1. Chuck Zito followed this up with numerous other "tough guy" roles, such as in Sons of Anarchy.
57 Facts About Chuck Zito
1. 2.
Chuck Zito has been a ringside boxing reporter, professional wrestling manager, and radio personality.
3.
Chuck Zito was born in the Bronx, New York City, the second of three children of Charles Chuck Zito Sr.
4.
Chuck Zito's grandparents were Italian immigrants to the United States.
5.
The son of a professional welterweight boxer, Chuck Zito was taught at an early age how to fight and defend himself.
6.
Chuck Zito's father boxed under the ring name Al LaBarba and fought in 228 professional matches.
7.
At the age of seventeen, Chuck Zito dropped out of New Rochelle High School and married his high school sweetheart, Kathy.
8.
Chuck Zito later received his high school equivalency diploma while imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution, Petersburg.
9.
Chuck Zito worked as a bouncer at Cafe Central on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
10.
Chuck Zito then defeated Michael Nesbitt in the tournament's third round at the Audubon Ballroom on February 19,1973, before losing to Orlando Nieves in the fourth round of the competition at the Felt Forum on February 23,1973.
11.
Chuck Zito returned to the Golden Gloves on February 2,1978, losing to Gaylord Bryant at the Felt Forum in the 160 pounds open division.
12.
Chuck Zito developed friendships with Arturo Gatti, Vinny Pazienza and Mike Tyson.
13.
Chuck Zito first met Gatti in 1996 and accompanied the boxer to the ring for several high-profile fights.
14.
In 2003, Chuck Zito began his career as a broadcaster with a role as a ringside reporter on Monday Night Fights broadcasts on HBO.
15.
Chuck Zito was a correspondent at the Affliction: Day of Reckoning mixed martial arts event on January 24,2009.
16.
Chuck Zito was charged with assault after allegedly attacking a police officer with a bar stool during a bar brawl on June 12,1977.
17.
Chuck Zito met Sandy Alexander, a professional boxer who was the president of the New York City chapter of the Hells Angels, while they both trained at the Gramercy Gym on East 14th Street in Manhattan.
18.
Chuck Zito convinced the membership of the Ching-a-Ling Nomads to become prospective members of the Hells Angels but only he and one other Ching-a-Ling biker joined the Angels.
19.
Chuck Zito allegedly earned his membership in the club by attempting to murder Robert Giangarra, a Queens pizzeria owner and low-level mobster who had previously shot and injured Hells Angels biker Cortland "Chip" Candow in a Manhattan bar.
20.
The police were unable to locate Giangarra afterwards, and Chuck Zito was never charged with the bombing.
21.
Chuck Zito pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal possession of a weapon and was sentenced in White Plains County Court on April 23,1980, to five years on probation.
22.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation began monitoring Chuck Zito's "meteoric rise" in the Hells Angels and labelled him "a rising star in a dangerous and well-established criminal organization".
23.
Chuck Zito served as president of the Nomads chapter for ten years.
24.
Chuck Zito was part of a contingent of 21 American and British Hells Angels who traveled to Japan on April 23,1985 to assess the suitability of biker club in Tokyo for potential membership in the organization.
25.
Chuck Zito's sentence was reduced to seven years' upon appeal in 1988, and he ultimately served six years at nineteen different federal prisons located in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Louisiana, Alabama, Oklahoma and Missouri.
26.
Chuck Zito has asserted that he was convicted solely on the FBI's claims of possessing a tape of a recorded telephone conversation between him and Kittel discussing a drug deal.
27.
Chuck Zito denies that such a conversation ever took place and maintains that he was bodyguarding actor Mickey Rourke on the set of Year of the Dragon in Vancouver at the time of the alleged phone call.
28.
Chuck Zito was questioned by police in Rockford, Illinois, in June 1994, over the shooting of a motorist who cut into a Hells Angels motorcycle procession the day before the funeral of Lamont "Monte" Mathias, the president of the Hell's Henchmen Motorcycle Club who was killed during a biker war with the Outlaws Motorcycle Club.
29.
