Opioid Warrior: George Chuvalo

By Michael C. Hughes

The last thing George Chuvalo wanted as he embarked on an astonishing heavyweight pro boxing career -- where he was called ‘The Toughest Man on the Planet’ by both Muhammad Ali and George Foreman -- was to be remembered as an ‘Opioid Warrior.’ But in retirement, he was thrown into the fight of his life, trying to save four family members – three sons and his wife -- from opioid hell.

This is his story in three parts; • through his astonishing boxing career; • Fighting the Poison: retirement and Opioid hell; • Fighting for Dignity: redemption and the launch of his speaking crusade: • Fighting the Fix: his early fight years and a background to all that came after.

In his boxing career, he faced Muhammad Ali (twice), Joe Frazier, George Foreman, and every other heavyweight champion and contender of his era. Then came retirement and the toughest fights of his life. From 1985 to 1996 he lost four family members – three sons and his first wife – to opioids, which George would only ever call ‘the Poison.’

Heroic! Heartbreaking! Inspirational!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael C. Hughes
• Release date: Jun 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463487969

Michael C. Hughes

Raised in Battle Creek, Michigan, Michael had a successful career as a journalist and news editor before launching his own marketing/PR firm. Det. Ty Connell is a hybrid character based on police officers Michael has known well at city, state, and federal levels. He also counts as a reliable source a formerly active member of one of New York City's major crime families since retired from "the Life." In addition to the Ty Connell Series, Michael has written biographies of two colorful sports/media personalities, as well as a chronicle of events leading up to what were called "the Detroit Race Riots of 1967." That book, THE BURNING OF MURDER CITY USA, was a nominee for the 2018 Michigan Notable Book of the year. It is also available in eBook and paperback.

Book preview

OPIOID WARRIOR

George Chuvalo

My times and travels with

George Chuvalo in his darkest days

by Michael Hughes

Chuvalo with Muhammad Ali 1987.

Ali at the time already had advanced Parkinson’s.

Photo above from Toronto Sun Archives

Front cover photo © 2018 Michael Hughes

PREFACE

It was a grey rain-misted afternoon on a lonesome highway to I-don’t-remember-where when George Chuvalo, out of the blue and to my surprise, suddenly opened up about something jarringly personal:

"When Stevie told me in sickening detail what it was to be a heroin addict, I could only ache for my sons. That they, my beautiful boys, would have to go through such degradation. Steven said that he and Georgie Lee would go to Parkdale, an older part of the city known for its heroin haunts, to a seedy hotel where they could always find a dealer.

"He said that for he and George Lee, just to be standing in front of the dealer, they would begin trembling with a rush of relief and overwhelming urgency, just knowing they were only moments away from the most important thing in their lives, more vital to them than anything else.

"Then, when the dealer opened the package to prove that the white powder really was there, at that moment, just looking at the heroin, they lost it. Before they could even finish pulling their money from their jeans —in that split second and just upon catching sight of the drug— their bowels and bladders would let go and they would shit and piss their pants as they stood there."

He fell silent for a few moments and turned away, to the side window, staring unfocused at soggy black-soil farm fields slipping past. Old memories that still seared like fresh scars etched his open and accepting features, and I felt for him. He pushed on.

"I know it’s hard for most people even to comprehend what I’m saying, that this was routine reality for my boys! With excrement and urine running down their legs, they would frantically pay the dealer, grab the dope, and race to the nearest bathroom. Not to clean up, but to tremble as they raced to dig out the spoon and lighter they always carried to melt the powder into a warm golden fluid and then draw it into the needle they also always carried. They’d yank up their sleeves in such a panic of anticipation that they’d sometimes tear their shirts to get it into a vein as soon as they possibly could.

"Sometimes, he said, in was a matter of poking and jabbing desperately until they found a vein, and then, and only then, when the needle found its mark, would they begin to settle down, settle their breathing, settle their nerves enough to clean up from crapping their drawers. Only then. Only after they’d used and the poison was in their system."

"Even at that, cleaning up couldn’t really be called cleaning up at all. Without stripping down completely, throwing all their clothes in the washer, and taking showers, there was no way to get out the stench or the foul sogginess. So once they got stoned, they walked around in their own stinking, crusty, sticky state, sometimes for hours he said. But they didn’t care. They could reek of human waste and not even care. They had found the short-lived relief they craved. That they lived for.

