THE STORYTELLER
From door to door salesman to world champion to ‘America’s baddest grandad’, Nate Campbell might not be rich but he can always hold his head up high, as Thomas Gerbasi discovers
‘The Galaxxy Warrior’ Nate Campbell has many enthralling tales to tell
NATE CAMPBELL has a story to tell. He’s got dozens of them, each one more compelling than the last. It’s a reminder that if there were a Hall of Fame for such a talent, “The Galaxxy Warrior” would be a first-ballot inductee. It’s not the only talent Campbell was blessed with. His ability to throw hands with the best in the ring earned him three world lightweight title belts a decade ago. And though that wasn’t the course he expected to take, looking back, the die was cast when he was just a schoolboy in Florida.
“It was a Tuesday morning, I’ll never forget it,” laughs Campbell.
Just six years old, the future world champion had a rough first day of school on Monday, as a classmate named Michael gave him a rude welcome.
“He slapped me and ran me home. And when I say he ran me home, he literally ran me home.” That didn’t sit too well with the Campbell clan. “One of my sister’s uncles saw me get slapped and he went and told my dad,” he recalled. “And my dad beat me, my mom beat me, my grandmother. You just didn’t do that where I was from.”
Tuesday morning, Campbell’s father told him to put on his “play” clothes and brought him back to the bus stop.
“I’m thinking my daddy’s gonna wait and kick his ass,” he laughs. “I’m all bold.”
“When you see him, you tell me who he is,” said Campbell’s father. “Yes sir.” A few minutes passed. “There he go, right there.” The father looked at the boy, but didn’t even turn to his son as he said, “Go over there and start punching on him and don’t stop until I tell you to.”
“I looked at him like, ‘I thought you were on my side?’” said Cambell. “But I ran over, ran through all my fear and started punching.”
And he didn’t stop. Not as the adults in the area tried to intervene. Not as Michael scratched and clawed to get Campbell off him. Finally, the only voice that could make him pull away spoke. As Campbell stood up, his father handed him a bag that had his school clothes in them. When the ³
WHEN I RETIRED NOTHING WAS EASY LIKE BOXING. IT TOOK ME YEARS TO RECOVER FROM THAT. I WAS NO USE TO ANYBODY, I WAS DEPRESSED”
youngster changed and returned, he got a hug, a kiss on the cheek, and a life lesson from his father.
“You’re from the ghetto,” said father to son. “You don’t run from nobody. Your last name is Campbell.”
Forty years later, Campbell still recounts those words with pride.
“From that day forward, I never ran from nobody. Me and you was gonna fight. You best believe I wasn’t running from you. I never took a backwards step. It didn’t matter how big you were; whatever was gonna happen was gonna happen, but you were gonna be in a scrap. There was no give, no run, which didn’t work out for me so good when I first started boxing.”
Some would say that was what made Campbell special on fight night. For better or worse, he wasn’t going to back down from a scrap, and at 46, he’s as feisty as ever.
“I’m not running from a dog. If a pit bull breaks off a chain and comes at me, we’re both bit. Just understand that.”
It’s why his commentary on Roy Jones Jnr’s final bout against Scott Sigmon was the highlight of that broadcast, why his show – Experience The Galaxxy with
Nate Campbell – is a hit among the hardcore, and why he didn’t pull punches on the most bizarre fight (or non-fight) of the year when the boxer he trained, Curtis Harper, left the ring just after the opening bell sounded against Efe Ajagba in August.
That no-nonsense approach to life may have cost him some gigs over the years, but he’s not about to tone anything down, especially when it comes to life in the ring.
“I’m a fighter’s trainer,” he said. “If a guy’s manager says or does something stupid, I tend to let the manager have it. I don’t like fighters to be taken advantage of, and I won’t be a part of it.”
Campbell saw the good, the bad and the ugly over the course of a 14-year pro career, and he was well prepared for it all having seen plenty of each growing up in Florida. His mother had issues with drugs and wound up in prison. His father died from pneumonia when Campbell was just 10 years old. This combination sent Campbell through the foster care system, and though he had apparently found some roots when he was taken in by his cousins Margaret and Louis Mosley at 13, a few years later, he was dealing drugs and heading down a wrong path, one that resulted in his own jail time – three weeks for being out after curfew.
He was 17 and it was a wakeup call. From there, Campbell avoided the temptations of the street as he worked anywhere and everywhere he could.
“I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door,” he said. “I was selling the s**t out of them. Gen 4. They came out with shampoo attached to it and I was shampooing rooms. And by the time I was through shampooing that room, I was writing you up.”
He also sold meat in Savannah, Georgia.
Meat. “I was the man,” he laughed. “This meat sold itself.” Perhaps the only world champion in boxing history to be a door to door meat salesman, Campbell doesn’t regret those days for one second because it kept him on the straight and narrow, put food on the table for his own growing family and developed the work ethic he would soon apply to a pro boxing career that began in 2000.
He needed that dedication, because when he stopped Scoey Fields in a single round in his debut, he was 27 with little room for error.
“I was a struggling fighter,” he said. “Every day was a struggle for me. For me, there was no ifs, ands or buts – there was no in between. There was no place in my life where I could take off and start over. This was what it was for me.”
