Chuck Wepner

Chuck Wepner has been married three times and has three children, including a daughter named Kimberly. He was still married to his first wife Phyllis during his bout against Muhammad Ali. She did not go to the arena, preferring to watch the match on a television in a nearby hotel room. Their marriage unravelled due to his infidelities. He went through another marriage and a subsequent divorce before meeting his current wife Linda.

He and his third wife, Linda, wed in 1995 and the couple currently lives in his hometown of Bayonne.

Following the fight with Muhammad Ali fight, Chuck Wepner was incarcerated for 18 months for possessing three ounces of cocaine and was put on probation for 12 more months. The authorities offered to lessen his sentence if he were to reveal the name of his supplier, but he refused to take the deal.

Born on February 26, 1939, in New York City, Chuck Wepner is one of the two sons of Dolores (née Hrynko) and Charles William Wepner. He is of mixed German, Ukrainian, and Belarusian descent. His brother’s name is Don.

When he was about a year old, he and Dolores relocated to his maternal grandmother’s house on the 28th Street near Hudson Boulevard (now Kennedy Boulevard) where he lived in a room that was previously a coal shed until he was 13 years old. Wepner was an active youth, regularly participating in several sports, especially basketball, which he played for the Police Athletic League.

His initiation to fighting occurred in a turbulent neighbourhood of Bayonne, New Jersey. In an interview later on, he called his home city a “tough town”, stating that there were a lot of people from the docks and naval base, and one had to learn to fight to survive.

As a youth, Chuck Wepner joined the army. His tenure in military brought a sense of discipline in his life. It also exposed him to boxing. He briefly served as a bouncer at a nightclub in New Jersey before taking up boxing seriously. Renowned for his toughness, he won the New York Golden Gloves Heavyweight Novice Championship in 1964. When he turned professional in the same year, he had an amateur record of 16 wins and zero losses.

The first match in his professional career took place on August 5, 1964 at City Stadium in Bayonne. He won that match against George Cooper and soon became a popular boxer on the Northeast's Club Boxing circuit. In the subsequent matches, he fought all over the US, defeating the likes of Rudy Pavesi, Jerry Tomasetti, and Ray Patterson as well as suffering back-to-back losses against Bob Stallings and Buster Mathis.

He won the first title of his professional tenure on April 28, 1967, defeating Don McAteer with a fifth-round technical knockout. On September 28, 1968, he knocked his opponent Forest Ward down three consecutive times to trigger automatic stoppage.

He faced George Foreman on August 18, 1969 at Madison Square Garden. Foreman, who had just begun his career, crushed Wepner in the third round, winning via technical knockout.

He had his only trilogy of fights against fellow American boxer Randy Neumann. In their first bout, on December 9, 1971, Neumann defeated him by points after a gruelling 12-round match, effectively winning the USA New Jersey State Heavyweight title. They met for the second time four months later, on April 15, 1972, and Wepner won the title back. The last fight took place at the Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1974. It ended in the sixth round after he knocked Neumann down to retain his championship.

On April 28, 1967, Chuck Wepner won the vacant USA New Jersey State Heavyweight title for the first time, defeating Don McAteer with a technical knockout. He would later win the title a second time on April 15, 1972.

He clenched the vacant National Americas Heavyweight title on June 23, 1973 against Ernie Terrell.