A Boxing Story of Risk vs. Reward

Our actions are all that separate our daydreams from our goals.  --Roy H. Williams

Roy Williams is a business consultant and advertising wizard.  He wrote the following:

As a boxer, Chuck Wepner earned the nickname "The Bayonne Bleeder" because of the punishment he took even while winning.  Tom Donaldson of Inside Boxing writes of him, "Wepner was what one would call 'a catcher,' a fighter who often used his head to block the other guy's punches--not the kind of strategy that leads to long careers.  He constantly pressured his opponent, until he either won or was knocked out.  He never truly cared how many shots he would absorb before landing the telling blow."   

His trainer, Al Braverman, called Wepner "The gutsiest fighter I ever met.  He was in a league of his own.  He didn't care about pain or cuts.  If he got cut or elbowed, he never looked at me or the referee for help.  He was a fighter, in the purest sense of the word." 

Now, when Chuck Wepner knocked out Terry Hinke in Salt Lake City, boxing promoter Don King offered Wepner a title shot against then-heavyweight champion George Foreman.  But before they could fight, Ali defeated Foreman and Wepner found himself scheduled to fight The Great One, Muhammad Ali himself.  On the morning of the fight, Chuck Wepner gave his wife a pink negligee and told her that she would be sleeping with the heavyweight champion of the world.   

Muhammad Ali scored a technical knockout of Wepner with 19 seconds remaining in the fight.  But, there was a moment--one glorious moment in the ninth round when a ham-like paw at Ali's chest knocked the reigning champion off his feet.  Chuck Wepner remembers, "When Ali was down I remember saying to my ring man Al Braverman, 'Start the car.  We're going to the bank.  We're millionaires!'  And Al said to me, 'You better turn around, because he's getting up and he looks pissed off'."   

After the fight, Wepner's wife pulled the negligee out of her purse and asked, "Do I go to Ali's room, or does he come to mine"'   

Now, a struggling writer was watching this fight, and he remembers it well. "I went to the fights and I saw this Chuck Wepner character who was called The Bayonne Bleeder, who was just this fighter of really very, very little skill, you know, kind of like a real American, you know.  A working class stiff who just takes it on the chin and then comes back, just a very symbolic kind of character.  And I thought, 'There it is.  There it is'.  He was fighting Muhammad Ali, who was like, you know, the perfect fighter, and he knocked him down.  And that validated his entire life.  He didn't expect to win.  He knocked him down.  You could never take that away.  I went, 'There, dear God.  Now if I could get that onto the page.'  So I went home and I started writing, and I wrote for three days straight."   

That writer's name was Sylvester Stallone.  Stallone finished his script, and the movie studio offered him an unprecedented $400,000 for his story.  But he refused the money, choosing instead just $20,000, the right to play the part of Rocky in the movie, and a connection to any ongoing profits.  The studio accepted.  Then they offered Chuck Wepner a similar choice: a $70,000 flat fee, or one per cent of the movie's gross profits.  Chuck took the guarantee, a decision that cost him eight million dollars.  Chuck Wepner now lives in Bayonne, New Jersey and works as a liquor salesman.  Sylvester Stallone enjoys a net worth of $275,000,000.   

Stallone believed in Wepner's story.  Wepner didn't believe in Stallone's.

 Friends, God believes in your story, so much that He gave up the guaranteed comforts of heaven to come and fight your battles in the form of a man.  All He wants is your heart, your faith.  Too many people, I fear, take the guarantee of this life, and lose out on the everlasting joy of heaven.  God believes in their story, but they don't believe in His.