Chuck Wepner, the fighter who took down Muhammad Ali and inspired Rocky Balboa

[ad_1]

Chuck Wepner, 1.90 m tall, was an important boxer for his time and ended up inspiring the creation of one of the greatest characters in cinema: Rocky Balboa. Chuck Wepner became known as the ‘bleeder of Bayonne’ due to the fragility of his face Getty Images via BBC Chuck Wepner is 1.90 meters tall. His shoulders are broad and his hands are very strong. His bony calluses are evident – ​​a reminder of his life spent throwing punches. His fighting vocation also left scars on other parts of his body. “I was bleeding a lot. I had a total of 328 stitches in my career. I broke my nose nine times in 16 years. But it never affected me, you know?” Wepner told BBC Sport journalist Ben Wyatt. During his time as a boxer, his face suffered wounds, injuries or cuts in the ring so often that he ended up accepting the nickname given to him as an insult: “Bayonne Bleeder” (“the bleeder of Bayonne”, in free translation), in reference to the city in the US state of New Jersey, where Wepner still lives today. The big night Chuck Wepner grew up in Bayonne (New Jersey, USA), where he faced a fight a week Getty Images via BBC Wepner was a boxer who lived up to his fame. Maybe that’s why the most famous fight of his career ended with his body stained red, soaked in blood. “Tony Pérez refereed my fight against Muhammad Ali,” recalls Wepner. The fight took place in 1975. “After I got knocked down, he said, ‘Chuck, you’re bleeding too much,'” he says. “I replied: ‘no way, I want this round. Let me finish the fight, I’m fine’.” “Tony then replied, ‘OK, Chuck, how many fingers am I holding up?’ I looked at his hand and said, ‘How many chances do I have to guess?'” Despite Wepner’s request and to the dismay of the 15,000 adoring spectators at the Richfield Coliseum in Ohio, in the United States, the referee stopped the bout just 19 seconds from the end of the last round. After the fight, Wepner needed to take 23 points and only received 1/15 of the value of the prize awarded to Ali. But, as was the case for much of his life, to focus on injuries would be to miss the grandeur of his achievement. The Unthinkable At age 36, Wepner was a heavyweight who trained part-time. He had come from an unknown part of New Jersey and, before the fight against Ali, few bet on him – to say nothing of anyone. He had never trained before under the guidance of an expert coach. Even so, his performance exceeded all expectations. Wepner not only resisted for almost the entire fight against the then world champion – one of the greatest fighters in history. He became the fourth person in the world to defeat Ali, the same man who had defeated George Foreman just 10 months earlier in the bout for the world title in the category. This image had an immediate impact on a person watching the fight on closed circuit television in a movie theater in Los Angeles, California. Chuck Wepner had to use his fists from an early age to make a living Getty Images via BBC The inspiration he felt from Wepner’s bravery and the way Ali landed on the tarp sent him running home and creating a character for a new script I had in mind. Until then, all his scripts had been rejected. Convinced it was his last opportunity to present a new idea, Sylvester Stallone re-sketched in a “three-and-a-half day frenzied burst of creativity” to produce a redemptive story about a fallen boxer. That screenplay was adapted into a movie and the film became the highest-grossing film of 1976. It also won three Oscars in 1977, launched Stallone’s career and is one of the most famous stories of the last 50 years. And for Wepner, the man whose blood and grit inspired the character of Rocky Balboa, it was just the beginning of the chapter that was to follow. Before Ali At the end of 2022, on the edge of Newark Bay, opposite New York, a bronze statue of Chuck Wepner as a young man was unveiled. It was recognition of what he did for a city in which he is admired to this day, despite the countless turns his life took. “Actually, I was born in New York,” says Wepner. “I moved to New Jersey when I was a year and a half after my mom and dad split up.” It was in the streets of Bayonne, near the park where his statue now stands, that Wepner began to learn his trade. “Where I grew up, there were always two or three gangs,” he says. “And you kind of had to go over there and beat the shit out of the toughest guy in the other gang to survive – and I did. I got into a fight almost every week.” And it wasn’t just a matter of physical strength. Wepner was also an up-and-coming athlete and played on the school’s basketball team in local tournaments. But when he discovered that he “could make more money beating people”, he turned to boxing. He was only able to fight after spending three years serving in the navy. But when he fought in his first competition as an amateur at age 18, Wepner knew he had found his place. “I ran over the competition like butter; they had never seen anything like my style,” he says. Wepner’s path to being a professional was accumulating victories in local and regional fights, until he turned professional in 1964. He won more than he lost and managed to fight stars of the ring of the time, such as Buster Mathis, George Foreman, Joe Bugner, Ernie Terrell and Muhammad Ali. He remembers a fight against Sonny Liston in 1970. He believed that fight would be his leap to fame. “I broke my nose, had 71 stitches and fractured my left jaw,” he recalls. “I was still chasing him in the 10th round, when the doctor called off the fight because I was bleeding too much.” Except for the broken bones, he treated every stitch he received in his career with just ice to lessen the pain. “The stitches hurt,” he recalls. “But I mentally prepared myself for that. In almost every fight, I knew I was going to get hurt. Eight or 10 stitches? It was just a small cut.” Wepner was willing to die in the