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The line for cash register No. 5 at the Somerville ShopRite slows to a stop as a customer searches her purse for exact change. A woman pushes her cart behind me and interrupts the mindless routine of stacking groceries on the conveyor belt with a question that is so strange, and so out of place here, that I ask her to repeat it.
“Did you know he was a famous boxer?”
She is pointing at the cashier, a squat but muscular man who does not look up from his work of sliding each item over the bar-code reader. I try not to stare as I size him up. His nose is flattened between his eyes. His gnarled hands look more suited for work behind the meat counter than in the checkout lane.
“Chizz? Chezz? What was his first name?”
The woman is now gesturing toward the nametag on his black ShopRite apron, which reads “ROBERT.” That doesn’t fit, but a smaller tag – pinned closer to his waist and almost out of sight – gives the final clue: “BOBBY.”
Now I know the woman is right.
Now I am staring.
His face is puffy and wrinkled with age, but decades ago, it was plastered on magazine covers with headlines like “Matinee Idol” and “Tomorrow’s Champion.” That face, with its dimpled chin and combed-back hair that made him look like a young John Travolta, was the face of New Jersey boxing for most of the early 1980s.
Still, none of this makes any sense. I’m standing inside a strip-mall grocery store in the middle of New Jersey, with “Runnin’ On Empty” playing on the sound system and watermelons on sale out front. This is a former world champion who earned about $2 million in his career and once fought boxing legend Evander Holyfield under the bright lights at Madison Square Garden.
This is … Bobby Czyz?
I reach out my hand and introduce myself. He shakes it and, before I can ask why he is here stuffing my purchases into plastic bags, he begins telling a story he likely has shared with countless disbelieving customers.
He tells me this is just temporary. He talks about an upcoming job as an analyst for bare-knuckle fighting that will jumpstart a once-successful broadcasting career. He mentions a horrific car accident that left him in a coma for almost a month and the medical bills that saddled him with a seven-figure debt.
He never stops working as he speaks, his thick Jersey accent mixing with the constant beeps from the cash register.
“They tell me I should thank God I’m still here, but I’m an atheist,” Czyz said, and before I have a chance to ask one of the hundred or so questions bouncing around my brain, the old boxer now running the register in lane No. 5 asks one of his own.
“Do you have your Price Plus card?”
“Did you know he was a famous boxer?”
She is pointing at the cashier, a squat but muscular man who does not look up from his work of sliding each item over the bar-code reader. I try not to stare as I size him up. His nose is flattened between his eyes. His gnarled hands look more suited for work behind the meat counter than in the checkout lane.
“Chizz? Chezz? What was his first name?”
The woman is now gesturing toward the nametag on his black ShopRite apron, which reads “ROBERT.” That doesn’t fit, but a smaller tag – pinned closer to his waist and almost out of sight – gives the final clue: “BOBBY.”
Now I know the woman is right.
Now I am staring.
His face is puffy and wrinkled with age, but decades ago, it was plastered on magazine covers with headlines like “Matinee Idol” and “Tomorrow’s Champion.” That face, with its dimpled chin and combed-back hair that made him look like a young John Travolta, was the face of New Jersey boxing for most of the early 1980s.
Still, none of this makes any sense. I’m standing inside a strip-mall grocery store in the middle of New Jersey, with “Runnin’ On Empty” playing on the sound system and watermelons on sale out front. This is a former world champion who earned about $2 million in his career and once fought boxing legend Evander Holyfield under the bright lights at Madison Square Garden.
This is … Bobby Czyz?
I reach out my hand and introduce myself. He shakes it and, before I can ask why he is here stuffing my purchases into plastic bags, he begins telling a story he likely has shared with countless disbelieving customers.
He tells me this is just temporary. He talks about an upcoming job as an analyst for bare-knuckle fighting that will jumpstart a once-successful broadcasting career. He mentions a horrific car accident that left him in a coma for almost a month and the medical bills that saddled him with a seven-figure debt.
He never stops working as he speaks, his thick Jersey accent mixing with the constant beeps from the cash register.
“They tell me I should thank God I’m still here, but I’m an atheist,” Czyz said, and before I have a chance to ask one of the hundred or so questions bouncing around my brain, the old boxer now running the register in lane No. 5 asks one of his own.
“Do you have your Price Plus card?”
http://projects.nj.com/investigations/bobby-czyz/index.html
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