THE HAPPY HATCHET
THE last place you would expect to find a man called The Hatchet is a women’s hair salon, but that’s where I met former IBF super-middleweight titleholder Charles Brewer on a recent Saturday afternoon. As incongruous as it seems, these days he spends as much time at Jazzy Shears Hair Studio as he used to spend in the gym.
“Back when I won the title in 1997, my wife, Sophia, a licensed hair stylist, and I opened up a hair salon in downtown Philadelphia,” said Brewer. They have since relocated to North Philly where rent is cheaper.
Brewer would turn 51 in a few days, but despite being a division or two above his fighting weight, he’s still an imposing looking man. We moved to a small curtained-off area at the back of the shop and sat at an appropriate distance from each other, facemasks firmly in place. I’d covered many of Brewer’s fights, but got to know him better during our trip down memory lane than at any time during his career.
Back then Brewer often seemed grim, bordering on grouchy. When he came to office for a photo shoot after winning the title, trying to elicit a smile was challenging to say the least. We had a hatchet handy as a prop and asked him to pretend he was hitting his promoter, J Russell Peltz, over the head with it.