"When Steven told me that, I honestly had trouble believing it. When he then told me that the dealers took a sadistic pleasure in selling to not one but two Chuvalos, knowing the damage they were doing to a proud family—to me!—I died a little inside that my boys would be targeted even more because of me and my name."

The year of Steven’s disturbing confession to his dad was 1985, twelve years before that day in my vehicle in 1997, and at the time of the incident Steven spoke of neither Steven nor Georgie Lee were still boys at all. George Lee was 25, and Steven was 24, married with a young family. At the time of Steven’s telling of his story to his dad, both were already more than a year into enslavement to a slave master called heroin addiction.

George took another pause and stared again out the side window, but he seemed to want to clear a backlog of pent-up anguish he’d been living with, mostly silently, for years with nowhere to take it and no one to tell it to. Now here I was, a new-found friend there to listen. So he began again.

"After the first shock of it all hit me, I realized that theirs was a pathetic world I could never have imagined. But why, I had to wonder, would anyone choose to live like that? The answer of course is simple: they didn’t choose to live like that. Choice implies control, and their lives were completely out of control and out of their own hands. Their lives had been taken over by the poison.

"I remember thinking to myself, ‘How exciting would something have to be in order for me to defecate and urinate in my drawers? For me to let go?’ How excited must something make you to react that way, react that way just upon seeing something that you so desire! What could have such an effect that you would let go like that? What could it be for an ordinary non-addict? The fact is, nothing on earth can make an ordinary person act like an addict. It’s a special and desperate kind of hell and a state of mental illness that few ordinary people can ever imagine."

George, when he recounted this story to me, had been almost twenty years retired from his boxing career but, unlike some retired ring warriors, he was still as lucid, clear-headed, and clear-spoken as you or me. Many people knew vaguely that he had lost a number of family members to various tragic circumstances, something about heroin, something about suicides, but most people weren’t clear about what had actually happened.

This is what happened.

This book is not written chronologically, but rather begins where his boxing career ended and retirement sets in with a vengeance no one could foresee.

Following his agonizing twelve year battle to save his family from ‘the poison’ —the only term he’d ever use for heroin or opioids—are details of his boxing career. Background information for those who want to know more about how a man with the courage and heart of a lion went from one the brightest of beginnings in the world’s toughest of sports came to endure the dark days that took him over, and that took most of his family.

-- Michael Hughes

Part I

Fighting The Poison

His desperate battle in retirement to save his family from the curse of opioids.

Part II

Fighting for Dignity

His rise from his darkest of days to begin his personal mission: George Chuvalo Fight Against Drugs.

Part III

Fighting The Fix

His incredible boxing career: facing Ali, Foreman, Frazier and every other champion of his era.

OPIOID WARRIOR

George Chuvalo

PROLOGUE:

"If boxing is a sport, it is the most tragic of all sports because, more than any human activity, it consumes the very excellence it displays. To expend oneself in fighting is to begin the downward turn that next time may be a plunge into the abyss."

- Joyce Carol Oates, Essays On Boxing

It was the weekend George Chuvalo’s world would finally come crashing down. The man George Foreman had called the toughest man on the planet, the only man in the recorded history of professional heavyweight boxing never to be knocked out, or even knocked off his feet in the ring, was, finally, down.

It was the summer of 1996.

American boxer, Johnny Tapia, junior bantamweight world title holder was fighting as many personal demons as challengers; allegations of wife abuse, a faltering career, a history of heroin use he couldn’t shake. His was a life in turmoil and he knew he needed help in his upcoming make-it-or-break-it match against coolly ferocious Japanese-American fighter Hugo Soto.

Tapia wanted—no, not merely wanted: needed—someone in his corner who understood his demons. Even though he and Chuvalo had never met personally, and Chuvalo was by then long retired, he was still legendary in boxing circles as one of the toughest heavyweights of all time. Tapia also knew that heroin had caused Chuvalo more pain in his personal life than anything in the ring had. In one way, Tapia was lucky: he was making good money and could afford whatever he needed, and he needed Chuvalo in his corner.

Like most events in Chuvalo’s life, this one followed a convoluted and sometimes even absurd path to an ultimately disastrous end.

