As a five-year-old, he is in the garden with his father. Harald Weller has a small heating fitter operation and is a boxer. Now he wants to clarify whether the son has not only inherited his pretty face, but can also strike. "Now hit me as hard as you can, in the face." René bleeds his nose bloody. Daddy is proud: "You will become a good boxer!"
When René Weller is 14, his father surprisingly dies of cancer. At 42. "The worst thing," says the son in November 2018, "was that my dad could not see what happened to me."
The beautiful René. The self-proclaimed Golden Boy . Womanizer. Macho Man. Box Pimp. The Föhnfrized, mustache-bearing, gold jewelry selling, lion-like Pforzheimer response to Muhammad Ali. A slicer, darling of the boulevard. Con. Big Brother candidate. Frauentauschler. Above all, a real champion.
And a damn good boxer.
It all starts on February 25, 1964, when 7800 kilometers from Wellers hometown, the pugilist Cassius Clay buzzes around the almost invincible Sonny Liston like a butterfly and dies like a bee until Liston stays on his stool after the sixth round. Clay is a heavyweight world champion. Such a type has not seen the world: looks good, is black and proud , with a gigantic big mouth. And instead of starting a fight as any sensible boxer, he dances through the ring as if this was not a fight, but a musical or variety show, the big show.
The "beautiful René" makes the halls full
René Weller sees excerpts of the fight and now knows what he wants to become: like Clay. The most beautiful, best, greatest and strongest boy in the world. At twelve, he enrolls in a Pforzheim boxing club.
Why does one start to box? Because he can fight. And want to prove something. For example, that you should take a thin shirt seriously, you do not want to risk a big lip. Like the boys who want to pamper Weller's sister in the schoolyard ten pfennig and cash in there from the seven-year threshing. Like so many other opponents in the sixties.
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René Weller: A man of the right kind"It did not matter if you were the tallest, heaviest or oldest," says Weller. "It was about who was the strongest and that was mostly me." Like the footballers of his generation, Weller lays the foundation for his later career on the street. But no 14-year-old is strong enough to cope with the death of his father. At least René tries. He sells his stamp collection and thus finances the first real boxing shoes plus pants and groin protection.
In 1972, Cassius Clay is long since called Muhammad Ali. The shrill boxer is now a global sports icon, African-American superhero, conscientious objector, heartthrob. René Weller is the first German champion in bantamweight title with a victory over Hans Pillarz. Like his idol, he casually lets his arms hang in the ring and, like a butterfly, cushions the attacks of his opponents. And when they release their cover to convince themselves that the Weller really looks as good as he always claims, he slaps ice cold.
Before moving to professional camp in 1980, he fought 355 fights as an amateur 338 wins. In 1976 he participates in the Olympic Games in Montreal, German champion in series and 1979 Vice European champion. Even more important than all the battle records: The Weller makes the halls full. "I had to attract attention to become popular, who cares about a normal lightweight boxer in Germany?"
World Champion in round one
He learns from the greatest of all times. In the late seventies, Muhammad Ali, who has been legendary since his triumph at the Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman, tours Germany on behalf of a beverage manufacturer and actually gets René Weller side by side. The will in the following decade, among others:
- to point at photos in leopard thong
- boldly claim, except Max Schmeling and he is no famous German boxer
- play the lead role in the movie "Macho Man" (and years later with a lawsuit to ensure that the sex scenes are cut out)
- with hundreds of women, even for nine years with an ex "Miss World"
- record the "René-Weller-Rap" subtitle: "To be or not to be"
- and to date his future wife with a magic trick learned from Ali
When Weller wins his first professional fight in 1981, "Bild" writes: "Rarely has there been an athlete who has so persistently ensured that he remains in conversation." From 1980 he is under contract with Wilfried Sauerland and gets after three years a title fight for the European Championship. Over 15 rounds he is the better man against the Sicilian Lucio Cusma, but the referees evaluate the fight as a draw. Cusma retains his belt scandal. Before the fight, there had been specific death threats from the local mafia, two armed bodyguards did not give Weller aside.
In 1983, he gets the next chance to become a champion, when the father of world champion James Ortega, out of frustration, sets up his own association through high fees to officials. The son skin Weller in round one Ko and is world champion of the World Athletic Association. In March 1984, Cusma is due, in the rematch Weller beats him clearly on points and is European champion.
Out of the ring, into the jail
Thus the Pforzheimer reaches the zenith. Every fight is a great spectacle, the ring its manege, in the audience sits all over Germany: poor as rich, ugly and beautiful, honest and dishonest, savings bank employees and brothel owners. Weller's performances exude the dull glow of the half-silk. He dictates such sentences to the newspapers: "I am the only German man who looks better naked than dressed."
In the ring he wears flashy outfits, the well-trained lightweight boxer body does not even look at the pieces of cake, which he breathes away in the hours between weighing and fighting. With such a foam hairstyle plus a mustache, today's students go to 80's parties, when they got so beautiful women. Not him, his wife tells the story of the French woman who once asked René at the airport if he was the famous boxer, and then kissed his fingers. How did the story go? "The René put his former girlfriend in the bistro and went to the bathroom with the Frenchwoman."
Women find him crazy or sexy, men either find him great or hope that someone will finally polish his face. One way or the other: You know him, he polarises you. Years before Rocchigiani's villain image and Henry Mask's reunification boxes on private stations, Weller is the country's best-known pugilist.
In May 1993 he ends his boxing career and remains the scene. Already at 19, he has repaired his fight exchanges with jewelry sales and founded in 1996 the gold jewelry label "Rewell". Apparently, his business conduct arouses so much suspicion that one of his girlfriends is recruited as a V-woman and in 1999 incited him to fill the saddlebags of his Harley with 200,000 marks, in order to buy cocaine in a hotel parking lot. The police immediately take him in handcuffs.
98 euros for a salute from the champion
"One of the worst moments of my life," says Weller today. He is in jail for four years. He used to relax when painting fights, now he writes poetry. They may not be quite as beautiful as their author once was, but they give an insight into the psychic life of the author:
Here's the worst creatures
But also many happy times
Almost all the prisoners tell me
Shit, I'm guiltless here!
Now it's clear
How beautiful freedom was
Early caviar and brisk bees
Today Swedish curtains
Since 2003, René Weller is a free man, as long as his weeks are left out in the Big Brothers house. Five years ago, he married his long-time partner Maria Dörk, a journalist who once had him abruptly and about whom her husband recently said in an interview: "Only death can dissipate us." Ms. Weller replied, "While I hope for René to die before me, he would be helpless without me." A completely normal, well-functioning relationship.
If you want to, you can send it via WhatsApp video messages from the champion. It costs 98 euros, somewhere the money must come, if a boxer does not box. René Weller tries to stay in conversation, a biography is planned. The golden boy, he still glitters a bit.
"Everybody should be vain," beautiful René once told SPIEGEL, "that sets us apart from the animals." Ali himself could hardly have put it better.