COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU… THE BOBBY CZYZ STORY, PART THREE OF THREE TRUE LOVE AND TEARDROPS

By Michael Swann

During his turbulent life and career, Bobby Czyz was a popular fighter, his fan base including many women as well as men. He was a good looking, intelligent, well spoken athlete who earned his nickname, “Matinee Idol,” honestly.

“I was engaged in 1983 and then in 1988,” Bobby recalled. “The first time I knew I wasn’t going to marry the girl but my dad had just killed himself, I broke up with Lou Duva, and I just had major surgery on my right hand. My life was in…I was just trying to fit in somewhere.

“Then I met a girl who had finished runner-up in a pageant. She was a sweet girl, very pretty. But her family was wonderful, so wonderful I ended up inviting her mother and dad and her brother and sister-in-law to my wedding. My ex-wife and I used to go down to their house to hang out. I still talk to the family to this day.”

Czyz met his eventual wife to be, Kim, in 1989. The couple became engaged in 1990 and married in 1991.

“My mom was special to me. I patterned a lot of my expectations after my mom. She’s a loving, caring, wonderful, nurturing person. My mom was drop dead gorgeous. Kim was a model, drop dead gorgeous too, with the morals of a saint. On our first date she told my mom, ‘You must be a saint the way your son talks about you.’

“Kim was everything I was ever promised. The problem was I spent so much time chasing what I was told I was supposed to look for. I got exactly what I wanted but what I wanted wasn’t exactly what I needed.

“Believe it or not, from 1989 when I met Kim until 1993 when my daughter [Mercedes] was born, I was actually faithful. I had issues with wanting sex two or three times a day and about 18 months [after the birth of his daughter] I was at the point of a little crazy. So we had some issues. She said, ‘Maybe we should spend a little time away from each other.’ I said, ‘My ass already left, I want to catch up to it.’ The look on her face was like I had shot her with a bullet.”

Bobby moved in with a friend, a former bodyguard, for six months, then he moved back in.

“I quit doing my end. Almost always I put her first and she did me. I stopped somewhere and she didn’t. I cheated. But she didn’t know or find out until we were separated three months. The breakup was so amicable that I got separated in 1997, divorced in January 2000, and I didn’t move out until January 2001.”

Kim passed away on December 19, 2006 at the age of 47. She had cancer. Bobby and his girlfriend, Angela, moved in to care for her in the final six weeks of her life.

“My ex-wife was the best human being who’s ever been born in history,” Bobby said. “Angela is a wonderful girl. We’d be sitting on the couch, and I’d do something cute, like giving them pedicures, cute things to make them laugh.

“One night Angela was crying and said, ‘You know what’s sad? I know that no matter how much you love me, you’ll never look at me like you look at that lady. You’ll never love me that way.’ It’s still ugly fresh on my mind that she would be hurt like that.

“We cooked Thanksgiving dinner for Kim and her mom and her sister and my daughter. I knew she was going to pass. Kim knew. Angela knew because I told her but her mom and her sister didn’t know. My daughter didn’t know because Kim told me that was her baby. She said, ‘Don’t talk. I’m coming home. I don’t want to die in the hospital. I’m coming home and I want to spend as much time as possible in this house. This cancer can kill me instantly, or I can get my affairs in order, so I’ll do the best I can.’

“And we’re crying - full blown. I never cried that hard in my life. I just wish I had never divorced her so she could have gone more peacefully. I said to her that if I had it to do over again I wouldn’t take her on that first date so she wouldn’t have to go through that. She said, ‘Bobby, I would do it over again. The best years of my life were with you.’

“And it made me feel even worse. And I still get emotional thinking about it. I just believe I could have kept her alive and it haunts me on a daily basis. Maybe I could have done something to make her life better. It’s my biggest regret and I’ll take it to my grave. With all the punches I was ever hit, the sum of all of them at once isn’t the same as that one.”

There was a residual consequence to the Czyz divorce that remains to this day. Between the time of his father’s death and the breakup of his marriage, Bobby calls the relationship with his mother “as strong as any I have known.” Today there is a rather strained relationship between Bobby, his mother and siblings.

“She knew my wife and there were some crazy things that were said and done that caused some resentment,” Bobby says of his mother, still alive and well in Florida. “Trust me, it was my fault. It was more about the things I did and some of the things I said.”

