Tiger as a legend. I started collecting books and still do on figures like Ali, Johnson, Louis and I'm aware of boxing's era's, heroes etc and I just felt that Tiger deserved a book to himself. It would be utterly scandalous for a man who lived so extraordinary and exemplary a life to not be remembered with the full biographical treatment.

Here is a man whose life and career interconnect with intriguing aspects of boxing, social and political history. A migrant fighter to England along with many West African fighters (analogous maybe to the Cuban influx in America), fought in the television era of America, his name inextricably bound to the illustrious setting of Madison Square Garden (Is any fighter of his era so linked to the Garden with the notable exception of Emile Griffith?), his conscientious involvement with Biafra after serving as a loyal ambassador of sorts for Nigeria, his indefatigable work ethic largely the influence of his ethnic background (the Igbo's are likened to the Jews and Chinese immigrants in the Far East), his determination to overcome so many, many setbacks in his career and the dignity he showed as a champion. The poignancy of his early death.

The book will contain insightful revelations on the cause(s) of his cancer, the troubling legacy he has among his countrymen because of his vehement stance during the civil war), the not too wholly accurate perception that he died in abject penury and the mans common decency.'

The book does critically assesses his fighting abilities, asks whether he was a dupe to the Biafran cause etc. etc. ...

I got the idea of writing the book in 1986 when I saw an amazing picture of Dick Tiger dressed in Biafran Army combat fatigues seated next to a Tiger rug with G & S gloves hanging in a corner. I thought 'Wow! This guy was more than a fighter.'

It was only a pipe dream, until I realized that I did not have to be a trained journalist or budding novelist to write a book. Heck I can do it! I jotted outlines and plans of his life from my boxing book and magazine collection and in 1996 started researching contemporary newspaper articles and reports from North American, British and Nigerian journals.

What I have found about Tiger and the responses I get from people only bolstered my confidence in bringing to fruition the complete story of a man whom I believe should be remembered.

So many people who knew him are dead: Jersey Jones, Jimmy August, Chickie Ferrara to name but a few but I hope that other sources and perspectives will not fail to conjure a correct and befitting portrait of the man.

It has been very exciting conversing with figures like Joey Giardello, Bob Foster, Terry Downes, Gene Fullmer and Gil Clancy. I discovered people like Victor Zimet who was good for a fascinating anecdote, a son and nephew of his two Liverpool managers. Tommy Kenville's anecdotes absolutely cracked me up (had me in stitches) and Larry Merchant's recounting of the time Tiger called on him to bear witness that the Nigerian government would grant him safe passage to Nigeria after Biafra was defeated had me riveted. It would be great to have these people and others like Tiger's sons in a documentary on Tiger complete with footage of his early Garden fights (TV era), the later fights and his involvement in the Nigerian civil war.

I would also like to thank Ron Lipton, a friend and sparring partner of Tiger (as well as a spar to great middleweights of the era like Carter, Giardello and Jose Gonzales) for his articulate and incisive insights into Tiger the man and fighter.

Thanks,
Ade