Leandro Sidower

From The Great Outdoor Fight

The winner of the 1923 Great Outdoor Fight, Leandro Sidower was hailed by many to be one of the most powerful fighters to ever set foot in the Acres. A towering mastiff, he was known for winning his duels with a single blow with his left fist, knocking out or killing his opponent.

His supposed reasons for entering the Fight were to "exorcise his evils", stating that he was to continue his seminary studies afterward and live a life of peace. He rose to fame in the second day of the Fight, knocking out crowd favorite Fitzgerald Moon by hammering him down on his head with a left fist, bringing him down to his knees and breaking all his leg bones. Moon was fugueing then, after his followers were massacred by Italian Long Tony Romano and his men. Until sundown, Sidower began a chain of duels that ended in less than a minute, each opponent knocked out by a single left fist.

That night, Romano forged a truce with three other group leaders who were also wary of Sidower's Left fist - former champion Trinidad Wilkerson, the Spaniard Barrabas Ortega, and Franky "Copycat" Fucharoe. This shaky alliance of men of different countries would be later known as the Four Pillar Truce. A fifth gang leader, the great Englishman Andrew Ironman, refused to partake in the alliance, saying that he will deal with Sidower "fair and square".

On the third day, the Four Pillar Truce confronted the lone Sidower, but the fight proved to be an utter disaster. Barrabas Ortega, a larger man than Sidower, coaxed Sidower into punching him for free, saying that "Yer Left won't eeven hurt a beet". Sidower gave him a left punch that dug into Ortega's side, sending him into a frenzied convulsion. He would die later of multiple organ failure. Sidower then launched a deceptively quick straight to Romano's face. Romano blocked it with his two arms, but the force was so great his arm bones broke and the shards peppered his face, sending him screaming in agony. Copycat Fucharoe unleashed an imitation of the "Berserker Festival" (used by Oren Turzanski back in 1914), but was stopped in mid-execution by Sidower, who gave Fucharoe a single left uppercut that blasted him off nine feet away, breaking his lower spine upon landing. Trinidad Wilkerson caught a downward open palm strike to the head that drove his face a foot deep into the dirt (Young Jude Surrency would later describe this as a "High Five to the Face").

Sidower and Andrew Ironman would later be the last two men standing. Ironman took a clean Left to the jaw, but managed to remain standing, the first ever to do so. The Englishman took two more hits before going down for the first time, but as Sidower started to walk away, Ironman, in an exemplary display of sheer willpower, stood up once more. Sidower, awed by Ironman's perseverance, was in tears as he struck Ironman for the fourth and last time. Ironman then slipped into a coma that he would never wake from.

True to his word, Leandro Sidower returned to his studies as a seminarian, and would later be ordained as a priest in 1930. He died of a stroke in 1935, while holding mass in a small chapel in Terre Haute, Indiana.

[edit] Record

• 1923 - Champion, last man standing.