With the Soto bout less than a week away, Tapia turned to Bob Case, a West Coast promoter. Case made a living in those days working contacts he’d built up over many years in the worlds of sports and show business, now working as an agent and a deal-maker. Tapia called him to ask if he could locate and contact the legendary George Chuvalo, whatever it took, to bring him to his Albuquerque training camp, also to be in his corner come fight night. Case, based out of LA then, already had an interest in the fight game through his involvement in the relatively-recent but still virtually-obscure, at that time, IBA, the International Boxing Association. Not to be confused with the long-established and recognized IBF, the International Boxing Federation which ranked fighters in each weight category and declared world champions. Tapia, from the newer IBA fight organization, wanted to go for the more legitimate IBF belt as well. And Case had said he was an old friend of Chuvalo’s.

Case was a six-foot four former major league baseball figure whose main claim to fame was being bat boy with the Los Angeles Angels back in the sixties and having Angels all-star pitcher, Sandy Koufax, hand his well-used baseball cap at the end of an award-winning season to the young Bob Case. Case held onto that cap for years, eventually selling it at auction for big bucks. He also went on to become known as a prodigious partier and regular on the LA party scene.

When I spoke to him, Case said that he and Chuvalo had met under the strangest of circumstances. As Case tells it: "In the late eighties I used to frequent a bar in Pasadena called Monaghan’s, a famous watering hole for pro athletes and celebrities. One night Chuvalo was there and someone introduced us. We became instant friends and started hanging out together, chasing girls, getting drunk, raising hell. He even stayed at my house a few times. I thought it was odd that Chuvalo had begun to drink so much, carouse so much after women, stayed up all night and slept all day. That wasn’t the highly-disciplined Chuvalo I’d heard about, but I just thought at the time, ‘Hey, people change.’ Chuvalo told me he owned a chain of laundromats in LA and that he didn’t have to work every day.

"Then, one day he just disappeared. We all thought he’d moved back to Canada. I asked my friend, Ingemar Johansson, the Swedish former world heavyweight champ, if he could pull some strings in the boxing world and track down Chuvalo’s private number in Toronto. He did. So I gave George a call and left a message on his machine: ‘Hey, Georgie, howerya doin’? Remember the good times?’ sort of message. But he didn’t return the call, so I left another. Then another. And another. Finally, I caught him home.

"I chewed him out. I said, ‘Georgie, what the hell do you think you’re doing, ducking my calls like that? I thought we were buddies.’ There was a few moment’s silence on the line, then George said, ‘I’m sorry, who did you say you were again?’

"To make a long story short, George and I had never actually met at all. He’d never been to Pasadena, much less Monaghan’s, had never got drunk with me, and had never chased women with me. The guy in Monaghan’s turned out to be an impostor, a Chuvalo look-alike living off Chuvalo’s reputation and good name. He was later arrested and charged for that impersonation. But George and I had such a good time figuring it all out on the phone that we became friends by long distance. Shortly after that I was in Toronto with Mickey Rooney, a long-time show biz contact and good friend, and I finally met George in person and found out what a beautiful guy he is. One of the kindest, gentlest, most honest, and articulate athletes I’ve ever met, and I’ve met thousands."

Mickey Rooney, one of Case’s clients, just happened to be working in Toronto at that time starring in a production of Crazy For You, the Gershwin tribute. After speaking with George, Case had followed up, getting George and Joanne tickets to see Rooney in the show playing at Toronto’s plush Royal Alexandra Theater. After the show, they all met up for an after-theatre dinner. So, having George’s unlisted home phone number, he agreed to make the call for Tapia.

When Bob’s call came in, it was the same week Steven got out, Chuvalo said at the time, "The first thing that struck me was the incongruity of the request. Here I was a retired 280-pound heavyweight, and there was Johnny, an active young 115-pound bantamweight. I was more than twice Johnny’s age and more than twice his entire body mass. Usually heavyweights stick with heavyweights, like I had Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano come up to my fights. But I knew what the connection was that Johnny felt with me: the poison!

"The problem was, when Bob called, I was once again dealing with the poison that infected my own family. I was more concerned with Steven’s life and health than anything else. When he caught up with me that day the only thing on my mind was, ‘Will Stevie be okay this time? Will he make it this time?"

These doubts reverberated and consumed Chuvalo’s thoughts almost to the exclusion of all others. But he knew that life must go on no matter what was swirling inside or around his head and, in the end, he managed to wrap his mind around what his old friend was saying. Johnny Tapia was a kid who needed him and, in truth, Chuvalo needed the payday.

