Chester Boxing & Martial Arts History
Joe Klecko - From the streets of Chester and boxing to the NFL
The whole tale starts in Chester — “the west end of Chester,” Klecko said over the phone. “Chester made you tough. Chester was no walk in the park. A working-class town. Nobody in my family had ever gone to college.” There was no Pop Warner football in Chester at the time, Klecko said. Baseball was his game. He remembers being a Little League all-star when he was 12. Klecko wasn’t a football player back then. His baseball prowess eventually turned into softball prowess. Klecko had gone out for the football team as a freshman at St. James, but remembers how the freshman coach taught a drill where two players got on a piece of wood, “like a 2-by-10,” and the pair of youngsters would hit into each other until one was knocked off the wood. Klecko had been put against the biggest guy. Klecko remembers the coach saying, “Get out of there before you get hurt.” “He embarrassed me so bad, I quit,” Klecko said.
Finally, senior year at St. James, “I said, you know, there’s not anybody in my senior class I didn’t think I could beat up, or a win a fight with.” He joined the team. The varsity coach, Joe Logue, saw what he had in Klecko quickly.
Klecko used his experience at St. James to land at Temple University. Klecko boxed a little at Temple. There was no NCAA boxing, but there was a national club competition, and Klecko won it twice, heavyweight division. Word got around Philly and Klecko was invited to work out at a little gym in North Philly. “You walked in the front door, the ring was right there.”
This was Joe Frazier’s gym. The big kid from Temple wasn’t just there to watch. Frazier, who had already beaten Muhammad Ali once and lost to Ali once, the Thrilla in Manila still a year away, needed sparring partners.
“I was a big, strong, tough guy,” said Klecko, who was listed at 6-foot-3, 263 pounds as a pro player. “Joe used to spar like 20 rounds. I went two or three rounds. It was a scary situation.”
In his mind, Klecko sized it up and decided, “If things get bad, I can tackle him.”
His confidence boosted a bit one time, Klecko tried to go on a momentary offensive.
“He threw a deadly left hook to my head — I didn’t see it,” Klecko said. “I said, ‘Oh, [shoot].’ Joe started cackling.”
In 1977, the NFL draft was 12 rounds. Klecko went to the Jets in the sixth round. Klecko played 11 seasons for the Jets, and made the Pro Bowl four times, twice at defensive end, twice at defensive tackle. With him bookending Mark Gastineau, the New York Sack Exchange was born, the tabloid headline describing the whole line. Klecko had 78 sacks in his career, which ended after one season with the Indianapolis Colts. In 1982, he won the George Halas Award, given to the NFL player who had overcome the most adversity.
