Nearly 50 years after Chuck Walker was a member of the 1976 Summer Olympics USA boxing team, he is still close with the remaining boxers of the team and calls them brothers.
Walker, 67, of Conroe represented the United States at the Montreal games and his boxing teammates included Ray Charles Leonard, best known as Sugar Ray Leonard, brothers Leon and Michael Spinks, Leo Randolph, Charles Mooney, Big John Tate and Howard Davis.
Several in this list won gold medals that year. While Walker didn’t medal in 1976 the former boxer-turned-movie director/producer has plenty to reminisce about from his Olympic experience as the Summer Olympics get underway in Paris.
The Games began Friday night and continue through Aug. 11 in France.
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Dancing before boxing
Walker grew up in Mesa, Arizona and became enrolled in dance as a young boy to overcome being born with a club foot. He later became a professional dancer.
He began boxing at age 13. His uncle, Mack, took him to some advertised boxing matches in Mesa.
“I sat in the audience and watched those fights and there was something in me that said ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to do that.’ I’d never had that sensation before or since,” he said. “Something just swept over me.”
He pestered his dad to take him to the Gene Lewis boxing gym in Mesa where he became a regular for the next five years. At 16, he won the Arizona State Golden Gloves Championship in Phoenix.
National spotlight
In the summer of 1975, he earned the chance to fight in the national boxing tournament in Shreveport, Louisiana. There he won his first three fights and began to turn heads. On the fourth night, he fought Robert White who was the No. 2 boxer in the nation and won.
This qualified him for the finals where national sportscasters Pat Summerall, Frank Gifford and boxer Jerry Quarry went to bat for him with CBS so Walker’s final fight of the tournament was televised nationally.
Thinking about it still gets him emotional today. He took that match knocking his opponent out in the first round.
“From total obscurity I was suddenly champion of the United States and No. 1 in line to all international competitions,” he said.
He was a part of the boxing team for the 1975 Pan American Games in Mexico City and continued to fight up until the Olympics. He received a bronze medal in Mexico City.
Montreal Olympic experience
Walker participated in the opening ceremonies in Montreal and called it a surreal experience to be among athletes from all over the world.
“Fortune smiled on Chuck in many ways at Montreal, as he reveled in the companionship of three later-to-be world champions,” said Robin Montgomery, Montgomery County historian and close friend of the Harris boxing family. “These were Michael Spinks who defeated Larry Holmes for the world heavyweight title, his brother Leon, who defeated the fabled Muhammed Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, popular world champion middle weight.”
Walker’s Olympic match though was disappointing and still leaves some questions about the scoring. He fought the Polish champion Jerzy Rybicki now a Polish politician.
The fight went to a split decision with three votes for the Polish fighters and two for Walker. He now feels the decision may have been impacted by global events at the time.
“It shouldn’t have even been close. Howard Cosell was doing the commentary and said ‘Ladies and gentleman this is the biggest travesty of justice I’ve ever seen in the Olympic games.’ Everyone was sorry but that didn’t chance the results and that was the end of my Olympic games,” he said.
Rybicki went on to win the gold medal in the division.
Often at the place where the athletes stayed during the games, he’d get on and off the elevator with a guy named Bruce. They would exchange pleasantries and go on about their day.
“Of course he wasn’t that famous at the time, but it was Bruce Jenner,” Walker said.
The former athlete who now goes by Caitlyn Jenner won the gold medal and broke the world record in decathlon in Montreal.
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Movies and turning pro
Following the Olympics he turned pro and continued to fight. He stopped for a while to focus on entertainment projects, but in 1984 staged a comeback and this lead him to Conroe to train with Henry Harris and the Harris family of which boxer Roy Harris was a product.
He fought until the late 1980s still No. 4 in his weight class and then turned his attention to acting and directing and formed Walker Cable Productions with then Conroe High teacher Sam Cable in the 1990s. Cable promoted Walker’s last few fights.
Over the years they’ve found success with several films including 2008’s “The Man Who Came Back” starring Eric Braeden, Billy Zane, George Kennedy, and Armand Assante; “Border Cross” which came out in 2017 featuring Lorenzo Lamas and Danny Trejo and 2015’s “A Little Christmas Business” with Daniel Baldwin, Tammy Barr, Lorenzo Lamas, Bo Hopkins, Leslie Easterbrook and Gib Gerard.
Most recently in 2023 working with Cable’s son, Ritchie, they released the film “The Author” about an author who is in a car accident. He is struggling with his faith and is asked to write about his life.
They are currently working on a series about community theater.
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