Palooka Finds Funny Business Restful After Bullets : Comedy: Rocky LaPorte won six bouts before a boxing career was cut short: Shots by robbers severed a hamstring. He plays the Irvine Improv tonight.

Meet Rocky LaPorte, the palooka next door.

With his heavy Chicago-meets-Brooklyn accent and jeans-jacket attire, LaPorte--a comedian who will stop in at the Irvine Improv for one show tonight--comes across on stage as a rough-edged but sweet-natured street tough, thumbs hooked in his pants pockets as he follows his disarming blue-collar tales with a shrug of his shoulders.

“I’m like somebody that somebody always knows,” he says. “People come up to me after my shows and say, ‘Hey, you remind me of my cousin Louie.’ ”

The street-wise shtick is no affectation. He was born in Brooklyn and moved when he was 8 to Chicago, where LaPorte, 31, still lives (“The people are nice, and they got good pizza”).

He boxed in the Army and followed that with a brief professional career in the ring. Training by day and driving a truck at night, he won six bouts before his career was cut short: During a robbery, a bullet severed one of his hamstrings.

It wasn’t his only run-in with robbers. “I’ve been shot like three times, and stabbed three times.”

All that may hardly seem like grist for a career in comedy. But LaPorte had been thinking of trying his hand as a comic ever since his childhood, when he would stay up late to watch “The Tonight Show.” Driving a truck for 10 more years to support a growing family, he honed his material in his mind on the long hauls and stepped on stage for the first time just over two years ago.

He went to an open-mike night with a friend and “chickened out” but came back alone the next night and was a hit. The club manager invited him back to perform on the weekend, setting off a quick rise through the comedy ranks.

Just his first year, he did 411 shows. He has scored several TV appearances and has won contests including, two months ago, the top ($10,000) prize in the Johnny Walker National Comedy Search, which involved more than 1,600 contestants in 20 cities. Last month he signed a deal with CBS, which will try to cast him in an existing show or to develop a new show for him.

“It just took off,” he says. “I can’t even believe it. It seems like a dream to come this far this fast. Two years ago I was in a truck--I made $12,000 a year.”

LaPorte says his appeal stems from his emphasis on universal topics with which his audience easily can relate--everything from stuffing buddies into the trunk to sneak them into the drive-in to the things women do to their hair. “Just everyday stuff,” he says. “Fun stuff that everybody looks back on.”

Of course, LaPorte puts his own mean-streets spin on the “fun stuff.” At the drive-in, for instance, he says the ticket-taker would guard against stowaways by firing a few shots into the trunk. He also remembers staying back a few times at school: “I was the only kid in the fifth grade who’d been to ‘Nam.”

But LaPorte says he’s having fun now: “I’m just having a blast. At least I don’t get shot doing this, you know?”

Rocky LaPorte joins Al Lubel, Drake Sather and Dave Goodman tonight at 8:30 at the Improvisation, 4255 Campus Drive, Irvine. Admission: $7. Information: (714) 854-5455.