Boxer Chuck Wepner, the inspiration for ‘Rocky,’ honored in Bayonne, N.J., with statue

The Bayonne Bleeder got bronzed.

Chuck Wepner, the heavyweight slugger who inspired Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa character when he shockingly knocked down Muhammad Ali in the ninth round of their 1975 championship bout, was honored Saturday with a larger-than-life bronze statue in his hometown of Bayonne, N.J.

It’s a fitting tribute for the popular brawler known as the Bayonne Bleeder for usually ending up battered and bloody, win or lose.

“Unfortunately the face looks exactly like me,” Wepner, 83, joked about the monument unveiled at Dennis P. Collins Park just across the water from Staten Island. “I asked the sculptor to make me look like Rock Hudson. He said, Nah, I can’t do that. It has to look like Chuck Wepner.”

Among the attendees were former heavyweight champion Larry Holmes, boxers Gerry Cooney and Iran Barkley, and actor Liev Schreiber, who played Wepner in the 2017 film “Chuck.”

Wepner jokingly conceded the statue, which stands seven-feet tall and weighs 1,200 pounds, is “a little bigger than” his 6′5 frame, which weighed roughly 224 pounds when he fought Ali for the heavyweight title and lost by TKO in the 15th round.

Now, more than four years into a battle with a form of cancer called LARS, Wepner said he’s lost 35 pounds but isn’t ready to throw in the towel.

“I’m fighting it [but] it’s a bad one,” he said. “I wish I could say it’s getting better, or it feels better ... I’m hanging in there.”

Just the same, Wepner claims, “I’ve been very lucky” and credits events like the unveiling of his statue for keeping him going. He still makes a living as a liquor salesman for Allied Beverages, where he’s worked for 54 years, and has been married to his “amazing” wife Linda for 23 years.

He said it happens “all the time” that when he’s working his day job, customers remember him from his glory days as a heavyweight contender and New Jersey State champ who also fought George Foreman and Sonny Liston — both of them losses — over a 14-year career that began in 1964.

Wepner had a lackluster 35-14-2 record as a pro, but he was a crowd-pleasing bruiser who always gave as good as he got. He said his colorful nickname was the result of 328 stitches, nine broken noses, and the shattering of both eardrums.

“I was a fighter, I wasn’t a boxer,” he said. “The bell rang and I was there, you didn’t have to chase me.”

That wasn’t the case with Ali, who Wepner said he chased for 15 rounds before being stopped in the final seconds of the bout by the “The Greatest.”

“I gave him my best shot,” Wepner recalled. “It was the only fight I ever trained for full-time.”

He still recalls throwing the punch that put Ali on the canvas.

“Of course I was surprised,” Wepner admits. “He threw a jab and I slipped under it ... and I hit him with a right hand under the heart. He was off-balance — he was surprised. He went down like a ton of bricks.”

Wepner said he and Ali went on to become “dear, dear friends” before he finally helped put the heavyweight champ down for the count in 2016 when he sat ringside at his former opponent’s funeral in Louisville, Ky.

The Ali bout was definitely the highlight of Wepner’s career. For years after, he carried a business card that had a photo of him knocking down Ali — which he once showed to the former champ.

“I told you I don’t like that picture,” Ali said and smiled, Wepner recalled.

The fight also inspired Stallone’s title character in the 1976 film classic “Rocky,” which landed those two in court three decades later, resulting in a 2006 settlement.

”I sued him for $15 million and I didn’t take anywhere near that. I just wanted him to admit I was the inspiration,” Wepner said. ”I love Stallone, he’s been very good to me and it was very unfortunate I had to go to court.”

Boxing promoter Lou DiBella, whose Broadway Boxing series will resume operations Nov. 22 at the Edison Ballroom for the first time since the pandemic shut the event down, said Wepner “was the people’s choice sort of fighter.”

“Chuck was a working man’s fighter ... he’d make a fight hell for anyone on Earth. Was he a championship level guy? No. But he’s sort of a legend.”