Campbell traveled a long road to glory

Nate Campbell knows that no matter the challenges he’ll find inside the ring when he climbs between the ropes on Saturday in Biloxi, Miss., to defend his lightweight title belts against unbeaten Joan Guzman, they won’t come close to approximating the difficulties of his late-night strolls as a teenager through Jacksonville, Fla.

Campbell, who holds the WBA, WBO and IBF lightweight crowns, was essentially homeless for a period as a teenager. After his biological mother went to prison and his biological father was unable to care for him because of alcoholism, Campbell had nowhere to lay his head at night.

And so he would walk around, look for a hedge to sleep under or a window with an awning.

“Always had to sleep with the clothes on to stay warm,” Campbell says.

He was a naturally-gifted athlete who had been a star basketball player in high school. Much of his life, though, was spent simply trying to make it to the next day.

He had been in 17 schools by the time he was 15. He had seen things that no teenager should ever see.

But overcoming the extreme poverty and adversity of his youth has, Campbell said, made him a tougher, better boxer. Boxing is a mentally demanding sport, and Campbell has a steely resolve built by a lifetime of learning to survive.

“I came from nothing – nothing,” he says, adamantly. “Where I was from, it was like it was a third-world country. It can break you, but if it doesn’t, I honestly believe it can make you a better person. It made me better, stronger. I understand what it is to have nothing. I understand when I see other people in pain.

“People who have always had stuff, they can’t possibly understand what it’s like to live life like I did, like so many people in this country have to do each day. They’re impervious to the pain of others. It’s not that they don’t care or don’t want to be a good person, but they can’t understand what it’s like to be in the shoes of people who were like I was.”

Campbell understands the plight of the homeless, which is why whenever he sees a beggar on a corner while he’s driving his car, he stops and rolls down his window. He always has a few bucks to share.

It’s a caring forged from a common bond.

But, as Campbell proved, one need not live a third-world life forever. He always had a superb work ethic and took on a series of jobs in order to support his young family. He worked as a warehouseman in a Winn-Dixie supermarket. He had a job at a Burger King. He made fudge. He was a carpenter. He was a dishwasher. He was assistant manager of the Gyro Wrap restaurant.

It was the otherwise mundane job at Winn-Dixie, though, that finally turned his life around. He was moving boxes on a daily basis to support his then-wife, Jan, and their three daughters, Jazmyn, Janae and Jade.

A co-worker saw him shadow boxing and suggested he take up the sport. He said anyone with hands that fast had to have some boxing talent.

When Campbell considered it, he knew the man was correct. He was having problems in his marriage and felt that perhaps learning to box would give him something constructive to do with his time.

Not long after, he wound up in Tampa Boxing at the Galaxxy Gym. He was 24, just beginning the sport and had about as much hope of winning a professional world title as he did of being elected president.

By way of comparison, when Oscar De La Hoya was 24, he was five years removed from an Olympic gold medal and had worn a world title belt of some sort for the preceding three years. And at 24, he narrowly defeated future Hall of Famer Pernell Whitaker to be briefly regarded as boxing’s pound-for-pound best.

Campbell didn’t have a prayer of reaching those kinds of heights. When you start a sport like boxing at 24, your best hope is to be able to use your skills to work out the frustrations of everyday life in the gym.

Winning a world title and becoming a main-event star? Those were storybook tales, far beyond the reach of a mere mortal.

Or so it seemed.

“The best fighters are the self-made ones,” promoter Don King said. “Nate Campbell made himself into a fighter because he refused to believe he couldn’t.”

He turned pro a month shy of his 28th birthday. And it wasn’t long before this once homeless, down-on-his-luck man was rewriting the ending to that storybook tale.

He had long arms, fast feet and unusual power. He could go and go and go and was as fearless as they came.

He was 23-0 when he met Joel Casamayor on Jan. 25, 2003. More than 10 years before, Casamayor had won a gold medal for Cuba. More than 10 years before that day, Campbell had been working at the Holiday Inn. Or perhaps it was Burger King.

Whatever it was, it was clear he had nowhere near the pedigree of the man he was about to fight. He had no business trying to beat this former world amateur champion, this one-time professional champion, this finely-tuned star. But Campbell went out and nearly did just that. He lost a close decision, one he disputes to this day.

Any doubts that he could make it to the top were erased by his performance that night. With less than three years of professional experience, he pushed a man with obvious world-class talent to his limits.

Five years later, Campbell is atop the lightweight division and may be on a collision course with Casamayor. Casamayor holds the Ring Magazine title and will meet Juan Manuel Marquez on Saturday in Las Vegas.

If Campbell wins and Casamayor wins, the two will likely meet again.

But Campbell has no doubt who should be regarded as the elite in the lightweight division. He made his point, convincingly, with a 12-round beatdown of previously unbeaten Juan Diaz in his title-winning effort in a Cancun, Mexico, bullring on March 8.

If the win over Diaz was the defining moment of his career, he plans to put an exclamation point on it with the way he handles Guzman.

The unbeaten Guzman is a superb boxer with exceptional quickness and has become the favorite despite being the smaller man. Saturday’s bout is his debut at lightweight.

Campbell understands the challenges he faces but has so much motivation, he can’t conceive of losing. He was remarried earlier this year and his new wife, Rosa, had three sons of her own.

He’s like a modern-day member of the “Brady Bunch” and is now responsible for six children.

“I’ve got double the motivation now, twice the desire,” Campbell said. “Guzman said he thinks marriage made me soft, but does he have a surprise for him. I’m hungrier now than I ever was.”