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Remembering Renaissance man and Hall of Famer the great Nick Charles

Remembering Renaissance man and Hall of Famer the great Nick Charles
BOXING

Remembering Renaissance man and Hall of Famer the great Nick Charles

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Nick Charles, Cory Charles and Evander Holyfield (Photo courtesy of the Charles family)

by Joseph Santoliquito | 

Nick Charles always seemed to have a walking subtitle under him: “Is this guy too good to be true?” It stirs a laugh from Hall of Fame broadcaster Steve Farhood, who worked with Charles for 11 years doing Showtime’s “ShoBox: The New Generation” series and working with Charles on CNN.

Once or twice a year, Farhood’s old high school buddies get together to play basketball on a local playground in Peter Cooper Village on the lower east side of Manhattan. One time, Charles happened to be in town and joined them. During the course of the afternoon, Charles made eye contact with each one of Farhood’s friends, asking inquisitive questions, making it a point to show a keen interest in their lives. Being skeptical New Yorkers, they approached their friend Farhood afterward and collectively asked, “Is this guy legit?”

“I remember telling them that is how Nick is,” Farhood said. “Nick’s philosophy in life was you only should be judged by how you treat somebody who can do nothing for you. That was a great quote and Nick really did that. He was great with garage attendants, the doorman, he legitimately showed an interest in everyone. You give that kind of love, it comes back. That was Nick. My biggest regret was that more people did not know Nick personally.”

On Sunday, the one-time taxi driver from Chicago will be posthumously inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame with fighters Diego “Chico” Corrales, Ricky “The Hitman” Hatton, Michael “Double M” Moorer and Ivan “Iron Boy” Calderon. In the women’s modern category, Jane “The Fleetwood Assassin” Couch and “La Guerrera” Ana Maria Torres will be inducted, along with trainer Kenny Adams, manager Jackie Kallen and beloved publicist Fred Sternburg.

In the non-participant category, Charles will be joined by journalist Wallace Matthews as part of the 2024 class in the observer category, while Luis Angel Firpo will posthumously go in in the Old Timer category and Theresa Kibby posthumously in the women’s trailblazer category.

Charles, born Nick Nickeas, died on June 25, 2011, at the age of 64 after battling bladder cancer. Told once by a news director that his name was “too ethnic,” he changed his name to Charles. He was raised in a dirt-under-the-fingernails, blue collar environment where no job was too big or small. In many ways, Charles was a fighter himself. As a teenager, he would brace himself against the brazen Chicago chill and work overnight jobs on produce docks. His nadir came when he was told to shovel out piles of rat excrement. The happening forced him into a cab to pay for Columbia College Chicago, where he studied communications and journalism.

Despite the hardscrabble upbringing, the radiant beauty about Charles was his authenticity.

“Nick was otherworldly in a sense, a true man’s man, and Nick was not just handsome and charming, Nick was real,” said Cory Charles, Charles’ wife who he met while he was at CNN. “We both came from humble backgrounds, and both came from fathers who were World War II veterans and both our fathers read voraciously. Nick was highly intellectual. He found these deep meanings in sports that I do not see with a lot of broadcasters today. Nick was constantly reading. People may not know this about Nick, but he may have known more about classical music than some people in the Atlanta symphony.

“I am surprised Nick never wrote a book. He was a great writer who wrote his own material, which is not done very often today.”

A true Renaissance man.

Charles built his career working out of the boondocks of the Chicago area. He started out as the nightly sports host at WICS, in Springfield, Illinois, worked his way to WRC-TV, in Washington, D.C., as sports director, then to WJZ-TV in Baltimore, Maryland, and in 1980, made history as the first sports anchor for CNN. That is how America became familiar with Charles. He and Fred Hickman created one of the best broadcasting teams in the history of network TV sports. His 17-year tenure as co-host of CNN’s “Sports Tonight” is a testament to his work ethic and personal sincerity.

With anyone who ever truly knew Charles, spent time with him, they often conclude their sentences with “… that was Nick.”

“Nick had so many incredible stories from being a taxi driver in Chicago, where one time he saw someone die in his cab, and a woman give birth in his cab,” Cory recalled. “There was this one story where one woman took him for an hour-long drive, and she stiffed him, but she left a diamond ring on the seat. I went to a lot of fights with Nick. He had a very close relationship with Mike Tyson and we went everywhere. I was actually friends with Evander Holyfield before I even met Nick.

“Nick just had this passion to see the world. We were married for 13 years and it was greatest time of my life. We went to places people would never think of going today. We went to Iran one time on a holiday. It was so Nick. It took us three attempts and we loved it. We went to Northern Pakistan. Nick was never really a beach person, but I made him snorkel all over the world. He went scuba diving once and almost died, because he saw the biggest sea turtle he ever saw and got so excited his mask flew off. Someone had grab him and save him.”

Cory will be making Charles’ acceptance speech. She knows what this weekend will be like. Charles’ induction has been along time coming. She wants people to remember Charles as someone whose favorite sport was boxing, and he truly appreciated the lives fighters led. The last decade of his life was boxing.

DVDs would arrive in the mail so Charles could break down the fighters he would be broadcasting.

“He lived for it, with a passion more than he had at CNN,” Cory said. “When it came to boxing, it was as important to him as his family and other hobbies.”

Katie Charles, Nick’s daughter, was three-months old when Charles adopted her. She is 37 now and is in business operations for Walmart.

“I was really young when my dad doing fights and in my early 20s when he passed,” Katie said. “Hall of Fame weekend will be an introduction for me to his boxing world and the connections that he had. It will be a forever memorial to the anchor that he was. My dad’s ability to connect to anyone and everyone is a lasting memory I will always have about my dad. My dad was everyone’s best friend. He cared about everyone’s life story, where they came from, who they were.

“He did not have just great hair (laughs). He connected with people. I interned at CNN shortly after he passed, and I remember everyone my dad knew coming up to me. One guy came up crying to me about how my dad was one of the most genuine people they ever met. Hall of Fame weekend will be emotional. I think about my dad every day. Being there will bring back a lot of memories in my life.”

This weekend will be bittersweet. It will be a celebration of a man who liked to celebrate everyone else around him, and both be viscerally pulling that Charles will not be there to bask in the glow of a sport he so fervently treasured and where he was admired.

“It is tough, I think about Nick every day,” Farhood said. “When Nick was dying, he was able to talk about his situation without any emotion. He explained how cancer had attacked him after our last broadcast together. When he was talking, it was very hard for me not to break down. It still when I think about Nick. As legitimate as Nick was, and ‘legitimate’ is a term you do not use too often when it comes to TV people, because when the camera is on, you wear makeup and you are basically acting, Nick was as real off the camera as he was on it. I have been blessed with two very special people, Barry Tompkins and Nick Charles, who I broadcast with for more than 10 years. They are two very different people, and two very different announcers. But both are Hall of Famers now. Nick loved a lot of things in his life and boxing was one of them.”

Charles never seemed to have a bad day in his life.

Cory was with Nick the day he died. He passed peacefully in his sleep during home hospice care in a room adjacent to where Cory was sleeping. He is buried in the backyard of their New Mexico home.

“I look at his picture every minute,” said Cory, a guest booker for news networks. “People say time heals all things, but when you spent time with someone you really love, they are always with you. There is a restaurant that I still go to that we used to go together. His picture is even in there (laughs). Nick will never leave me.”

Joseph Santoliquito is a Hall of Fame, award-winning sportswriter who has been working for Ring Magazine/RingTV.com since October 1997 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America.
Follow @JSantoliquito



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