Booyah Productions: Flash Back: Last spring Shane began training with WBH Champion Pinklon Thomas for Hike Across America

Last spring World Heavy Weight Boxing Champion Pinklon Thomas began training Businessman / Speaker / Marines Shane Johnson to prepare him physically, mentally & spiritually for his Hike Across America to raise awareness about Veteran suicides and homelessness.

by George Diaz Contact Reporter / Orlando Sentinel

Pinklon Thomas has a Christmas gift for you.

It offers redemption, sacrifice, pain and perseverance. It’s a road map of survival, one that he would not recommend.

It’s his story. Hopefully, you can take away bits and pieces, and remember those cautionary moments that come across in everyone’s life. From there, it’s a simple step: Don’t do what he did.

Thomas, who has lived in Orlando since 1989, is a former world heavyweight boxing champion.

Back in the day, that was the most prestigious badge of honor a man could wear. Boxing was once the sport of kings, and heavyweight champions were legendary heroes.

Joe Louis, John L. Sullivan, Jack Dempsey, Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson. And Pinklon Thomas.

“Pink” was the World Boxing Council heavyweight champion from 1984 to 1986. He made one successful title defense against Mike Weaver before losing the title to Trevor Berbick. It was a short ride, but still, he climbed the mountain.

The sacrifices have been significant. Pink provides much context and detail in an autobiography he released in November, titled “Back from the Edge of Hell.” The spoiler alert is obviously in the title.

You can also flip to the back cover that says, “Pinklon allowed himself to be lured into the gangster lifestyle and becomes a heroin addict at age 12. When 15, he quits school, commits armed robberies, steals from a drug lord and is hunted down by hired killers. Boxing offers him a way out. …”

After years of inflicting pain on himself, Thomas found a way out by learning to inflict pain on others.

“I didn’t have to have a degree,” he said. “I didn’t have to have a diploma. I had to have heart. I had to have desire and motivation to do what I wanted to do. So I had to make a choice. And when I made that choice I didn’t look back.”

He turned pro after just three amateur fights. His skill sets were basic. He was a lefty and didn’t even throw rights in his first nine fights. But he kept winning. After 25 fights and a 24-0-1 record, he beat Tim Witherspoon in August 1984 to win the world heavyweight title.

Two fights later, it was all lost, and Thomas eventually reverted to the hopeless lifestyle he had embraced growing up in Pontiac, Mich.

He checked out in a hazy blur of smoking cocaine after losing to Evander Holyfield in September 1988. He lost 13 pounds in a drug-induced stupor. All the while, he kept fooling himself that he could still fight. He tried reaching out to his former trainer, the legendary Angelo Dundee, who abruptly told him to get lost before hanging up the phone.

Pink had to make another choice. He finally checked himself into a drug rehab facility, the Eastwood Clinic near Detroit. Ashamed and embarrassed, he used the alias, "Thomas West.” Pink got himself scared straight in 21 days. After paying the $6,000 bill, one of the first people he called was Dundee.

This time, Angie didn’t hang up the phone.

Pink would fight until January 1993, retiring with a 43-7-1 record. But his greatest victory is getting clean and sober, all these years and counting, starting on Feb. 13, 1989.

“There are a lot of things I wish I didn’t do,” he said, a few months short of celebrating his 60th birthday in February. “But today I have a great life. I’m happy. Satisfied.”

Like every good man, Pink has a strong woman in his corner. He met DeJuana (aka DJ) eight months into his sobriety, in Orlando. They’ve been together ever since, embracing the traditional “sickness and health” vows.

Thomas is recuperating from recent back surgery that took nearly six hours. The doctor’s diagnosis was spinal stenosis, which came from all the rounds of combat fighting. A lot of scar tissue had built up as well. The pain had been excruciating.

photo by Ray Tharaldson

Pink will be home for the holidays on doctor’s orders. He wears a back brace. He hooks himself up to a simulator two hours a day to strengthen his back. DJ still gives him grief because Pink tends to go off the grid now and then, playing pool or doing something else to put stress on his back.

But he will be fine. Rising up without adversity is easy. Rising up after you fall is the hard part.

Pinklon Thomas is no longer King of the Ring. But he is still standing. Sometimes, the greatest victories aren’t celebrated when the referee raises your hand.