He told Case, Okay, tell Johnny I’ll be there

Three days later, on a searing August Saturday at noon—Steven’s fourth day out—Chuvalo departed Toronto’s Pearson International for Albuquerque.

Chuvalo said of that anxiety-filled day: "All the way down on the flight and then, during the fight itself, as I stood in Tapia’s corner, I can’t count the number of times my mind drifted back to Steven, back to Toronto, back to Vanessa’s place, wondering; ‘Is Stevie okay? Is he having the solitary, soul-searching weekend he said he needed? Is he watching me on TV right now? Is he still alive?’ "

After the fight, Chuvalo was sitting with Case and Tapia on the back deck of Tapia’s sprawling home high in the New Mexico hills. They were overlooking the glittering sprawl of lights below that was Albuquerque, laid out across the blackness of the night-time desert. The air was warm and they were enjoying victory cigars, celebrating Tapia’s win over Soto.

Case, himself an ex-alcoholic and ex-coke addict, was trying to be positive for Chuvalo, talking in a philosophical and encouraging way about his own addiction recovery experiences. They talked also about Steven’s situation. About his addiction and about what Chuvalo might do to help him this time out of prison.

Case recalls, "We were all just sitting back, relaxed, when George stood and went quietly over to the railing, gripping it. He looked up at the heavens and said in a low tone that was almost pleading, ‘God, you’re a three time loser. You took two of my beautiful boys and you took Lynnie. Don’t take anyone else from me.’ After, when everyone had gone, when I looked back, I realized that that was almost at the exact moment, about midnight our time, while George was pleading to the heavens in New Mexico, that Steven was back in Toronto with his last needle in his arm, dying."

PART I

Fighting the Poison

"George Chuvalo in his prime was such a beautiful man. Such a rare talent, but such a contradiction. The courage and the heavily muscled upper body of the male alpha lion but the soul of an artist. So delicate. So sensitive. How often do you find that in one man? Extremely rare. George. Muhammad Ali. Who else?"

— the late Dr. Joe Greenberg,

George Chuvalo’s lifelong physician

ONE

Retirement hits with a vengeance

While George was able to delay official but inevitable retirement for several more years, after losing to Muhammad Ali for the second time in 1972, and being thirty-five years old, it meant that he was finished as a serious world-ranked contender with a realistic title shot.

He would drag out his career for another seven years chasing small-time paydays, but trouble on the family side would begin to come at him with a vengeance, and overwhelm both him and his family.

Shortly after Ali-Chuvalo II, a sportswriter asked Chuvalo about retirement and recorded this response: ’Not much longer—maybe a year.’ Chuvalo said it softly and gently, just as he does so many things—softly and gently. Which is a blessing, because if this solid, stolid Torontonian was a man of wrath, he could be pretty frightening. The writer added, To make sure that it won’t be necessary for his boys to follow the same path he did, Chuvalo has tried to build financial security for his family.

Unfortunately, that financial security was a mirage, a house of cards, and there were storm clouds gathering over the family which Chuvalo couldn’t foresee and could not fight off.

With his winnings from the second Ali bout, Chuvalo was able to purchase and move the family to an even nicer home than the tidy little bungalow that had backed onto Eglinton Avenue. This one was still in the suburb of Etobicoke in western Toronto, but in a more upscale enclave, on a street with the serene name of Golfwood Heights, which ran to the exclusive Weston Golf & Country Club at its north end.

Vanessa Chuvalo recalls the move as a young girl. However, her view of the new home and of the new neighborhood, was not all positive: "When I was four, we moved to Golfwood Heights, but people weren’t nice to us there and I could never figure out why. But my brothers were labeled on the street almost right away as the bad kids. I was too, because of my brothers, but I never knew why we were targeted. I always thought we were pretty good kids. But, for some reason, we were labeled, picked on, and ostracized. Other kids wouldn’t hang out with us. I never knew why that was either. I never knew if it was out of jealousy because of my dad or what, but we were just automatically classified right away as the bad neighbors. The bad kids. The ones who didn’t belong. So my brothers, I guess, rebelled and decided to live up to it.

