Robert Nichols, Jr.

King of the Ring.

Nichols excels in Golden Gloves.

If Robert Nichols Jr. hadn’t been outside his house with some friends that day; if T.L. McManus hadn’t driven by; if they didn’t happen to be just up the road from the Jaycee Building…a Golden Gloves success story would not have happened.

“T.L. McManus was the coach, and he was riding through the neighborhood, and he asked a group of us if we wanted to box,” Nichols says. “So me and two of my brothers and a friend who lived close by, we all went down and tried out. So that’s how we got started.” Nichols was 17, a heavyweight at 175 pounds. “It went very well,” he says. “I only lost one match.”

He became the Mount Holly Golden Gloves novice heavyweight champion, from 1968 through 1970, which secured his place in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

The Jaycees, he says, supplied the gloves and equipment, and a little traveling money when McManus would take the crew to away bouts.

Nichols says he didn’t wear headgear: “I thought it was distracting,” he says, “and I wasn’t planning on getting hit in the head that many times anyway.” But there was an issue, once, with shoes.

“There was one incident in Gastonia when the fighter before me, he got knocked out and I was in the dressing room waiting for him to come back because I had to wear the same boxing shoes he had on,” he says. “I had to wait until they took his shoes off so I could put them on and fight.”

Boxing matches started on Thursday nights and continued through Saturday. “In order to make it to those finals, you had to fight two times, maybe three times, and if someone didn’t want to fight me, I automatically would go to the finals,” he says. “It was very seldom I’d have to fight all three fights.” He won the Saturday night finals 22 times. An article in the Gaston Gazette on January 31, 1969, said:

“One of the most pleasant surprises for Mount Holly veteran coach T.L. McManus has been the performance of heavyweight Robert Nichols. Nichols had very little experience, was in his first year of fighting, yet won the Mount Holly Golden Gloves. Last night, he beat a veteran fighter in Charlotte’s Jack Hefner. Nichols got in his share of strong punches, and stayed away from Hefner’s dynamic to cop the victory. Robert punched his way into the finals and will meet the winner of tonight’s bout between Gastonia’s Steve Carpenter and S.C.’s Howard Jones.” A newspaper article from February 10, 1969 said:

“Robert Nichols of Mount Holly, in his first year of boxing, captured the novice heavyweight title, beating Jack Hefner of Charlotte. Nichols swept to titles on three consecutive weekends in Mount Holly, Gastonia and Charlotte. “

“I won all my [Novice] bouts leading up to the Golden Glove championship, where all the fighters who had made it would participate. I only lost one,” he says. “I’m thinking I aged out of Novice during our last fights, because they were in January and February, so I think I aged out into the Open division when I turned 18.”

Nichols, who turned 71 on February 8, says something else happened about 1970 that pulled at him like a rope in tug-of-war, each side trying to muscle him in a different direction.

Nichols’ faith in the Lord is an indispensable part of his life.

Nichols is Robert Sr. and Ossie Nichols’ oldest of eight children. He grew up in a Christian home, a close-knit family. He was a junior deacon and youth leader at their Pentecostal church. A pastor learned of Nichols’ passion for boxing.

“Their rules were very strict, and the pastor told me I shouldn’t be boxing. I’m a born-again believer, and I listened to him,” Nichols says. “He was our pastor for 13 years, and then we got another pastor and he told me there was nothing wrong with it. So I went back to boxing.”

By then, Nichols was in his 30s. He and his wife Naomi married in 1971. They have a daughter and two sons.

“I came back because of the love I had for the game, and if I’d have had my way about it, I never would have stopped. But I was trying to be obedient to the pastor,” he says. “It hurt my career, because I was looking for ways to be a top contender of the heavyweight boxing profession, so after all those years I lost, I stepped back into the ring and found out I still had it.”

He competed in the Open division and boxed for a club in Gastonia awhile, “But my roots are in Mount Holly.”

Away from the ring, Nichols worked 29 ½ years for Clariant Corporation as a maintenance mechanic and chemical operator and took early retirement at age 55.

When Nichols got the call from the Hall of Fame about his induction, he was with his wife at the restaurant their daughter owns on Mount Holly-Huntersville Road.

“Actually, I was speechless, and tears started running down my face and I told my wife, and she started jumping up and down in the restaurant, praising the Lord,” he says. “The reason I started crying is that I lost my mother two years ago, and she would have loved to participate in this. But to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. I’m sure she’s pleased, but it’s sad she’s not here anymore.

“I had the privilege to box with some of the greatest men in Mount Holly, and T.L. McManus took us around and I learned a lot under his leadership.”

The Nichols have 15 grandchildren. Athleticism is in the family. One grandson, Jaylen, is a 6-foot-5, 322 pound scholarship offensive lineman for the University of South Carolina. Cameron, a senior 6-foot-2, 283 pound offensive guard has a full scholarship to Navy.

“I’d definitely like to thank the committee for choosing me. I was really blown away, and I’d like to thank each and every one for their outpouring of support for this little hometown boy.”