Champion for Charity Dan Nagle ready to channel his Hollywood doppleganger on Fight Night
By Jeff Hicks
KITCHENER —
Dan Nagle bears more than a passing resemblance to a late missing-in-action movie star.
“People tell me I look like Chuck Norris,” said Nagle, a chartered accountant and financial problem-solving partner at BDO Canada in Uptown Waterloo.
So maybe the 44-year-old chartered accountant is strolling the concourse at the Aud during a Rangers game. Or perhaps he’s just tossing a baseball to 8-year-old son on the first sunny day of April in an East Avenue park.
Either way, passersby see Nagle’s good-guys-wear-whiskers beard, fit-as-a-martial-artist physique and do a Delta Force double take.
“I’ll be walking along and people say, ‘Oh, my God! He looks like Chuck Norris,’ and they come up and approach me,” Nagle said.
“This happens all the time.”
So when Nagle climbs into the Tapestry Hall ring on April 24th as one of Mandy Bujold’s Champions for Charity, don’t be alarmed.
You aren’t seeing a silver-screen ghost in Blue Team boxing gloves.
Norris, who passed March 19, has not returned from the great Octagon in the sky to help Nagle and the Champs meet their fundraising goal of $1-Million for MacKids.
Yes, Nagle goes by the ring name of Texas Ranger, a nod to his Lone Wolf McQuade doppelgänger and the passed-on star of the TV series Walker, Texas Ranger.
“I picked the name and then, 2 weeks later, he dies,” Nagle said.
“Is this a bad omen? Or is he going to help me with the fight.”
Yes, omens are at play.
Nagle, whose wife also a chartered accountant, is from the tiny Lake Huron community called Brucefield.
A flashing light. A closed gas station. An antique shop and the world’s best ice cream.
That’s Brucefield, where his parents, Pat and Linda, still live.
And didn’t Chuck Norris famously fight Bruce Lee in The Way of the Dragon?
But Nagle, who never got a Chuck Norris comment until he grew his beard three years ago, has never dabbled in the Martial Arts.
“Maybe I should,” he mused.
Nagle loves golf. Plays basketball and squash. He even lifts weights regularly.
He once worked the hot corner for Clinton’s Little League Nine.
He was just a kid then, standing on third base waiting for a ball to be hit his way.
As a teen, he sold knife sets that included a pair of scissors that cut through a penny.
Today, he’s a Champion for Charity, whose personal fundraising total has surpassed $50,000. He is grateful for the good health of his son and 10-year-old daughter.
Now, for this Chuck Norris look-a-like and community leader, the boxing ring beckons as 16 weeks of training dwindles. The cause makes it all worthwhile.
“I just love the bigger-picture thinking.”
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