Rocky Lockridge: Former boxing champ to living on streets of Camden

Rocky Lockridge sits high on a stoop, giving himself a lofty view of the intersection of 7th Street and Chestnut in Camden.

There's a convenience store on the corner, but it's not drawing as much interest as the woman openly dealing drugs, shouting, "Five dollars, five dollars," to anyone who passes.

In the midst of it all, a brown sedan stops, the car idling in the middle of the street. A middle-age man gets out and quick-steps to the top of the stoop to greet Lockridge with a fist bump and a quick man-hug. After a few quiet words, he gets back into the car and drives off.

Others take turns approaching Lockridge to exchange pleasantries. One is a 20-something girl named Laquicha Smith, who seems excited to tell an outsider about the special man sitting on the cement steps.

"That's Rocky. He's the champ," she says. "He's still got it."

The Champ looks out across the familiar street corner, his head held high. But his face is swollen by scar tissue around the eyes and more than one tooth is missing. A silver metal four-prong walking cane he now needs to walk is balanced across his knees.

His fingers tremble as he lifts a cigarette to his lips and his voice is raspy and hard to make out.

"Everybody kisses me, calls out, 'Champ, Champ, Champ,' " Lockridge says. "I get joy being around them because they're going through the struggle, same as me."

The struggle is living on the streets of Camden, where Lockridge has been for more than 10 years. It has been a long way to fall for a two-time world boxing champion.

Lockridge, who climbed the rankings while fighting out of Ice World in Totowa from 1978-81, has no money. His body tilts to one side when he walks, the result of a stroke he says he suffered three years ago. His scraggly, graying beard makes him seem far older than 50, the age he reached on Jan. 30.

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