"We never should have stayed there. We were considered the outsiders as soon as we moved in. My dad was in this tough world of boxing and he was struggling financially after his last big fight and big payday with Muhammad, but there we were, all of a sudden among families that made safe easy money: dentists, accountants, managers, business owners. People with big brand new cars and few financial worries. Whereas my dad, after his boxing career ended, struggled. Sometimes there was no money at all. So he didn’t fit in to their world and neither did we. It was my mother’s dream to buy that house, even though she didn’t like the way people treated us from the first moment we got there. Still, it had been her dream. To get there: the nice big middle-class home in a nice part of town with the pool in the backyard and the golf course down the road. Everything she wanted materially. But she was never able to make a friend there and we only got more isolated when my brothers Jesse, Steven, and Georgie hit their teens and began getting in trouble. Our reputation as the bad neighbors only grew worse and we were ostracized more than ever. I know that really bothered my brothers, made them more determined not to care what the neighbors thought."

Chuvalo’s fame also worked against the young family in that they weren’t able to sort out problems privately and on their own, keep it in the house. Even minor trouble seemed to bring the critical glare of bad publicity. Whenever there was trouble in our family, it was always news. Even minor trouble. It would hit the papers, Vanessa says. Never any good came of my dad’s fame. Not for me. Nor for my brothers. It was always, ‘Your dad is a has-been.’ ’Your dad is a loser.’ Which was so unfair, because my dad had fought so hard for so long and had such a great career, respected around the world, but not in our own neighborhood. But that’s the way it was. In some ways, I think it was part of being a boxer in Canada. There was a really negative and defeatist attitude among some people. A stigma against professional boxers. Not from ordinary working people, but more from the media and the so-called ‘establishment.’ I think there still is. I just think my dad and my brothers got more than their share of that negativity. They didn’t deserve that treatment. We should have stayed where we were, even though it was a smaller place, we were happy there.

Spider Jones, Chuvalos occasional spar mate, had been a close friend of the Chuvalo family since the sixties and was someone who had watched the boys grow up. He agrees that the Chuvalo boys were constantly being challenged just for being Chuvalos, and often, as kids, had to fight when it was the last thing they wanted to have to do. They were really gentle boys, but other kids were always at them.

Vanessa agrees. "My brothers were only tough because they had to be. They were all strong, tough boys. But they were gentle when they were just left alone, which wasn’t often. They became tough because they had to be."

Several times in his career Chuvalo was only one punch away from the title of heavyweight champion of the world. If he had achieved it and made millions, would it have made much difference to what was going on in the family? Absolutely, Vanessa says. "If dad had made it really big, we would have left the kind of area we lived in. Maybe to a bigger house but in a more working-class area where my dad was so well loved. Or maybe outside the city altogether. Someplace where the boys weren’t targeted all the time. Maybe my brothers wouldn’t have been exposed to a lot of the things they were exposed to. That neighborhood definitely wasn’t right for us. Enough money makes things a lot better. You can insulate yourself and your family better from outside forces, rather than expose them, which is what happened to us as kids."

It may be that the middle class dream isn’t the right dream for the prizefighter and his family. It may be that the broad middle class, where disapproval of boxing seems to be strongest, doesn’t respect the prizefighter, and he and his family will never fit in there. In any case, Chuvalo’s income was back to being as it had been since the earliest days of his career: sporadic and seldom quite enough.

Financial turbulence in Chuvalo’s life arrived just as emotional turbulence was impacting the boys’ lives. Chuvalo tried so hard to keep things together for his family, to hold on to some of the glory while also trying to maintain his income, but instead came a string of entrepreneurial enterprises for which he wasn’t prepared, for which he had no training, and that didn’t pan out. The income tap got turned off just as the three middle boys hit their most formative years.

By 1972 Mitch was fourteen and had been fortunate to have been a young boy through his dad’s glory years and had gotten mostly positive comments and praise from his schoolmates and friends growing up for having a cool dad. Vanessa was only five and not yet aware of her dad’s stressed circumstances. Also, as the only girl in the brood, she was less involved in her dad’s career and identity. The fact even that he was a boxer meant little to her. So, while Mitch and Vanessa were spared the worst of the fallout of their dad’s struggling years, the three middle boys took the full brunt of very uncertain times.