On December 11,1994, Chuck Zito was among a group of twenty Hells Angels arrested at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago by a task force composed of agents from the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Illinois State Police, and the Chicago Police Department Intelligence Unit after an alleged high-speed car chase along the Northwest Tollway.
30.
The Hells Angels reached a $250,000 out-of-court settlement with the police, of which Chuck Zito received a share of $9,000.
31.
On December 15,2001, Chuck Zito was arrested by the Connecticut State Police and charged with first-degree criminal trespass after refusing to remove his Hells Angels "colors" at the request of security staff while attending the John Ruiz vs Evander Holyfield III boxing match at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut.
32.
On February 23,2002, Chuck Zito was present at the Hellraiser Ball, a tattoo and motorcycle trade exposition in Plainview, New York, sponsored by the Long Island chapter of the Hells Angels, which was ambushed by dozens of members of the rival Pagan's Motorcycle Club, resulting in one biker being killed and at least ten injured.
33.
Chuck Zito was a regular patron of the Scores strip club in Manhattan while the club was controlled by the Gambino crime family.
34.
Chuck Zito attended the funeral of Gambino boss John Gotti in Queens on June 14,2002.
35.
Chuck Zito declined to comment when he was approached by reporters after the wake.
36.
Chuck Zito had first met Gotti while they were incarcerated together at MCC in 1986.
37.
In 2004, Chuck Zito left the Hells Angels, after 25 years of membership in the club, to focus on his acting career.
38.
Chuck Zito resigned from the club "in good standing", an option reportedly extended only to the Hells Angels' most respected members.
39.
In 1979, after assisting the bodyguards of actor Robert Conrad at a motorcycle convention at the New York Coliseum, Chuck Zito began his own bodyguard agency, Charlie's Angels Bodyguard Service.
40.
Chuck Zito initially provided protection for actress Lorna Luft and later was hired by her half-sister Liza Minnelli.
41.
Chuck Zito's brother-in-law was a policeman, which allowed him to hire moonlighting police officers to bodyguard celebrities at public events which required additional manpower, such as award shows.
42.
Chuck Zito later worked on over 50 films such as Nowhere to Run, The Specialist, True Lies, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Heat, Eraser, The Juror and The Rock.
43.
Chuck Zito acted as stunt coordinator for the first time on Santa with Muscles.
44.
Chuck Zito then began landing small acting roles in films, including Heaven's Prisoners, No Code of Conduct and Gia.
45.
In 1996, after a meeting with producer Tom Fontana, Zito joined the HBO prison drama Oz as mobster Chucky Pancamo.
46.
Chuck Zito was a cast member until the show ended in 2003, after six seasons.
47.
Chuck Zito is then purported to have punched Jean-Claude Van Damme, who had previously been a bodyguarding client of his, in another incident at Scores on February 5,1998.
48.
Chuck Zito appeared on the January 11,1999 edition of WCW Monday Nitro in Knoxville, Tennessee accompanying Hollywood Hulk Hogan and the New World Order to the ring alongside 17 other members of the Hells Angels from New York, Kentucky, Illinois and North Carolina.
49.
In 2002, Chuck Zito released his autobiography, Street Justice, co-authored with Joe Layden.
50.
Chuck Zito released a self-defense and dieting video, Chuck Zito's Street Survival System, in 2005.
51.
Chuck Zito appeared in Carlito's Way: Rise to Power the same year.
52.
Chuck Zito hosted Chuck Zito's Italian Bad Boy Hour on WVOX.
53.
In 2010, Chuck Zito filed a $5 million lawsuit against the cable network FX, alleging that he had a development meeting with them in 2006, in which he pitched the idea of an outlaw motorcycle group.
54.
Chuck Zito alleges that FX blew him off and then stole his idea, which became the FX show Sons of Anarchy.
55.
Chuck Zito appeared in Sons of Anarchy season 5, as Frankie Diamonds.
56.
Chuck Zito appeared in SOA creator Kurt Sutter's Discovery Channel documentary series, Outlaw Empires.
57.
Chuck Zito has a daughter, Lisa, with his ex-wife Kathy.