Eugène Criqui

Who was Eugène Criqui?

Eugène Criqui was a French boxer who held the world featherweight title in 1923.

Criqui was born in the Belleville neighbourhood of Paris. He was a professional pipe-fitter before he turned professional in 1910. He won the French flyweight title in 1912. His boxing career was interrupted when he served in the French military in World War I. While doing guard duty at Verdun, his jaw was shattered by a sniper's bullet. A surgeon reconstructed the jaw using wire, silver, and a goat leg.

After the war he resumed boxing. He won the French featherweight title in 1921 and the next year won the European Boxing Union featherweight championship. On June 2, 1923, he beat Johnny Kilbane by a sixth-round knockout in New York City to win the world featherweight title. Part of the contract for this fight required that he give Johnny Dundee a shot at the title within sixty days. When he fought Dundee fifty-four days later, Dundee knocked him down four times and beat him by a fifteen-round decision. In his next fight, Criqui injured his hand and did not fight many more fights before he retired in 1928.

He died blind in a nursing home in 1977. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, making him the second inductee from France after Marcel Cerdan.