René Weller made boxing popular in Germany, later he also came into conflict with the law. Now the “beautiful René” has passed away as a result of his dementia disease.
To describe him as dazzling would probably be an understatement. Viewed soberly, René Weller was a talented boxer who helped his sport gain increasing attention in Germany in the 1980s. More than with his fights, however, he dominated the headlines at the time with the spectacle he created around them, and later repeatedly with his conflicts with the law.
On Tuesday at 5.50 pm, Weller passed away at the age of 69 as a result of his dementia. His wife Maria announced this via Instagram in the evening. “You fought like a lion but unfortunately lost your last battle,” she wrote. Weller was diagnosed with the disease in 2014 and had been getting worse and worse. The dazzling life of the “Pforzheim answer to Muhammad Ali” (Der Spiegel) came to a sad end.
René Weller served the tabloids intensively
Weller, born in Pforzheim on 21 November 1953, used to be cult, the son of a pugilist provided good entertainment, something Weller missed in his heirs. “There are no more fighters that all the people in Germany know,” he said.
This was different in his time in the 80s. Almost everyone in Germany knew the “handsome René”, partly because the trained heating engineer and goldsmith knew how to make headlines outside the ring with macho slogans and other escapades.
With his image as a playboy, the lightweight skilfully served the tabloids and provided many colourful stories.
Wife Swap, Summer House of the Stars, Big Brother
Weller’s past is colourful – and also a little bizarre. He has left out almost nothing. Boxing titles, women, parties, showbiz, prison. “Others would have to have three lives to experience what I have experienced,” Weller once said.
Even when Weller could no longer be a professional, his show went on – but as a C-list celebrity. In TV formats such as “Big Brother”, “Frauentausch”, “Das Sommerhaus der Stars” or “Das perfekte Promi-Dinner”, the self-proclaimed “Golden Boy” played himself: a sports-mad macho with a gold chain and western boots.
The fact that Weller, who used to be coached by promoter Wilfried Sauerland, was once the best lightweight boxer in Germany and lost only one of 55 professional fights is increasingly being forgotten: in 1984, Weller had celebrated his greatest success when he defeated the Italian Lucio Cusma in Frankfurt and became European champion. In 1986 he lost the title to the Dane Gert Bo Jacobsen, his only defeat in the ring.
“Macho Man” also in the movies
In any case, legendary photo shoots remain in the memory, in which a well-trained Weller gives his playboy image plenty of fodder. Sometimes alone on a Harley, sometimes surrounded by beautiful women on an air mattress in the pool – but always bare-chested and in a macho pose. “I’m the only German who looks better naked than dressed,” he once said. The quote “Without bubbly I’m thirsty, without a Rolex I’m naked!” also comes from him.
On YouTube, Weller’s 1984 appearance on the music television show “Flashlights” continues to amuse the internet community. With his “boxer rap” (“Suddenly, bang, it’s on again! The managers are beaming, the magic is on!”), but also with a slip of the tongue during the subsequent interview: “I’m into the women, I’m completely undemanding.”
In the film “Macho Man”, Weller plays – how original – the boxing world champion Dany Wagner, who rescues a young woman from the violence of three drug dealers.
In real life, Weller himself was sentenced to several years in prison in 1999 for cocaine trafficking, inciting document forgery as well as illegal possession of weapons, but was released early in 2003. He had been framed, Weller emphasised, he had never had anything to do with drugs.
Weller generally reacted sensitively to the dark chapter of his colourful life: In 2006, he sued TV presenter Günther Jauch for saying on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”, “He’s always in jail”. The suit was dismissed.
