Taking His Midlife Crisis Out on the Other Guy’s Chin

Toughman Tom “The Bomb” Wiechecki lies on the floor of Gold’s Gym in Tujunga and takes it like a man.

His trainer, Rae Manzon, thwacks him across the face with puffy red boxing mitts till Wiechecki’s head swings back and forth like a tetherball and his glazed eyeballs bounce crazily in their sockets like pinballs batted by electric arms.

His sparring partner steps in to knee Wiechecki in the stomach.

Wiechecki holds his feet in the air--that’s part of the exercise--and releases sharp gasps like a balloon with multiple punctures, deflating fast. But still, he doesn’t resist.

He’s in the zone, where a Toughman has to be.

“A lot of people can punch. A lot of people can kick. But can he take the punishment?” Manzon asks rhetorically during a 60-second rest.

Los Angeles is a city of dreams, and people flock to Southern California from everywhere to reinvent themselves.

Here in the scrubby hills of Tujunga, far from the cosmopolitan airbrushed perfection of any Hollywood fantasy, is a gritty world, where Harleys roar and coyotes howl at night. It is to this arid place that a rough-hewn Texas contractor trekked with a different kind of dream.

It is here, in the aerobics room of Gold’s Gym, which smells of stale sweat, that Wiechecki has come to train for the bone-cracking, blood-spattered underworld of Toughman boxing.

The Toughman Contest is a cross between the glitz, grappling and showmanship of professional wrestling and the rigors and violence of prizefighting. It is for novice adults, generally with little training.

Although organizers insist it is safe, the fans describe it as controlled street fighting, carefully constructed to appeal to beefy, working-class guys who never quite got to live out their athletic fantasies. In the Toughman competition, a big gut isn’t an obstacle--it’s a qualification.

Started in Bay City Michigan in 1979, the contest is meant to lure these armchair fighters into the ring and to entertain audiences with their lumbering antics and amateurish moves.

The Toughman Contest Web site challenges: “Are you tough enough? . . . More Guts! More Heart! More Fat Guys!”

But Wiechecki is an anomaly in this world of couch potatoes because he is not fat--he holds a lean 175 pounds on his 6-foot frame. And because he trains seriously, all-out, 2 1/2 hours daily--for this “sub-novice” amateur boxing event.

The 35-year-old Texan gave up his home and his company to move to California and train with a martial arts master he saw in Las Vegas, to vie for the title in a sport with meager financial rewards. The 16 finalists take home $1,000; the winner $50,000.

But Wiechecki says he isn’t doing this for the money. He’s doing it to take control of his life.

For the past five years. life has thrown him problems. Things went sour with the partner in his Texas contracting business. He got a divorce.

Boxing Became His Calling

“I didn’t like my life,” he says. “I became very passive. I let people walk all over me. But when you get up there with the fame and the applause, there’s a lot of control.”

Wiechecki had always been an athlete. Football, basketball, he’d done it all. But when he first saw the Toughman Contest on television about a year ago he knew boxing was his calling.

Wiechecki moved to Tujunga to train with martial arts expert Manzon, and because his brother lives here and offered him free rent for his handyman work.

Three months after he started training, now sinewy-strong and light on his feet, Wiechecki flew to San Antonio to compete Nov. 10 and 11 in his first Toughman Contest at the Lone Star Arena.

Fat men, short men, men in running shoes, men in sweats--with names like “The Lawman,” “Popeye,” and “Superman”--jogged out through the crowds, fists in the air, for their three minutes of glory.

Or humiliation.

Busty women in skimpy outfits paraded around the ring in spiked heels between rounds, as the crowd cheered at the one-round wonders taking wild, wide swings at each other.

Fighters go three one-minute rounds, wearing balloon-size 16-ounce gloves, padded headgear, and kidney protectors. (The sport is illegal in California because it doesn’t comply with the state’s boxing rules.)

Three judges using the standard boxing 10-point system score each bout. No biting, kicking, grappling or head-butting is permitted. Fighters who have had more than five sanctioned amateur wins in the last five years are ineligible to compete in Toughman, as are fighters who have ever been in a professional fight.

Coach Manzon said he had seen the Toughman Contest on television, but when he got to Texas and looked around at the competitors he was astounded at how bad they were.

“On TV they glamorize things. When I got there I thought, this is different. I had never seen guys tire out in 30 seconds,” said Manzon, who has boxed since childhood, done martial arts for 36 years, and trained students for two decades.

Manzon said most of the fighters do little more than make a trip to the gym two days before the event. The fact that Wiechecki actually had a coach sent a ripple of fear through the competitors, Manzon said.

“Everyone felt totally intimidated because he was actually training,” Manzon recalled.

Wiechecki’s moment came that Saturday.

With music pounding in the background, the announcer blared, “When I asked Tom the strangest thing he ever did he said: ‘I jumped off a 50-foot bridge, landed in 12 feet of water and got stuck in the mud. [It’s true!] Let’s bring out Tom, ‘The Bomb,’ Weicheckeeeeeeeee.”

From the moment he stepped into the stadium it was clear that Wiechecki was in a different league. He had on cotton boxing shorts with red satin trim, $100 boxing shoes and a long black robe with his sponsor--Tujunga-based Bidbay.com--embroidered on the back.

A grainy video of the San Antonio Toughman event shows Wiechecki’s progress through his three bouts in the light heavyweight category.

In the first fight Wiechecki knocked his flailing opponent down three times. Sometimes the opponent just toppled over by himself.

In the second fight he knocked the guy down and opened a cut over the left eye.

A Vow to Return

And in the third round he got tired and went flat-footed and the fight disintegrated into a brawl. He knocked his opponent down, but the referee picked the guy up, brushed his gloves off and the fight resumed. In a controversial split decision, Wiechecki lost.

He came in third overall, but failed to qualify for the National Finals in February. But Wiechecki has vowed to return in July and take the Toughman title.

Until then he will be running five miles a day through Tujunga’s hilly canyons, working out 2 1/2 hours a day shadow boxing and punching, mastering martial arts moves with Manzon and internalizing the high-minded philosophies of a warrior.

Manzon has told Wiechecki he’s crazy to do this at his age, that your brain can get racked around with too many hits to the head.

“But that’s what he wants to do,” Manzon said. “I understand Tom. He just loves to box.”

Wiechecki is undeterred. A laconic man, he clings steadfastly to the dream he brought to California.

“In July I’m going to win this,” he said. “Then I’m going pro.”