Aside from the income plunge, there was the added onerous burden on the boys of growing up as the sons of not only the toughest man in Canada, but the man who had reputedly been treated like a human punching bag throughout his career. The man who had lost all his biggest bouts when one win in any of those bouts could have led to the Heavyweight Championship title and many millions more in career earnings.

So, Chuvalo’s life began to revolve more and more around deals than ever before. Short-term small-time deals for quick bits of income. Deals had always been a feature of the landscape in Chuvalo’s life, but they had always been a sideline, ways to make some quick extra bucks with little time or effort spent. Often as cash payments and free of the tax man. But now they took center stage and were charged then with much more urgency because they were needed. Sometimes they were land deals, which by their very nature were cash draining waiting for long-term payoffs, but, just as often, there were minor-league deals: signing autographs somewhere on a Saturday afternoon.

Vanessa recalls those days: "When I was growing up my dad was always running around just trying to make a buck. We lived on his dreams. His Big Dreams again. We’re going to be rich, we’re going to do this, we’re going to have that, with all his wheeling and dealing. But it just never happened. Just never happened. He was offered jobs, but he wouldn’t dance to anybody else’s tune. He’s not a nine to five guy. He would never work a nine to five job. For instance, he was offered a job with the Ontario Boxing Commission, like Clyde Gray got into when he retired. A government job with a huge salary and guaranteed everything, including a gold-plated pension. But my dad said ‘No.’ My father always felt he was better than that. Better than just a paycheck every week. He wanted more. But it just never happened. At least not while my brothers and I were growing up."

In 1973, Chuvalo took a couple of minor fights. He made the hour’s drive down to Buffalo one September day to, once again, take out his old friend and spar mate Tony Ventura in three restrained rounds for a five thousand dollar payday. A week later Chuvalo was back in Buffalo meeting journeyman Mike Boswell, taking him out in the seventh for another five grand payday. So he had made ten grand in one month, and that was the goal. Irving Ungerman had made the drive down with him for that one, and this bout is memorable mostly for being the very last time Chuvalo would ever work with Ungerman. After the Boswell bout, Chuvalo banned Ungerman from his corner and permanently severed any boxing relations with the chicken man.

Teddy McWhorters, then in decline, in his seventies and mostly retired, still picked up the odd minor payday with Chuvalo, accompanying him on these twilight bouts.

Chuvalo was also active in the movie business about that time. Over the span of several years he had minor bit roles in such films as the re-make of the cult classic The Fly with Jeff Goldblum (Chuvalo’s in the bizarre and memorable scene where Goldblum wrestles his arm off in a bar); The Untouchables, with Robert Stack; Love You Hugs and Kisses with Elke Sommer, Prom Night III with Sissy Spacek. Fifteen films in all. But they were another sideline and didn’t constitute big paydays for bit parts.

As for a movie on his own life that could have brought in much-needed revenue? George had an almost pathological obsession to make sure there was never to be a film done of his life. That phobia was based on what he perceived had happened with Raging Bull, the classic 1980 B&W film by Martin Scorsese about Bronx-born middleweight champion, Jake LaMotta. George was very close with LaMotta in those years and when he saw what they did to poor old Jake (George's words) he swore he'd never sign a film deal with anyone. It was George's opinion that "they really stiffed Jake on that one, on the money AND the movie.

Chuvalo’s film career also should have been a source of pride to his children, but in some ways they were almost a distraction from more pressing family issues.

Some of the films were fun, Vanessa recalled. "I remember being on the set of The Fly when it was being filmed. The bar scenes were shot in a little place called Soupy’s in a seedy area of downtown Toronto. It sure was authentic as a rundown little dive bar. I brought my friends along and we hung out while they filmed. I met David Cronenberg, Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis which was a big thrill. But overall, my dad being in films wasn’t really a Big Deal with me. Some kids at school commented on it. But my dad being in the movies just wasn’t important to me, as a kid. I was always more worried about other things at home—money concerns of my dad’s, the boys getting into trouble, my mom’s welfare—so maybe I didn’t want to talk about things like my dad being in a movie. I’d block out comments about dad being in a film because everything was not okay at home. I just closed it off."

As for the prospect of a film being produced of his own life to that time, Chuvalo wasn’t interested. Not merely not interested, one hundred per cent adamantly against it. Even though a movie might have brought in much-needed revenue, he was distressed and discouraged by what he considered happened to Jake LaMotta. Chuvalo was close friends with LaMotta at that time, when LaMotta’s early life was portrayed in the critically acclaimed and highly successful 1980 black and white docudrama, Raging Bull, based on LaMotta’s own autobiographical account of his early fight years and fractious early marriage.

