OLDER AND WISER? RETURN OF BOBBY CZYZ : He’s Back and Better Than Ever--All You Have to Do Is Ask Him

It was a crazy campaign, back in the early 1980s, when boxing thirsted for contenders who seemed capable--this was the crazy part--of citizenship as well as concussion.

You may recall this mini-era, when Bobby Czyz (pronounced Chezz) was relentlessly beamed into your living room. A matinee idol with looks, books and hooks. “White, bright and polite” was the cynical catch-phrase. An elevated club fighter in the ring, a useful member of the community outside. It was reliably reported that he had his choice of medical school, a Rutgers scholarship or a West Point nomination, just as soon as he won his title. It was just as reliably reported that he once blocked an intersection with his car so a senior citizen could cross the street safely.

America drank it up, along with all the light beer that was sold between rounds. His first 22 fights were on either ESPN or NBC. Only Sugar Ray Leonard at the time could boast of such exposure. In network terms, Czyz had been shrewdly “cross-promoted.” His appeal went well beyond boxing fans and for a fight with Robbie Sims, Czyz and NBC gained a rating of 12.4, the highest daytime boxing rating at the time. All this despite an unimpressive ranking.

“He was a wildly exciting fighter,” remembers Kevin Monaghan, now NBC’s boxing coordinator. “And, true or false, he was a good story. He seemed like the boy next door. A bright middle-class New Jersey kid, who happened to box.”

But, as sometimes happens, the story overwhelmed the fighter. Perhaps had he just listened to his promoter, Dan Duva, Czyz might have been a longer-running story, might even have transcended Leonard’s popularity in the years to come.

“We told him, like we tell all our fighters, not to believe everything we say about them,” Duva said. “Medical school? He never spent a day in college. West Point? I doubt it. Rutgers? He may have been accepted. He did have good grades in high school. There was a certain amount of puffery involved, an enhancing of image. We told Bobby not to believe it. Bobby, I guess, came to believe.”

In any event, Czyz didn’t listen and by 1982, at the age of 20, prisoner of his own image, he embarked on one of boxing’s most spectacular free falls. He froze in the ring against Mustafa Hamsho in his first important fight and lost a chance to fight for a title. He pulled out of subsequent fights with NBC and alienated Ferdie Pacheco, the network’s matchmaker, ripping him in print at every opportunity. He quarreled with manager/idolmaker Lou Duva over money, eventually breaking off their relationship. Personal problems compounded his professional descent. In 1983, his domineering father committed suicide. A year later, he was arrested and convicted on a charge of burglary after he broke into the house of his then-fiancee’s mother.

If this was the boy next door, you lived in the wrong neighborhood. “He was suddenly tainted,” Dan Duva says. “Everything about him had been positive, and then there were all these negatives, a lot of negatives. He could never be what he could have been.”

Almost as quickly as he had arrived, he disappeared, swept out of your living room like an empty six-pack.

They say there are no second acts in American lives, but here comes Bobby Czyz, immaculate in formal wear, shooting cuffs, mingling comfortably with VIPs at a Trump’s Plaza buffet. “Mark, buddy,” he says to a man at the door. “Two guests.” Czyz sails by an apparently impressed Mark, who happens to be the property’s vice president. “It’s good to be champion,” says Czyz, winking to one of the guests.

He’s on top of the world again, although the world, like everything else, has changed in five years. His comeback has been largely unreported. Without the support of fans or a sponsoring network or an image-enhancing promoter, Czyz has very quietly moved up to light-heavyweight, won all his fights and even captured the International Boxing Federation title. As titles go, it is somewhat unimpressive. It is in a weak, no-name division--”fat middleweights,” Monaghan calls it. Nevertheless, it is a title.

He is talking of the fights that got him to where he is today. “You can say the jury is out on this opponent or that,” Czyz says, pacing the room, tugging at his collar. “But there can’t be that many flukes in a row. Three impressive knockouts, clean and overpowering. That’s increased my marquee value. My name has to go up there with (Marvelous Marvin) Hagler, transcending the regular man.”

Czyz, despite his troubles, has evidently retained some sense of self-worth. He has also clung to the image first fostered by the Duvas. His is an outpost of civilization in the jungle game. It can be annoyingly calculating, as he self-consciously chooses a more sophisticated vocabulary when simple speech would do, or struggles with elaborate imagery. When he says, “I have the unusual ability to speak white and fight black,” you cringe. You can almost sense the long-departed Duvas prodding him on, although they would surely have updated the material.