There is seemingly no end to the misfortune that has invaded Czyz’ life at every turn. It’s difficult if he is simply a victim of incredibly bad luck or if some latent self destructive forces are responsible. But it’s undeniable that this man, so athletically gifted, intelligent, and articulate, has absorbed more than his fair share of adversity and always comes back fighting, just as he did in his ring days.

In his account of Czyz’ life, Greg Smith wrote in 2005 that, “Outside of boxing, Bobby is involved in several business ventures. At around the time he was parting ways with Showtime, Bobby was approached by friends in the insurance and securities industry regarding a new and innovative trademarked product. Bobby passed his examinations, (third in a class of about thirty students), and informed me that the product possesses tremendous intrinsic value and external financial rewards. It’s a nice step in a different direction at this time in his life.”

Flash forward to today and the results of the venture reflects the turmoil that has dogged Bobby throughout his life.

“Right now I’m in a bit of a struggle,” Bobby explained wearily. “I had the Department of Labor Racketeering from the Attorney General’s office over my house, and I thought this can’t be a good thing. I put in 29 months worth of work and money into a project and one of the guys I was in business with defrauded a number of us for $3.7 million. Collectively it was seven guys that put in a lot of money and had money coming back. $480,000 of that was mine. It was involving insurance premiums.

“That’s a lot of money to lose when you don’t have that kind of liquidity. I wasn’t $480,000 liquid so I lost a lot trying to cover what I had to cover. On top of that, and a host of other problems at the same time and trust me, I don’t know why I didn’t shoot myself. Every day, seeing my daughter, looking at her picture, or talking to her, that’s what’s keeping me here.

“It really hurt, crushed me. Aside from the fact that I gave everything away in the divorce, it forced me to declare bankruptcy. No big deal, start all over. I’m getting back on my feet. I have some very promising leads. I look for some serious windfalls in the next few weeks and I’ll be back to where I need to be.

“I still host events at casinos and boxing events, trying to bring in the big gamblers. I do motivational speaking. I do charity work.”

A dozen or so years ago, Senators William Roth and John McCain developed the Professional Boxing Corporation Act and requested Bobby’s counsel. Bobby was skeptical that it would work. Nevertheless he traveled to Washington D.C. to testify in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Organized Crime Investigating Boxing. The act passed without addressing the issues that Bobby raised. When Bobby was offered the prestigious position of Executive Director of the Professional Boxing Corporation Act, he turned it down.

Czyz is currently living with his old bodyguard friend in Clarksburg, New Jersey.

“I was going to build a house in Pennsylvania, but I don’t have a license and it’s a pain in the ass to get around,” he says.

Bobby’s movie still needs an ending. Will there finally be a happy ending? What is his ultimate legacy?

“I hope I left behind a reasonable legacy,” he began. “ I competed at a championship level in six weight classes and I won titles in three of them. I just want to be thought of as a good fighter and one of the good guys in the game. I was a good fighter because I was tortured as a kid. There’s nothing you can do to me except kill me and what’s good about that is that you can only do it once.

“I was supposed to be dead 27 years ago [the Polish Airlines crash]. My ex-wife just died. I’ve had friends that have died. Death is the inevitable end all for everybody. One day maybe I’ll sit down and write a book. Some people might get divorced, if they’re not already.”

As we roll the credits, here are a few bits of Czyz-isms:

“I was supposed to fight a mandatory for the WBA title. Nobody would bid on the fight. I asked for an exemption and asked what I needed to do. (He) said, ‘Send $10,000 certified funds by tomorrow. So I did. Bing, I got my exception. That’s how corrupt it is.”

“The networks should not be promoters. If they sign a fighter to as 10 fight deal, they’re promoters.”

“Don King never took advantage of me. But he’s so smart that when he made a promotional deal with the MGM Grand, three or four executives got fired because the deal was so one-sided that the Grand lost money.”

“I wasn’t the person I thought I was. I thought I wanted five kids and a big house and a 9-5 job. Can’t do it!”

On fighters he respects - “Anyone who came to fight and gave it 100%”

On his friendship with Mike Tyson - “I just like the guy.”

On the Mike Tyson - Bruce Seldon fight - “Tyson missed him and he went down anyway.”