But Chuvalo says that he was offended on behalf of his old friend. According to him, LaMotta said he was given twenty thousand dollars at the outset of production and it was then made clear to him to stay away from the set, they were going to do it their way. Chuvalo felt that the resulting movie on which Martin Scorcese, Robert DeNiro, and Joe Pesci made major career steps, not to mention major paydayswas a cruel and twisted distortion of LaMotta’s tough early life. LaMotta was portrayed as a raging out-of-control psychotic brute bearing no resemblance to the LaMotta Chuvalo said he knew.

That film caused Chuvalo to stay well away from any biopic proposals that came his way on his own lifeand many did come his wayfearing that his life might be portrayed in the same buffoonish and negative way.

TWO

Chuvalo’s new world of pain

-- opioids

Chuvalo missed his career badly and, as he said many times, he was born to be a boxer and he loved all aspects of it, including the training. So, even as the bouts got smaller and more meaningless, he still went to the gym every day just to be in that environment and still keep his body and mind in the shape of a top-ranked contender.

In 1974 he was finally able to put The Caravan Club – the nightclub he co-owned-- behind him and close that chapter of his life. It had started with such high hopes, but had been petering out and on life-support for years, finally closing its doors for good after a seven-year run. Chuvalo had sunk a lot of his Patterson-Terrell cash into it, and it was still draining him at the end. So he wasn’t sorry to see it gone.

For Jesse Miles, the youngest and smallest of the three boys, trouble just wouldn’t leave him alone. In the spring of 1975, at age eleven, he was playing with friends around neighborhood houses. They were playing with BB gun air rifles, which were all the rage at the time with young boys. And they were considered to be a toy, and not dangerous because, while a BB could fly a hundred feet or so, it was almost weightless , couldn’t penetrate the skin, and had almost no impact. However, many children of that era suffered eye injuries from BBs. And this is what happened to a friend of Jesse’s.

It was never clear whether Jesse and his friends were actually shooting at each other, playing cowboys and Indians, or shooting at objects—bottles, cans, sticks—but Jesse fired his gun and the BB ricocheted off a wall and struck another boy in the eye, blinding him in that eye. The incident resulted in a lawsuit against Chuvalo and an eventual financially-draining out-of-court settlement. However, on the more personal side, Jesse was devastated by the incident. He was so guilt-ridden that he started to speak openly about suicide. It was the first time such talkor even thoughtshad surfaced and, coming from an eleven year old boy, it was disturbing to George and Lynne. But they wrote it off as the natural feelings of guilt and depression a young boy would feel after such a traumatic incident and they hoped it would pass.

But It may have been a turning point in Jesse’s troubled young life.

Always a private kid, he became even more withdrawn and two years later, at thirteen, he began smoking marijuana—a fateful gateway introduction, for him, Chuvalo says, to other drug use. However, his actual introduction to substance abuse may have started even before the BB incident. Not a far walk from their neighborhood was an industrial area, where there was one fateful plant in particular: a glue factory. Chuvalo claims that there was a particular vent at this glue factory that emitted a stream of glue vapors directly onto a side-street, and that Jesse and some of his pre-teen friends took to hanging around this vent, inhaling the vapors to get high. The factory is no longer there, but Chuvalo is convinced that that plant was the start of drug problems creeping into his family, that it pre-disposed Jesse to drug use.

In 1976 Chuvalo took night courses at George Brown College and got a real estate license. He had long admired the way Irving Ungerman wheeled and dealed in real estate, and he thought he might try his luck.

He was still upbeat generally about business prospects in late 1977 when he agreed to be interviewed by Barbara Amiel of Maclean’s Magazine, now better known as the Baroness Black of Crossharbour, the wife of the international media mogul and financier, Conrad Black. Black had been given the title Baron Black of Crossharbour while living in Britain but ended up losing much of his fortune in protracted legal battles and a subsequent conviction for various forms of legal malfeasance, even serving some time in a US prison.

He told Amiel, I’m alright financially. I have some real estate of my own and a terrific deal selling land at a small place where I get 100% commission. It was one example of a business situation that sounded good, but wasn’t necessarily. The kind of real