“I will always be a viable force,” he is saying. “I’ve finally come into my own. I’ve paid my dues, personally and professionally, I don’t think anybody will doubt that. I’m the original roller-coaster, but I’m up to where I’m staying.”

His past troubles? “The suicide of my father, mononucleosis, they were like a giant snowball I couldn’t see around. I had to follow it down the hill, waiting for it to shatter. It’s shattered. I’ve finally come into my own, getting the respect, the accolades, the open doors. This is what a young boy turning into a man works for. I wouldn’t wish my life on anybody, but I’m the happiest man in the world.

“What a difference a year makes.”

The jury is not out on Czyz’s opponents, so much as Czyz himself. Pacheco likens Czyz to a child actor looking for adult parts. “But what works for you then doesn’t necessarily work for you now,” he says. “He has to make that transition.”

Not everybody thinks Czyz has grown sufficiently. Monaghan recalls Czyz cutting himself and Pacheco dead at a recent fight. Earlier, Monaghan says, Czyz shouted to Pacheco, why didn’t NBC give him easy fights like it did some other boxers. Pacheco, stunned, said, “Bobby, you’re not on scholarship here.”

According to Monaghan, Czyz and new manager Carlos Dee have retained an exaggerated idea of Czyz’s attraction, as well. “We still wanted Bobby Czyz to fight for NBC,” he says. “But I have a minor problem unless they’re good fights for reasonable money. The opponents they want are just not competitive. And the money demands, you’d think they were indeed on scholarship. For the Willie Edwards fight they said they’d need something like $300,000. CBS (which televised the fight) didn’t give them anything near that.”

The fights that could restore Czyz to his ratings’ peak, Czyz refuses to take. “He’s made two big mistakes,” Monaghan says. “He never wanted to fight Hamsho again, a perfect fight. And he didn’t want (former light-heavyweight champion) Marvin Johnson, which would have been big money.”

Without fights like those, Czyz can not restore his luster. “The Jim McDonald fight,” Monaghan says, “I think he got a 3.4 rating, lowest-rated show of the week. He’s not being cross-promoted like he was. He’s just not there any more.”

Dan Duva, whose point of view has obviously been skewed by their breakup, admits Czyz has ability and can make it as a fighter. But that’s as far as he can take it.

“He has no promotion around him, the kind of coordinated marketing plan we gave him. He isn’t the All-American boy anymore. He can make money, he can be successful. But what he had before, he can never have that again.”

Pacheco is far more charitable, given their relationship. Their problem stemmed from only one thing--reliability, nothing more. “I know he went through a traumatic series of events, and I don’t know if I could have handled it any better than he did at 20,” Pacheco says. “But we’re not running a social service. We waited on him two times (when he pulled out of fights). It’s not baseball, there are no third tries.”

As far as negatives, though, Pacheco surprisingly sees none. “I’ve finally realized he’s a championship-caliber fighter,” Pacheco says. “I’ve seen his last three-four fights and he’s for real. Not only is he still an exciting fighter, he now has his confidence back, the confidence that Hamsho depleted. On top of that, Bobby can talk, he’s likable and handsome. Tainted? He could have killed a goat and eaten it, but nobody would care. He spells box office.

“I see a very handsomely rewarded future, it’s absolutely screaming for him. He really does have the world in his hands.”

Czyz speaks of his next breakthrough fight, possibly with Tommy Hearns, or even Hagler, when he attains “the mega-marquee value” of a Sugar Ray Leonard, when he indeed transcends the regular man, or at least fighter.

As to that, well, he’s long since transcended that breed of man. “I’m the antithesis of the everyday fighter,” he is saying proudly. “For example, I’m on the board of education (Wanaque, N.J.), and, in fact, I have to get back there for a meeting tomorrow.” He is pleased to announce this, although, to our cynical ears, it sounds a little too much like something Lou Duva would have invented.

“Oh, I’m different,” he is saying, as he takes his leave. “I prove that by doing the things I do, the places I show up.” An hour later he shows up at ringside of the Michael Spinks-Gerry Cooney fight, where he is introduced as the comebacking light-heavyweight champion. He gets a pretty good cheer, too.