ring, and he knew it worked in his favor. “After the Liston fight, I was semi-comatose and in shock,” he says. “My doctor told my mother that I was badly hurt.” “I really wondered if I wanted to keep going. But then I thought, ‘I’ve got to try, I’ve got to try again. I’ve got to try one more time,'” says Wepner. The fight with Ali Wepner returned and, after two wins and three losses, he managed eight straight victories between 1972 and 1974, which caught the attention of manager Don King. King announced the fight between Wepner and Ali at the Richfield Coliseum, giving the match the slogan “give the white man a chance”. It was the golden age of heavyweight boxing, dominated by black men. King thought, cynically, that he might attract a larger audience if Ali faced a white American opponent in the first defense of his new reign. But King’s hopes of producing a grudge match, a battle between races, were dashed by Wepner’s admiration for his opponent. “I felt very emotional and honored to be in the ring with Muhammad Ali. The most famous man in history. I was very proud,” he says. When he sounded the gong, the boxer put aside his burgeoning friendship with Ali and began to put a plan in place to win the fight. “My strategy was to put pressure on him, tire him out, at least during the first four or five rounds, and maybe beat him in the last ones”, explains Wepner. The audience expected him to take a beating, but, little by little, they began to react to Wepner’s unexpected boldness. Instead of shouting “Ali! Ali!”, they began to support the underdog, with shouts of “Chuck! Chuck!”. ‘I took him down’ Buoyed by the public’s support, Wepner saw a flaw in Ali’s defense. And he set out to take advantage of her in the ninth round. Wepner dodged the champion’s left jab to land a jab over the opponent’s body with a right. Muhammad Ali landed on his back onto the tarp. Ali’s team later argued that Wepner had stepped on the champion’s foot, causing him to lose his footing, but Wepner stands firm. “You can kill me, but I knocked you out,” he claims. “I landed him a punch that can be heard on the video, landed a hard blow to the shoulder. He was off balance, I knocked him down and he knew it.” When he saw Ali rise from his position in the corner of the ring, Wepner noticed the change. “I could look into his eyes and I thought, ‘Now, yes, he is angry!’ That’s when he started to fight back and insult me.” Furious with the affront of being knocked down, Ali launched himself at Wepner as the crowd urged the underdog to hang on and make it to the finish. But the punishment imposed by Ali meant that Wepner was unable to reach the last gong for just 19 seconds. After Ali The fame gained in the epic defeat to Ali and his association with the film Rocky: A Fighter gave a new direction to Chuck Wepner’s life. To try to take advantage, King promoted a match between Wepner and wrestling legend André René Roussimoff, better known as André the Giant, at Shea Stadium in New York. It was a staged fight and Wepner lost by knockout. Roussimoff was not his most unusual rival. Later in his career, Wepner twice faced a bear named Victor in wrestling matches in a New Jersey bar. Wepner was thrown to the other side of the ring after the animal received blows to the head. In addition to boxing, Wepner devoted himself to other activities. He was a salesman for the beverage company Allied Liquor and, to increase his income, he also dedicated himself to “solving problems” for people who had debts to receive. “Let’s say I did some favors for my friends,” he says. “I used to go around and ask people nicely [pelo dinheiro que estavam devendo] and then I had to slap them or something.” But after he retired from boxing in 1979, things got complicated. Wepner was partying and taking a lot of cocaine. star in the movie Rocky II alongside now superstar Sylvester Stallone.In 1985, Wepner was found guilty of possession of narcotics and sentenced to 10 years in prison, which landed him in a penitentiary in Newark, New Jersey. they would consider prison to be a problem, but that was not the case for Wepner. “I was fine,” he says. “Wherever I went, the boys sang: ‘champion! champion!’ And they’d say, ‘How are you, Chuck?” “You know, I could tell I was with the right people [na prisão]”, he states. “Ultimately, I ended up in a unit with some of the neighborhood boys. I knew them and they knew me.” After three years, Wepner was paroled. Real-life Rocky Until that time, Wepner had not been credited with the movie character. He then sued Stallone, seeking damages for his role. in the creation of the Rocky franchise. The case was settled in 2006, for an undisclosed sum, which gave Wepner the right to claim that he was officially the man the films were based on. It also offered the opportunity to make a film about his own life, without legal reprisals. Entitled Chuck (Fists of Blood, in Brazil), the film premiered in 2016. his,” according to actor Liev Schreiber, who portrayed Wepner in the film. “He fought his own demons, which were more ruthless than any of these big heavyweights he faced. And he won thanks to his tenacity and his heart.” “Each time Ali hit him in the mouth with that incredible jab, it seemed like he was more satisfied. You can’t kill a man like that. This was the indomitable spirit of Chuck”, according to Schreiber. A few years passed until that spirit was immortalized in bronze, as happened with the character of Sylvester Stallone, whose statue occupies a place of honor at the top of the stairs of the Museum of Art in the United States. Philadelphia since 1980. “I was proud when they made the statue of Sylvester. He deserved it. And it’s a beautiful statue,” said Wepner. “I heard they paid $350,000 for the Rocky statue. This one cost a lot less, but for me it’s genius.” The real-life Rocky finally received the same honor as the fictional character. * Based on a report by Ben Wyatt of BBC Sport.

[ad_2]

Source link