Campbell started off winning and he kept winning. He shot out to a 23-0 record before dropping a close decision to Joel Casamayor in a short notice 2003 meeting but, by then, the boxing community knew who he was, and he was within striking range of bigger and better opportunities. And he had all the motivation in the world to succeed.
“I really want you to print this,” he said. “I stayed motivated because of Jazmyn, Janae and Jade. I stayed motivated because there was no other way in my life. No one saw me as good and perfect but those three young ladies.”
Providing for his three daughters took Campbell to new heights, but his ambition also led him to distraction, with the most notable (and notorious) instance coming when he dropped his hands to taunt Robbie Peden in their title elimination bout and wound up getting knocked out. Even in 2004, long before viral videos, this clip got around. A year later, Peden stopped Campbell a second time, and when he lost a decision to Francisco Lorenzo, the verdict on “The Galaxxy Warrior” was that he was good, but not good enough to become a world champion.
Yet three years after the first loss to Peden, Campbell shocked the critics when he decisioned Juan Diaz to win the IBF, WBA and WBO lightweight titles in 2008. Against all odds, the Floridian was a world champion.
It would not be a long reign, as he lost his titles on the scale the night before a 2009 win over Ali Funeka. That episode began an 11-fight run that included only four wins, a short-lived retirement and bankruptcy. In March 2014, he fought for the last time, winning an eight-round decision over Gilbert Venegas. At 42, Campbell was retired and lost.
“I went through a real bad time after I retired and I couldn’t get up on my feet,” he said. “I didn’t make the kind of money the rest of the guys made. I made enough money to live on, but I would never be a rich man. So I put a little money away that I really can’t get to until I’m much older. But I would never be the guy who retired and rode off into the sunset because I couldn’t get the [Floyd] Mayweather fight, the [Juan Manuel] Marquez fight. None of those guys would fight me. So I never made a million dollar payday.”
The big money would have made life easier, but it wouldn’t have necessarily made it better. He found that out almost as soon as he hung the gloves up.
“What I learned was, as much as my heart was broken, I was a hundred per cent in love with the game of boxing, and I was blessed to do my job,” Campbell said. “And when I retired, nothing I did worked the same as boxing. Nothing was easy like boxing was. To me, boxing was easy. Nothing else was easy like that. It took me some years to get through that. I was of no use to anybody. I went through the worst depression I ever went through in my life and I felt like giving up. But one night while sitting in my apartment, I looked around and I said, ‘You know what, I refuse to quit. It’s just not in me.’ I refused to quit, I refused to give up, I wasn’t gonna be a statistic.” There was only one loose end to tie up. “My mother wasn’t the hug and kiss kind of a mother,” Campbell said. “She was a hard girl, she came up rough, came up tough. At 40 years old, I began to really turn a corner and realise who she was and what she was.”
Mother and son went to brunch every Sunday, catching up on lost time, but by 2016, Ann Jones was running out of time.
“My mother started to get really, really sick,” he said. “But the greatest moment of my life was the day that she told me she was proud of me.”
“You could have been a failure with me being hooked on drugs and being in and out of prison, your daddy dying when you was 10,” she told her son. “You didn’t let none of that stop you. You did something that’s going to forever make me proud of you. And it ain’t the world title. You made it out. You didn’t go to prison, you didn’t go to jail, and you’ve raised beautiful daughters.”
Ann wanted Nate to write her eulogy, something he didn’t want to address, but he wouldn’t let her wish go unfulfilled. He just couldn’t deal with that now. Campbell went on a trip to Thailand in November 2016. They talked and joked, but soon, Ann was in the hospital. Campbell prepared to fly home.
“What for, you ain’t no doctor,” Ann told him. “Stay over there.”
Things got worse, and Campbell’s oldest daughter Jazmyn gave him the news: “She’s sick and they don’t expect her to make it.” “Keep reviving her until I get home,” said Campbell, but during his flight home, Ann Jones passed away. She was 60. “I’m the oldest child, the only son, and I know I’ve got a job to do,” he said. “I switched into my mode of doing my job. I wrote the eulogy, but I was beat up. I was in a haze.” Campbell arrived at the funeral parlor. “It was the hardest moment of my life, but I said, ‘I’ve got to see her.’ This is me spending time with the first woman I ever loved. It was just me and her and I kinda cried. That’s my girl. I kissed her on the forehead.”
As he left the room, he had an announcement for his family and friends. “This is gonna be a celebration. Because she lived.” He pauses after recalling his mother’s passing. “I didn’t get to see my father die. He died when I was 10. That was the most painful moment. My mother dying was the second. She was a great woman. I’ve been blessed. I’ve lived life.”
And he’s still living it, as a father of three, and grandfather to four (with one grandchild on the way).
“I’m still America’s baddest granddad,” said Campbell, who says of boxing, “I fight the urge every day. With the way they’re paying these kids – with monopoly money – you might see a comeback.”
I can’t tell whether he’s kidding or serious, as he’s equally adept in each realm, but if there are any regrets, he has none, though he would do one thing different if he could live his boxing life again.
“I just say in the next life I’ll start earlier. But if I die and come back 20 times, every time I’ll be a fighter.”